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.

Scripts: what to do when big bad companies won't negotiate

Abstract: The authors reprise and update their earlier work “Last Plane Out” to examine the state of the art of negotiation with large companies who are repeat players in negotiation (airlines, Amazon, government agencies, retailers and others), analyzing past practices of “customer is always right” to current efforts to routinize and “electronocize” negotiations with customers, who are sometimes “one-off” negotiators. The authors analyze how both problem solving and more routinized negotiations must be adapted to new conditions. The authors analyze some Online dispute resolution strategies and offer some suggestions, from empirical study and personal experiences, for more effective ways to successfully negotiate when repeat players use inflexible “scripts and playbooks” for their negotiation processes. Issues of social justice, publicity, transparency and modern “aggregation” of claims are briefly reviewed.

Agency Statutory Abnegation in the Deregulatory Playbook

Abstract: If an agency newly declares that it lacks statutory power previously claimed, how should such a move — what this article calls agency statutory abnegation — be reviewed? Given the array of strategies an agency might use to make a policy change or move the law in a deregulatory direction, why might statutory abnegation be chosen? After all, it is always a perilous and likely doctrinally disadvantageous strategy for agencies. Nonetheless, agencies from time to time have utilized statutory abnegation claims as part of their justification for deregulatory shifts. Actions by agencies during 2017 and 2018, under the administration of President Donald J. Trump, reveal an especially prevalent use of such statutory abnegation strategies. This article explains the agency statutory abnegation strategy, illustrating its variants with review of past and recent uses. It then distinguishes statutory abnegation claims from other agency actions and explanations that might appear to manifest or permit such a strategy, but actually involve doctrinally different and less problematic settings. Then, after distilling the key elements of doctrines governing agency policy change, or what is sometimes referred to as consistency doctrine, it reviews procedural and analytical hurdles agencies must surmount to succeed in a policy change. It closes by exploring how analysis of this strategic move reveals the inadequacy of, or perhaps the naive publicly interested optimism behind, prevalent theories and linked normative claims about agency incentives, judicial roles, and political accountability. The article closes by analyzing the persistent judicial rejection of such strategies and the underlying normative vision they reflect about the balance of law and politics in the administrative state.

Do Credit-Based Insurance Scores Proxy for Income in Predicting Auto Claim Risk?

Abstract: Property and casualty insurers often use credit-based insurance scores in their underwriting and rating processes. The practice is controversial—many consumer groups oppose it, and most states regulate it, in part out of concern that insurance scores proxy for policyholder income in predicting claim risk. We offer new evidence on this issue in the context of auto insurance. Prior studies on the subject suffer from the limitation that they rely solely on aggregate measures of income, such as the median income in a policyholder's census tract or zip code. We analyze a panel of households that purchased auto and home policies from a U.S. insurance company. Because we observe the households’ home policies as well as their auto policies, we are able to employ two measures of income: the median income in a household's census tract, an aggregate measure, and the insured value of the household's dwelling, a policyholder-level measure. Using these measures, we find that insurance scores do not proxy for income in a standard actuarial model of auto claim risk.

Golan v. Holder

Abstract: In Golan v. Holder, the U.S. Supreme Court held that section 514 of the Uruguay Round Agreements Act (Uruguay Round Act), which had been enacted to implement the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works (Convention), neither exceeds Congress’s authority under the Copyright Clause nor violates the First Amendment’s free speech guarantees. Golan v. Holder holds two noteworthy implications for American copyright law. First, it affirms the internationalization of this law after two centuries of either full (the first century) or partial (the second century) rejection of the rights of foreign creators. Second, it rejects a narrow, utilitarian understanding of incentives to create as the sole explanation for this law in favor of a broader account.