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.

An Issue of Life or Death

Abstract: Not too long ago, an HIV-positive diagnosis was tantamount to a death sentence — for people in the East and the West, in the South and the North. The drug companies that perfected the antiretroviral therapies invested princely sums to find these miracle cures. To justify their investment, they rely on the promise of a patent — the twenty-year exclusive right to make, use, and sell an invention that is novel, non-obvious, and useful. The patent allows the drug company to charge high sums for the medicine, and thereby recoup its enormous investments in scientists and drug trials, while also turning a profit for shareholders and investing in research toward future breakthrough drugs. Thus patents have saved countless lives. But this structure has its limits. Indeed, the evidence is mounting that in crucial ways patents fail to promote the health of people in the developing world, and in some cases in the developed world as well.

Shared Equity Housing: Cultural Understanding and the Meaning of Ownership

Abstract: In this paper I examine whether shared equity limitations that are sometimes applied to subsidized affordable housing creates for the owners of such housing a second class ownership status. I conclude that they do not. In support of this conclusion, I look at the meaning of property from both cultural and historical perspectives. I argue that property and ownership are culturally constructed concepts that are understood differently in different cultures and in the same culture over time. I examine the series of limitations that have been placed on property in industrial societies and argue that the limitation on equity is just another in a long list of limitations that society has imposed on ownership in favor of a supervening social good, in this case, the preservation of affordable housing for future generations of low-income homeowners.

Evaluating Joint Ventures: Economic Analysis Checklist

Abstract: This short article (for a symposium on joint ventures) provides practitioners and law professor with a 20 question checklist to guide the competitive effects analysis of the formation of a joint venture and the specific restraints and conduct of the venture. The questions mainly focus on ventures among actual or potential competitors, though some of the questions also are relevant for ventures involving complementary product firms. The questions concern potential competitive harms, potential competitive benefits, and the determination of net competitive effects. While this sequencing follows the standard burden-shifting formulation of the rule of reason decision process, the article notes that this sequencing should not be approached rigidly. A finding of a lack of efficiency benefits might suggest that the motivation of the JV is to achieve and exercise market power to the detriment of consumers, thereby supporting an inference of harm. Moreover, under a quick look to condemn standard, efficiency benefits are examined first, albeit with a possibly lower burden of proof placed on the venture to justify its formation and restraints.

Roscoe Pound, Melvin Belli, and the Personal-Injury Bar: The Tale of an Odd Coupling

Abstract: In the fourth chapter of Patriots and Cosmopolitans: Hidden Histories of American Law, legal historian John Fabian Witt tells the story of a collaboration between storied scholar Roscoe Pound and trial virtuoso Melvin M. Belli, which he calls "among the most startling and yet unremarked-upon relationships in the annals of American law." Witt argues that it both shaped and energized the efforts of personal-injury lawyers to oppose proposals that would shift to the administrative branch of government responsibility for compensating auto-accident victims. Entitled "The King and the Dean," in reference to the media's coronation of Belli as the "King of Torts", and Pound's lengthy term (1916-1936) at the helm of the Harvard Law School, the chapter advances the claim that the two men came together synergistically in the early 1950s and mobilized a campaign by personal-injury lawyers to resist the enactment of automobile no-fault plans and other proposals that would have replaced common-law tort suits with alternative compensation mechanisms. This Article will first take issue with Witt's story of the Pound-Belli relationship and then offer a different version of the interaction between the Dean and the plaintiffs' trial bar.