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.

The Word on Trial

Abstract: Milner Ball's extraordinary book, The Word and the Law, begins with a narrative account of "seven practices in law." The seven practitioners Ball brings to life for the reader share two powerful traits: they all, in quite different ways, use law to lessen the multiple sufferings of various communities of poor people, and they all, by doing so, strengthen the communities within which and for which they labor. The reader gains from these accounts not only a sympathetic understanding of the lives of seven lawyers, but a renewed sense of the possibilities their practices present. This can be put any number of ways. Perhaps most simply, Ball's retelling of these practices opens the possibility of finding in "legal practice" a vehicle for helping people, for attending with care to the needs of people, for making a change in the world for the better, for acting with compassion toward the end of social justice. These practices deserve our admiration, but they are by no means beyond our grasp. They are human-sized practices that suggest the feasibility, and not just the nobility, of a professional life committed to social justice.Ball employs theological argument, literary interpretation, journalistic reporting, a good deal of personal narrative, and simply, moral reflection to engage the reader directly with both the seven practices and with the texts, biblical, literary, and legal, that he brings to the task of understanding. These meditations are overflowing with insight, suggestion, description, self-revelation, interpretation, and stones within stones within stones. While never sentimental, his meditations are truly heartening. They tell the story of one man's intellectual attempt to make moral and religious sense of his own life, and the lives of some people he admires, in law it is a story, and an intellectual journey, that is well conceived and well told.In the remainder of this Review, I will comment very briefly on two of the theological themes that recur in Ball's meditations and note what I think are some possible connections between his theological arguments and some of our legal practices and habits of mind. Thus, in Part II, I will explore the possibility that the discussion Ball provides of the use of parables in the Bible, and particularly his challenging interpretation of a passage from the Book of Mark regarding the use of parables, might also shed some light on the use of narrative by critical race theorists, as well as some of the recent criticism that narrative jurisprudence has elicited. In Part III, I briefly suggest that the relation for which Ball argues between religion and Belief, or between religious practices and God's Word, may find an echo in the relation between law and justice. I hope that by drawing analogies between the theological arguments Ball makes about religion and the Word, on the one hand, and some of our contemporary debates about law and justice, on the other, I am not trivializing or grossly misstating Ball's positions. I must emphasize that the analogies I draw are mine, not his, and I apologize for any distortion in his positions that may result from my attempt to make a coherent claim that fruitful analogies exist.

Sparse linearized iterative coherence estimation (SLICE) and risk assessment in image analysis

Abstract: Many methods form manifold learning have been proposed recently to accurately embed some high dimensional sets of points into low dimensional space. Most of these methods make assumptions about the spectral support of the high dimensional space being sampled and the consistency of these assumptions over time. Additionally, most of these methods do not directly incorporate a means of assessing the embedding in terms of probability distributions for estimation and detection purposes. Finally, most of these methods do not take into consideration noise in the estimation of the true underlying space. We propose a new method using sparse coherence-based estimation of distributions of points sampled from a high dimensional space that iteratively refines its notion of the support of the space. This approach will enable a new method of estimation, detection, and identification risk analysis and mitigation in a general class of image analysis problems.

Tipping Point Challenges in International Economic Disputes

Abstract: This Article reviews two critical “tipping point” moments in the evolution of international economic law: the controversial successful challenge to the appointment of an arbitrator in an investment arbitration case (CC/Devas v. India) in 2013 and the equally contentious non-reappointment of a member of the World Trade Organization Appellate Body in 2016. In each instance, an adjudicator was dismissed on the basis of his past decisionmaking. These two developments brought into sharper focus questions about the mandate of the adjudicator and the checks and balances in relation to the adjudicatory role. The Article refers to these moments as "tipping points" given the overwhelming negative response to each. Most commentators took the position that the moment ought not be repeated as it called into question foundational tenets of the trade or investment dispute resolution system. After reviewing the details of each moment and the responses, the Article surveys the availability of ethical or other doctrines to guide arbitrators when it comes to the impact of their past decisionmaking. It notes the variation in these doctrines both with respect to clarity and substance across international economic law. Finally, the Article calls for change in the interest of preserving the legitimacy of the international economic law adjudicatory systems.

