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.

Explaining the Housing Bubble

Abstract: There is little consensus as to the cause of the housing bubble that precipitated the financial crisis of 2008. Numerous explanations exist: misguided monetary policy; a global savings surplus; government policies encouraging affordable homeownership; irrational consumer expectations of rising housing prices; inelastic housing supply. None of these explanations, however, is capable of fully explaining the housing bubble. This Article posits a new explanation for the housing bubble. First, it demonstrates that the bubble was a supply-side phenomenon attributable to an excess of mispriced mortgage finance: mortgage-finance spreads declined and volume increased, even as risk increased—a confluence attributable only to an oversupply of mortgage finance. Second, it explains the mortgage-finance supply glut as resulting from the failure of markets to price risk correctly due to the complexity, opacity, and heterogeneity of the unregulated private-label mortgage-backed securities (PLS) that began to dominate the market in 2004. The rise of PLS exacerbated informational asymmetries between the financial institutions that intermediate mortgage finance and PLS investors. These intermediation agents exploited informational asymmetries to encourage overinvestment in PLS that boosted the financial intermediaries’ volume-based profits and enabled borrowers to bid up housing prices. This Article proposes the standardization of PLS as an information-forcing device. Reducing the complexity and heterogeneity of PLS would facilitate accurate risk pricing, which is necessary to rebuild a sustainable, stable housing-finance market.

Law as a Tool to Facilitate Healthier Lifestyles and Prevent Obesity

Abstract: PUBLIC HEALTH AGENCIES FACE CONSIDERABLE CHALlenges trying to prevent overweight and obesity in society, primarily because a person’s own behavior is often the root cause of the disease. Individuals make personal choices about their diet, exercise, and lifestyle, so disease is often thought of as a matter of personal, not governmental, responsibility. Obesity, one of the 10 leading US health indicators, is associated with increased risk of death from type 2 diabetes, hypertension, coronary heart disease, stroke, and certain cancers. Yet the proportion of overweight and obese children and adults is alarmingly high and continues to increase. In 2005, 60.5% of adults in the United States were overweight (body mass index, 25-30), 23.9% were obese (body mass index, 31-40), and 3% were extremely obese (body mass index 40). African Americans have the highest obesity prevalence at 33.9%. The prevalence of adult obesity increased significantly in every state during the 1990s; therefore, no state will meet the targets for reduced rates of obesity set in Healthy People 2010. Similarly, 16% of children and adolescents were overweight, a prevalence that has increased nearly 50% between 1999 and 2002. Obesity could shorten the average lifespan of an entire generation by 2 to 5 years, which, if true, would result in the first reversal in life expectancy since data were collected in 1900. Obesity primarily affects the individual, but it also has high socioeconomic costs. The aggregate consequences of individual choices are countless preventable disabilities and deaths, affecting families and the entire community. Obesityattributable medical expenditures reached $75 billion in the United States in 2003, with substantial additional indirect costs in lost productivity. Critics of state regulation argue that individuals should absorb the cost of their own illness, but taxpayers finance about half of all medical costs through Medicare and Medicaid, and employers cover most of the rest. The government arguably has a legitimate interest in controlling medical and social costs of individuals’ unhealthy behaviors that are borne by society at large. Moreover, nonwhite and poor individuals experience substantial disproportionate burdens from obesity, with poor diet and sedentary lifestyles contributing to socioeconomic disparities. This Commentary discussess how law can be used as a tool to prevent overweight and obesity (TABLE). The idea has international dimensions, as suggested by the recent adoption of the European Charter on Counteracting Obesity. The charter contains a detailed action plan to improve the availability of healthy foods, promote physical activities, and regulate marketing to children.

The Human Nature of Corporate Boards: Law, Norms and the Unintended Consequences of Independence and Accountability

Abstract: Recent empirical work has puzzled over the lack of a positive correlation between the presence of a majority of outside directors on a corporate board and measures of firm performance. Drawing on work in social psychology and group behavior, this paper extends previous work to offer plausible explanations for the value-enhancing contributions of a "balanced" board. These possibilities include insider countering of outsider biases, the promotion of internal middle management interests, and the reduction in CEO influence activities that distort communications and interfere with trust. The paper then turns to use these same (and related) insights to point out some unintended behavioral consequences of recent efforts to increase the liability exposure of directors and make them more accountable. The paper concludes by addressing the connection between its analysis and the current "law versus norms" debate in corporate and securities law.

Meeting Basic Survival Needs of the World's Least Healthy People toward a Framework Convention on Global Health

Abstract: This article searches for solutions to the most perplexing problems in global health - problems so important that they affect the fate of millions of people, with economic, political, and security ramifications for the world's population. There are a variety of solutions scholars propose to improve global health and close the yawning health gap between rich and poor: global health is in the national interests of the major State powers; States owe an ethical duty to act; or international legal norms require effective action. However, arguments based on national interest, ethics, or international law have logical weaknesses. The coincidence of national and global interests is much narrower than scholars claim. Ethical arguments unravel when searching questions are asked about who exactly has the duty to act and at what level of commitment. And international law has serious structural problems of application, definition, and enforcement. What is truly needed, and which richer countries instinctively do for their own citizens, is to meet what I call "basic survival needs." By focusing on the major determinants of health, the international community could dramatically improve prospects for good health. Basic survival needs include sanitation and sewage, pest control, clean air and water, tobacco reduction, diet and nutrition, essential medicines and vaccines, and functioning health systems. Meeting everyday survival needs may lack the glamour of high-technology medicine or dramatic rescue, but what they lack in excitement they gain in their potential impact on health, precisely because they deal with the major causes of common disease and disabilities across the globe. If meeting basic survival needs can truly make a difference for the world's population then how can international law play a constructive role? What is required is an innovative way of structuring international obligations. A vehicle such as a Framework Convention on Global Health (FCGH) could powerfully improve global health governance. Such a Framework Convention would commit States to a set of targets, both economic and logistic, and dismantle barriers to constructive engagement by the private and charitable sectors. It would stimulate creative public/private partnerships and actively engage civil society stakeholders. A FCGH could set achievable goals for global health spending as a proportion of GNP; define areas of cost effective investment to meet basic survival needs; build sustainable health systems; and create incentives for scientific innovation for affordable vaccines and essential medicines. This article first examines the compelling issue of global health equity, and inquires whether it is fair that people in poor countries suffer such a disproportionate burden of disease and premature death. Second, the article explains a basic problem in global health: why health hazards seem to change form and migrate everywhere on the earth. Third, the article inquires why governments should care about serious health threats outside their borders, and explores the alternative rationales: direct health benefits, economic benefits, and improved national security. Fourth, the article describes how the international community focuses on a few high profile, heart-rending, issues while largely ignoring deeper, systemic problems in global health. By focusing on basic survival needs, the international community could dramatically improve prospects for the world's population. Finally, the article explores the value of international law itself, and proposes an innovative mechanism for global health reform - a Framework Convention on Global Health.