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 & Public health. The organization has 585 authors who have published 2488 publications receiving 36650 citations. The organization is also known as: Georgetown Law & GULC.

COVID-19 and the Loneliness Pandemic: Implications for Intimate Partner Violence Survivors

Abstract: The COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically highlighted domestic violence survivors’ isolation, and has triggered innovative efforts to reach out to people who are trapped in their homes, more endangered by a partner than by the virus. But a related – and extremely damaging - consequence of this challenging time has received far less attention: survivors’ intensified experience with loneliness. Although loneliness can be catalyzed by isolation, it is a distinct psychological phenomenon that is interior and subjective in nature. Loneliness is not only acutely painful in its own right, but it also inflicts a range of long-lasting health-related harms, and heightens survivors’ vulnerability to IPV, creating a vicious cycle that may continue long after strict stay-at-home policies end. This may be particularly true for marginalized survivors, for whom larger structural inequalities and institutional failures heighten and compound the negative impact of loneliness. This brief report describes what we know about the nature and costs of survivor loneliness; and argues that that the COVID-19 pandemic provides a useful impetus to both review the ways in which current DV interventions may help alleviate loneliness (as distinct from isolation), and how we might intentionally adopt deeper and more expansive measures, now and particularly after a return to “normal.”

Gun Laws and Mental Illness: Ridding the Statutes of Stigma

Abstract: A man takes aim at people gathered in a public place, killing large numbers of them. In the hours, days, and weeks to come, police, politicians, and the media insist that he must have been mentally ill. This presumed strong link between mental illness and violence is so unquestioned that it is enshrined in federal and state laws that prohibit people with mental illness from possessing guns. But this assumption is deeply flawed. This Article lays bare the lack of evidence of a direct line between mental health conditions and violent acts and argues that mental illness gun bans do little more than reinforce the harmful trope that people living with a mental health condition are intrinsically dangerous. These laws, which prohibit people with certain indicia of mental health conditions from purchasing or possessing firearms, fail at their supposed goal of preventing guns from getting into the hands of dangerous people. They define the prohibited group in ways that both include many individuals who will never be violent and exclude many individuals who pose a risk. Moreover, this focus on mental illness distracts lawmakers from traits that better predict violence, such as past violent acts and substance abuse. The danger stigma has real consequences: It makes employers less likely to hire individuals with mental illness, landlords less likely to rent to them, and legislators less likely to allocate money to programs to serve them. It also makes police more likely to arrest or shoot them. Because mental illness gun bans do not accomplish their goals and instead impose deep psychological and societal harms, they should be discarded in favor of laws that focus on stronger predictors of violence.

Tax Advisors and Conflicted Citizens

Abstract: How should we think about the obligations of a lawyer who counsels and provides legal advice outside of litigation? thousands of lawyers are involved every day in advising clients in this setting. these lawyers counsel companies or individuals on how they can benefit from or avoid violating statutes, regulations, and other sources of law. Legal counsellors do their job behind closed doors. they engage in conversations that are usually protected from disclosure. they move in the shadows, and their influence can be hard to trace. that influence can be profound, however. It can determine who is exposed to what chemicals, who keeps and who loses their jobs, who will be able to count on retirement savings and who won’t. rules of professional responsibility devote remarkably little sustained attention to the role of the advisor. American Bar Association (ABA) Model rule 2.1 is the only rule that explicitly refers to the lawyer as advisor. It simply says that a lawyer ‘shall exercise independent professional judgment and render candid advice’. In doing so, an advisor ‘may’ refer to considerations such as ‘moral, economic, social and political factors’. By contrast, most of the other Model rules are premised on a conception of the lawyer as an advocate. this model is relatively clear and straightforward, and can provide an appealing default template for thinking about the obligations of the advisor. It suggests that the lawyer take a relatively aggressive approach to interpreting the legal provisions applicable to a client in order to maximise the client’s freedom of action. If a client’s behaviour would be permissible according to the literal terms of a statute, for instance, an advocate should urge the client to behave in that way on the ground that assessing the behaviour’s consistency with the purposes of the statute is inappropriate. If the literal terms of the law proscribe behaviour in which the client is engaged, the advisor as advocate may counsel to continue it on the ground that it is in accordance with the law’s purposes. While an advisor who acts as an advocate may adopt either approach, Doreen McBarnet and christopher Whelan argue that advisors who act as advocates in the regulatory context often focus on the literal terms of the law to help the client engage in what they call ‘creative compliance’. this involves structuring transactions, relationships or entities according to

Embryonic stem cell research as an ethical issue: on the emptiness of symbolic value.

Abstract: As we engage the human embryo-deriving and using stem cells from spare, research, or cloned early embryos-the matter of its status is unavoidable. Several important official bodies, including the National Bioethics Advisory Commission (NBAC) in its 1999 Ethical Issues Human Stem Cell Research report, affirm that the early embryo is worthy of moral respect. This essay argues that the self-congratulatory mantra of "respect" invoked to constrain embryo research serves to camouflage a distressingly narrow view of things. If vital interests of real persons trump over all other moral considerations-the benefits of destructive research with embryos always outweigh whatever "symbolic" (John Robertson) or "detached" (Ronald Dworkin) costs arise - then the metric of respect owed embryos is set too low. There is a necessary place in public debate for perspectives that challenge the dominant view on our understanding of the embryo's moral status. The limits of this essay permit the author to frame only one. To "reverence" rather than to "value" early embryos is a more intuitively appealing paradigm. The attitude of reverence is one not of evaluation but of deference. For the human embryo itself matters, not what goes into it. A better way of measuring the intrinsic worth of the early embryo is to look at the wonder it elicits. Where value-language invites inegalitarian judgments of comparative value-to evaluate and so to devalue those embryos we might destroy - reverence-language ensures that embryos are seen as quasi-subjects that lay a claim on us rather than objects for manipulation. Affording the embryo's symbolic worth real bite, this view meets the challenge of more properly weighing the symbolic in embryo research. Reverence does not require embryonic preservation at all costs, but it does raise the bar. At a minimum, an ethic that demands reverence for human embryonic life will require that other, less morally controversial alternatives, such as the use of adult stem cells, be explored first. Rather than paying lip service to the idea of respect for embryos, the author suggests that we need to accommodate a fuller and thicker picture of the embryo, to respond to the deep moral reservations about embryo research held by many Americans, and to shift the paradigm for public discussion on such research.

Modeling juror bias

Abstract: We consider the implications of the definition of juror bias offered in Schwartz and Schwartz Edward P. Schwartz & Warren F. Schwartz, The Challenge of Peremptory Challenges. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Public Choice Society, Long Beach, California, March 24–26, 1995. for optimal use of juror challenges to improve the accuracy of the jury process. For them, bias consists of a juror assinging more/less weight to the evidence for guilt than would be assigned by the median juror in a fully representative pool of jurors. When juror assessments of the evidence have a probabilistic component to them, we show that this notion of bias does not imply that we necessarily would wish to use challenges to eliminate the most biased jurors. We also explain how understanding juror verdict accuracy requires an analysis of the interaction between the threshold rule that the juror uses to determine what level of belief in the guilt of the defendant is sufficient for “guilt beyond a reasonable doubt” and the probative force of the evidence in the cases that the prosecution chooses to bring to trial. Whether we use the Schwartz and Schwartz definition or other more standard legal approaches to defining juror bias (and grounds for challenge for cause) we come away highly skeptical of the expanded voir dire and extended use of peremptories that, in a number of recent highly publicized criminal trials, have had the consequences of eliminating from the jury pool the most highly educated and the most knowledgeable jurors.