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.

Do the "Haves" Come out Ahead in Alternative Judicial Systems?: Repeat Players in ADR

Abstract: This article revisits Marc Galanter's important thesis expounded twenty five years ago, that the "haves", or better resourced litigants, and repeat players in the system have structural advantages over "one-shotters" and less resourced litigants. This article reviews the applicability of that thesis to recent developments in ADR, especially in the context of contractual arbitration. The article reviews recent cases and developments in employment arbitration, health, education, securities and consumer disputes in which contractual arbitration is mandated by "repeat player" and institutionally strong disputants. The existing empirical research is reviewed to suggest that, as in litigation, the "haves" often "come out ahead" in ADR, too. This has implications for when and how third party neutrals, as well as litigants, are repeat players in these processes and why and how particular parties try to control the kinds of processes that are used to resolve certain kinds of disputes. If ADR is no more effective at justice "redistribution" than litigation, we must examine other justifications for ADR. Mediation may operate differently than arbitration in this context, and, as usual, more research is needed to assess these issues.

Global Regulatory Strategies for Tobacco Control

Abstract: Recent tobacco control regulation in North America and Western Europe has had a salutary effect, even if smoking remains a pressing public health hazard. But in the 21st century, the tobacco industry has quietly moved its locus of activity to lucrative, emerging markets: the vast populations in Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe, and Latin America. The poorest, least educated, and sickest people on earth inhabit these regions. "Big Tobacco's" new marketing strategy will cause untold morbidity for the world's most vulnerable. However, there are a variety of effective tobacco control policies that nations can and should enact. The World Health Organization treaty, the Framework Convention for Tobacco Control, requires signatory nations to adopt a variety of tobacco control policies to the fullest extent permissible under their constitutions. The Second Conference of FCTC Parties recently set regulatory goals in Bangkok, Thailand, including the first FCTC protocol on illicit trade of tobacco products, a second protocol on cross border advertising regulations. Effective tobacco control policies include: national tobacco regulatory agencies; comprehensive bans on tobacco advertising, promotion, and sponsorship; health warnings on cigarette packets that cover at least half of the packet, convey the risks, rotate messages, and use images; mandating smoke-free environments; and tax and price policies that make smoking prohibitively expensive. This article examines legislation and regulation from all parts of the world in each of these spheres, and evaluates their effectiveness. The imperatives of science, ethics, and human rights oblige society to reduce the burden of smoking, particularly among the most disadvantaged.

Asymmetrical Regulation: Risk, Preemption, and the Floor/Ceiling Distinction

Abstract: If the federal government has constitutional power to address a social ill, and hence has power under the Supremacy Clause to preempt state, local, and common law regimes, is there a principled rationale for distinguishing federal standard setting that sets a federal floor or ceiling? At first blush, the two appear to be mere flip sides of the same federal power, only distinguished by their different regulatory preferences for a world of minimized risk (with floors) or higher levels of risk (with ceilings). This Article argues, however, that these two central regulatory choices are fundamentally different. Floors embrace additional and more stringent state and common law action, while ceilings actually are better labeled a "unitary federal choice" due to how they preclude any more lax or more stringent action as well as the different actors, incentives, and modalities of information elicitation and proof of common law settings. Advocates of less hindered markets respond that this is precisely the idea-regulatory certainty is enhanced with ceiling preemption, allowing producers of goods to plan with confident knowledge of the regulatory terrain, unbuffeted by an array of uncoordinated actors. This debate was, until recently, largely hypothetical. Recently, however, in settings as diverse as product approvals, to regulation of risks posed by chemical plants, to possible legislation regarding greenhouse gases contributing to climate change, legislators and regulators have suggested or asserted such a broad, preemptive impact. The federal action, whatever it is, would be the final regulatory choice. But under what theory of regulation and legislation can one be confident that locating all decisionmaking power in one institution at one time will lead to appropriate standard setting? In fact, advocates of risk regulation, "experimentalist regulation" scholars, and, at the other end of spectrum, skeptics about the likelihood of public-regarding regulation, all call for attention to pervasive risks of regulatory failure. Agency and legislative inertia, information uncertainties and asymmetries, outdated information and actions, regulatory capture, and a host of other common regulatory risks create a substantial chance of poor or outdated regulatory choice. Considering these pervasive risks of regulatory failure, the principled distinctions between floor and ceiling preemption become apparent. Vesting all decisionmaking power in one institution can freeze regulatory developments. Unitary federal choice ceiling preemption is an institutional arrangement that threatens to produce poorly tailored regulation and public choice distortions of the political process, whether it be before the legislature or a federal agency. Floor preemption, in contrast, constitutes a partial displacement of state choice in setting a minimum level of protection, but leaves room for other actors and additional regulatory action. Floors anticipate and benefit from the institutional diversity they permit. This Article closes by showing how the institutional diversity engendered by retaining multiple layers of law and regulatory actors creates conditions conducive to reassessment and adjustment of often rigid or outdated regulation.

A Yellow Fever Epidemic: A New Global Health Emergency?

Abstract: This Viewpoint discusses the yellow fever epidemic in Angola as well as in China, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Kenya due to cases arising from infected travelers from Angola.