Volume 3, Issue 1
LIBERTARIAN PATERNALISM: THE COCAINE VACCINE AS A TEST CASE FOR THE SUNSTEIN/THALER MODEL
Professor Dru Stevenson
We make bad choices. We also make choices for other people. This seems to be an unfortunate pair of statements, and it would be just as unfortunate (or maybe worse) in the reverse: We make choices for other people. We make bad choices. These two sentences are more palatable with some qualifiers. People do not always make bad or irrational choices; but neither do we always make optimal choices, even if we always try. We sometimes make bad choices. The word “sometimes” is helpful, because it is more precise, but not completely necessary from a grammatical or syntactical standpoint. “We make bad choices” can mean either that we always make bad choices, or that we usually do, or that we sometimes do – or even that we did so just once, but are likely to do so again. For the time being, it is helpful to keep this ambiguity afloat to illustrate a point. View More
RACE AND CLASS DIMENSIONS OF THE WAR ON DRUGS: A HUMANITARIAN CRISIS
Professor Terry Gibbs, and Garry Leech
The U.S. war on drugs has been waged along class and race lines, both domestically and internationally. Rather than finding long-term solutions to the social development issues in target communities, drug policy has exacerbated problems of poverty and social marginalization. This paper examines how the war on drugs has prejudicially targeted poor people of color in U.S. cities, and impoverished Colombian farmers, who have been disproportionately victimized by U.S. drug policies. The focus of law enforcement on urban drug use, and the mandatory sentencing disparities between crack cocaine and powder cocaine in the United States, has contributed to a disproportionate number of African- Americans and Hispanics being incarcerated. This strategy has led to serious dislocations within the families and communities of these populations. Similarly, militaristic drug policies in Colombia have destroyed food crops and displaced thousands of poor farmers and their families, while failing to confront an underlying development crisis in rural communities. We argue that U.S. drug policies have effectively created a humanitarian crisis in both the United States and Colombia, particularly for people of color and certain sectors of the lower class. View More
Roberta Ann Johnson
Most Americans are familiar with whistleblowers, people who go public with information about corruption, fraud and abuse in their own organizations. Whistleblowers are often seen on the nightly news and discussed in the morning newspapers. In December 2002, three whistleblowers were named Time magazine’s “Persons of the Year.” Whistleblowers have been the subject of The New Yorker cartoons, Hollywood films, and children’s stories. View More
SOLUTIONS TO THE CRISIS IN AFFORDABLE HOUSING: A PROPOSED MODEL FOR NEW YORK CITY
Maria Cristiano Anderson, and Professor Paula A. Franzese
Federal and state housing programs were created decades ago to increase the availability and quality of affordable housing in the United States. Among the most well-known of these federal programs is the Housing Choice Voucher Program (“Section 8”), that provides rental assistance to help meet the housing needs of the poor. Section 8 is administered by the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (“HUD”), which pays rental subsidies to eligible families so that they can afford decent, safe, and sanitary housing. The rental assistance provided under Section 8 is either project-based, where money is paid to families that live in specific housing developments or units, or tenant-based, where the tenant chooses the unit and limited financial resources are provided to assist the tenant with the payment of the rent. In essence, Section 8 provides a rent subsidy to low-income families. View More
THE REVIVAL OF A FORGOTTEN DISPUTE: DECIDING KOSOVA’S FUTURE
Korab R. Sejdiu
Should the rights of over two million people to live freely, self-govern, and ultimately decide their own fate, be sacrificed for the sake of preserving an ever-eroding principle of territorial sovereignty? The aforementioned is a dilemma that the international community will face when deciding the future status of Kosova. Six years after the conclusion of the Kosova war, the international community has been persuaded that the two parties to the former conflict are ready to begin discussions regarding practical issues, with the ultimate goal of addressing the final status of the former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia’s (“SFRY”) province. View More
MAYDAY PAYDAY: CAN CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY SAVE PAYDAY LENDERS?
Carmen M. Butler, and Niloufar A. Park
When Enron and WorldCom went bankrupt in 2001 and 2002, scholars, legislators, and corporate leaders scurried to find ways to prevent another major collapse in the U.S. equity markets. They scrutinized accounting practices, financial disclosure requirements, and the various components of corporations to develop new or stronger laws that would prevent future corruption and market failure. In a word, these reforms analyzed and restructured standards for corporate accountability. View More
Professor Sarah E. Ricks
Sometimes a change in legal doctrine happens quickly. The attached brief was filed in the Third Circuit in December 2002 and the attached original introduction to the brief written shortly thereafter. At that time, the scope of the parental liberty interest protected by substantive due process had split the federal circuits, with the Seventh and Ninth agreeing that parents had a protected interest in companionship with their adult children. At that time, more than a dozen years of district court decisions within the Third Circuit had recognized the same parental substantive due process right, either because they believed the Third Circuit already had endorsed that view, or because they predicted that the Third Circuit would do so when confronted with the issue. View More