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.

The Architecture of Constitutional Time

Abstract: Bruce Ackerman's account in his We the People series urges the legal recognition of constitutional amendments enacted outside of Article V as part of a larger descriptive project concerning the creation of distinct republics within the Constitution of 1787. One of its limitations is that he and other scholars have not fully appreciated the way in which the original institutional design of the Constitution has facilitated — and perhaps even anticipated — the construction of subregimes during extraordinary times. This Article presents constitutional time and presidential incentives for a lasting legacy as the most important factors influencing constitutional meaning. It is constitutional time — the extraordinary historical triggers that open space for a new regime — that changes constitutional meaning, as the President’s vision tends to prevail over the Court’s. Presidents are incentivized to construct constitutional regimes by the desire to lock in a legacy against future presidents, political opposition, rival branches, and the bureaucracy. This process of maintenance and renewal has been in place since George Washington’s presidency in 1789 and raises important questions for constitutional theory.

A Meditation on Juliana v. United States

Abstract: In this essay, I try to see, and to appreciate, the wisdom in a species of climate litigation that has many detractors. This litigation asks the courts to hold the government and private parties judicially accountable for their active promotion and pursuit of climate-endangering activities, even after they knew better – even after they knew the terrible risks we faced if they continued on their preferred course. It calls upon venerable legal doctrines, deployed as modern bulwarks against the most pressing challenge of our time. The legal theories these lawsuits pursue do not come from statutes, but instead rely on constitutional law, natural law, and the common law. This is the kind of litigation that is most likely to draw criticism not only from the governmental and industrial institutions it seeks to constrain, but from within the environmental community itself, as some worry that the litigation may produce more bad law than good. I admit that I had the same fear when the litigation commenced, and to a large extent I still do. But for purposes of this essay I'd like to put that anxiety to the side and simply be curious about, and open to, the lessons these cases might teach us. My focus will be Juliana v. United States, known as the "children's climate lawsuit," in which a group of children and other plaintiffs ask for declaratory and injunctive relief against the agencies of the federal government that do work directly related to climate change. The plaintiffs allege that the government has knowingly promoted and permitted activities contributing substantially to the risks of climate change and has, with deliberate indifference, failed to protect them against these risks even though have known about them for decades. The plaintiffs' case was on the eve of trial when the Supreme Court issued two unusual orders, winking and nodding at the lower courts to prod them to stop the trial before it began. I will argue that the courts should allow Juliana to proceed through the normal process of trial and appeal. I will also compare the claims in Juliana to other cases, also involving climate change and recently pending in the nation's courts, and try to persuade the reader at least to find it interesting that cases aiming to protect fossil-fuel interests proceed through the courts without anyone suggesting they do not belong there, while cases aiming to constrain these interests confront – and have come to doom based on – a battery of objections about the types of claims courts simply should not decide. I will suggest that these objections rest on an undefended and untenable assumption about the nature of the liberty the separation of powers protects.

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.

Using Computers to Manage Large Litigation Document Populations Effectively: A Primer

Abstract: Use and creation of databases to manage discovery and evidence in large-scale US civil litigation.

More on the Gettier Problem and Legal Proof: Unsafe Nonknowledge Does Not Mean that Knowledge Must Be Safe

Abstract: In a previous article, “The Gettier Problem and Legal Proof,” I argued that epistemic conditions that undermine knowledge in Gettier-type cases also potentially undermine legal verdicts. For this reason, I argued, there is a deeper connection between knowledge and legal proof than is typically presupposed or argued for in the scholarly legal literature. Thus, I concluded, legal proof includes something like a knowledge requirement – in the sense that legal verdicts aim not only at truth and sufficient evidential support but also, as with knowledge, an appropriate connection between their truth and justifying evidential support.This conclusion is compatible with different ways of articulating further epistemological details, and the argument that supports it does not depend on any novel or particularly controversial conceptions of the epistemic concepts or analysis of the Gettier problem. In a thoughtful reply to my article, Mark McBride focuses on the epistemic concept of safety as it applies to legal proof. McBride argues that my analysis depends on an account of knowledge in which safety is a necessary condition, and he argues that this dependence challenges my central claim. In this response, I explain why neither McBride’s specific examples nor general analysis undermine my central claim. They do, however, further clarify and illuminate epistemological issues underlying my central claim in ways that are useful and instructive.