Georgetown University Law Center

About: Georgetown University Law Center is a based out in . It is known for research contribution in the topics: Supreme court & Global health. The organization has 585 authors who have published 2488 publications receiving 36650 citations. The organization is also known as: Georgetown Law & GULC.

Lawrence O. Gostin on Biosecurity Policy: Are We Safer Today?

Abstract: World-acclaimed authority Lawrence O. Gostin analyzes biosecurity policy since 9/11. He begins with the question: Are we safer now? Then comes a review of biosecurity legislation, followed by discussion of planning to deal with specific diseases and the problems with such an approach, and then an explanation of what the right approach is. He concludes by covering the Model State Emergency Health Powers Act and related civil liberties questions.

Celebrating the 200th Anniversary of the Federal Courts of the District of Columbia

Abstract: February 27, 2001 marked the 200th anniversary of the Federal Courts of the District of Columbia, the courts we know today as the United States District Court for the District of Columbia and the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. The history of these courts is interesting, albeit somewhat confusing; their names changed no fewer than six times since their creation. Indeed, from 1863 until 1893, the two courts were joined and called the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia. Because of their location in the nation's capital and their unusual dual jurisdiction as both federal and local courts, the District of Columbia courts were destined to make unique and important contributions to American jurisprudence. This article describes the evolution of these courts from a three-judge circuit court with both trial and appellate jurisdiction to the two courts whose anniversary we celebrate this year. It then examines two prominent themes central to appreciating the core and character of these unique institutions. First, the courts of the District have served as principal reviewers of government action, protecting the rule of law against non-observance, neglect, or abuse by federal officials. Second, these courts have responded to the pleas and plight of vulnerable populations within the city, including African Americans, women, the poor, the disabled, political protestors, and criminal defendants. While these courts were frequently constrained by the often restrictive laws and customs of the time, their opinions, especially their dissents, revealed a sensitivity that was then notable and ultimately influential.

Empiricism and Privacy Policies in the Restatement of Consumer Contract Law

Abstract: The Draft Restatement of the Law of Consumer Contracts includes a quantitative study of judicial decisions concerning businesses’ online privacy policies, which it cites in support of a claim that most courts treat privacy policies as contract terms. This Article reports an attempt to reproduce that study’s results. Using the Reporters’ data, this study was unable to reproduce their numerical findings. This study found in the data fewer relevant decisions, and a lower proportion of decisions supporting the Draft Restatement position. It also found little support for the Draft’s claim that there is a clear trend recognizing privacy policies as contracts, and none for the claim that those decisions have been more influential than decisions coming out the other way. A qualitative analysis of the decisions in the dataset reveals additional issues. The analysis reveals that the Draft Restatement study’s numerical results obscure both the many judgment calls needed to code the decisions and their limited persuasive power. These results confirm the importance of transparency and replication in empirical case law studies. They also suggest that the closed nature of the Restatement process is perhaps ill-suited to producing reliable large-scale quantitative case law studies.

The Definitions of Income

Abstract: What is income? It’s a seemingly simple question that’s surprisingly hard to answer. Income is the basis for assigning tax burdens, for distributing transfers, and for broader normative issues of inequality and justice. Yet we lack a shared conception of income, and a pure, rigorous definition of income is impossible. In this Article I review the intellectual history of the income concept among tax and fiscal theorists to show the difficulty of the problem, and also to show that some important debates about what’s proper under an income tax can be explained instead as arguments over competing income definitions that necessarily incorporate policy choices. These insights are applied to more modern questions, like the role of tax expenditure analysis and optimal income tax theory. I also perform — for the first time in the literature — a close examination and comparison of 12 different income definitions used by the federal government for different purposes. This examination illustrates that there is wide range of income concepts actively in use, but that the measure of income for tax purposes has a prominent and growing role. This Article concludes that income is not a pure, external concept, but actually a constructed concept that necessarily embodies policy, and therefore political, goals. The differences between the income concepts and definitions examined here result directly from the policy goals of the various agencies, analysts, and scholars using those concepts. Therefore, the increasing reliance on the measure of income for tax purposes risks erroneously exporting what are essentially tax policy decisions into non-tax areas, such as transfer policy, health care subsidization, higher education grants and loans, and broader discussions on income inequality and economic justice.