The Political Morality of Evidence Law

Abstract: This review essay discusses Alex Stein's recent book Foundations of Evidence Law. It focuses on explicating the book's general normative framework and then offers a critique of that framework from within the domain of political morality. Part I discusses Stein's views about the purpose of evidence law and the importance of error allocation. Part II explains how Stein derives his normative principles from probability theory. Part III discusses the book's master principle - the principle of maximal individualization. Part IV explains how this principle operates, along with two additional principles ("equality" and "equal best"), to regulate evidentiary issues. Part V evaluates the overall theory in light of two goals that the law of evidence must satisfy to a significant degree in order to be justified in terms of political morality: error reduction and the fair allocation of the risk of errors that do occur. The critique developed in this essay offers some reasons to question the extent to which Stein's theory would achieve either goal. The general theme of the critique is that a greater focus on the epistemology of proof would also lead to a more morally justified proof process, and thus that the epistemic and moral domains are more intertwined than the book supposes.

Who Benefits from Physician Wellness

Abstract: In their recent Position Paper for the CPA’s Professional Standards and Practice Committee, Myers and Freeland state that there is a “clear relationship between physician wellness and competence to practice medicine.” This grounding assumption, and other questionable claims about the dangers posed by physicians with burnout and the effectiveness of physician health programs, is not helpful to physicianemployees with or without mental health disorders. Physician wellness policies and initiatives in general seem more likely to help hospital management. Myers and Freeland’s statement about physician wellness and competence is similar to statements in the new Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education program requirements on resident well-being. The requirements claim that programs “have the same responsibility to address well-being as other aspects of resident competence.” The American Psychiatric Association Publishing Textbook of Psychiatry also states that “Psychiatrists will play an increasingly important role as leaders in medicine in the future and can help to emphasize the links among physician well-being, clinical competence, and the importance of well-being as an ethical imperative. . . . ” “[P]hysician wellness [is a term] used interchangeably with physician well-being” that loosely refers to health. The effect of defining physicians’ competence in terms of well-being is to refocus appraisals of physicians’ abilities not on their performance, but on their health. Another problem with physician wellness is that studies suggest physician wellness initiatives are not effective. Even if they were, it is doubtful that even effective treatments could overcome the harm done to physicians with mental health disorders by such stigmatizing links between wellness and competence. In addition, what might be framed a “voluntary” physician-initiated participation in a wellness program may often be more accurately characterized as an employerinitiated requirement for assessment of potential impairment. Imagine a physician who checks a box on his initial employment paperwork asking, “Would you like to sign up for our free mindfulness and relaxation classes?” or “Would you like to work with wellness counselors and hospital management to evaluate and improve your mental health and work performance?” Follow-up contact from the wellness program and subsequent participation may be appropriately characterized as voluntary. But what if a resident is called into a meeting with program leadership, who to her surprise, express concerns about her performance and say they want to provide their residents with every available resource they need to succeed: “Do you feel that psychological testing— which we can offer right here at the hospital wellness program—might be helpful?” I would argue that the resident’s subsequent participation and any “voluntary” waiver of confidentiality in this setting would not actually be voluntary. Furthermore, the authors’ medicalization of disruptive behavior and their references to “stigma” as essentially akin to “resistance” or as a problematic belief on the part of physician-employees may coerce compliance with these assessments. This is a problem with psychiatry in general that may be even more problematic in the already coercive environment of employment. The unintended consequence of these and other wellness policies and practices is that they grant physicians’ employers greater control over physicians’ private lives. Anything physician-employees do outside or inside the hospital can be said to interfere with, impair, or affect their well-being—and, by extension, harm patients. Linking physician well-being to competence opens the door to employers with strong personal opinions about certain therapies and lifestyle practices imposing those preferences on their physician-employees through implied threats that they will be labeled incompetent should they resist. These physician wellness policies are unlikely to actually help physician-employees. And they are even less likely to help physicians with mental health disorders or disabilities.