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.

Practices that (Credibly) Facilitate Oligopoly Co-ordination

Abstract: It is now well established in both the economic and legal literature that successful price co-ordination (either express or tacit) is not inevitable — even in highly concentrated industries protected by insurmountable barriers to entry. The key to this insight is the recognition that even though oligopolists’ fates are interdependent, individual self-interests are not perfectly consonant. As a result, oligopolists may find it difficult to agree on a mutually acceptable co-operative outcome, achieve that outcome smoothly, and maintain it over time in the face of exogenous shocks and private incentives to deviate. In the current language of industrial organisation, the joint profit-maximising point may not be a Nash equilibrium.

Reframing the Opioid Epidemic as a National Emergency.

Abstract: On August 10, 2017 President Trump announced his intention to declare a national emergency following the recommendation of the White House Commission on Combating Drug Addiction and the Opioid Crisis. Opioid abuse is among the most consequential preventable public health threats facing the nation. More than 600,000 deaths have occurred to date, with 180,000 more predicted by 2020. Of the 20.5 million US residents 12 years or older with substance use disorders in 2015, 2 million were addicted to prescription pain relievers. A national emergency declaration authorizes public health powers, mobilizes resources, and facilitates innovative strategies to curb a rapidly escalating public health crisis.

Ethical and legal challenges posed by severe acute respiratory syndrome: implications for the control of severe infectious disease threats

Abstract: The appearance and spread of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) on a global level raised vital legal and ethical issues. National and international responses to SARS have profound implications for 3 important ethical values: privacy, liberty, and the duty to protect the public's health. This article examines, through legal and ethical lenses, various methods that countries used in reaction to the SARS outbreak: surveillance and contact tracing, isolation and quarantine, and travel restrictions. These responses, at least in some combination, succeeded in bringing the outbreak to an end. The article articulates a set of legal and ethical recommendations for responding to infectious disease threats, seeking to reconcile the tension between the public's health and individual rights to privacy, liberty, and freedom of movement. The ethical values that inform the recommendations include the precautionary principle, the least restrictive/intrusive alternative, justice, and transparency. Development of a set of legal and ethical recommendations becomes even more essential when, as was true with SARS and will undoubtedly be the case with future epidemics, scientific uncertainty is pervasive and urgent public health action is required.

Liberalism, torture, and the ticking bomb

Abstract: Preface This chapter was published concurrently in its present form and in a more extended version that appeared in Karen Greenberg’s collection The Torture Debate in America (Cambridge University Press, 2005). The latter version included a longer and fuller analysis of the torture memos; I have used the shorter version here because other chapters of this book go into the torture memos in greater detail. The chapter received wide circulation: in March 2006 it was excerpted in Harper’s Magazine and published in translation in the German cultural magazine Die Zeit Kursbuch . Together with the following two chapters, it represents the philosophical core of this book’s analysis of torture and its critique of discussing torture through ticking-bomb hypotheticals. I began writing the chapter when the Bybee–Yoo torture memo became public in the summer of 2004, shortly after the sensational Abu Ghraib revelations. It needs only slight factual updating. At the time I finished it, only two of the torture memos were public. It was not until April 2009 that the Obama administration released the remaining torture memos, all but one of which were shortly republished by David Cole in The Torture Memos: Rationalizing the Unthinkable (New York Review of Books, 2009). The existence of CIA “black sites” – secret prisons in Poland, Romania, and Thailand – had not yet emerged, nor was it clear what interrogation techniques the Justice Department had approved for CIA use. I also wrote before the issue of nonaccountability for torture became salient. By the time the smoke had cleared, only a handful of low-level enlisted personnel had been punished for Abu Ghraib, and, ultimately, none of the 101 potential torture cases investigated by a special prosecutor resulted in criminal referrals. I discuss the issue of nonaccountability in this book’s final chapter.

The Economic Structure of Renegotiation and Dispute Resolution in the WTO/GATT System

Abstract: The treaty creating the WTO replaced the GATT dispute resolution system, which contained no formal sanctions for breach of agreement as a practical matter, with a system that results in centrally authorized sanctions against recalcitrant violators of WTO trade agreements. We examine the important features of the new system, and argue that the institutionalization of a sanctioning mechanism was not motivated by a perceived need to increase the penalty. In particular, the GATT system relied on unilateral retaliation and reputation to police the bargain, and toward its end unilateral retaliation became excessive, interfering with opportunities for efficient breach. The WTO mechanism for arbitrating the magnitude of proposed sanctions is the major innovation under WTO law, and ensures that sanctions are not set too high.