Copyright (c) 2009 University of Maryland School of Law All rights reserved. http://digitalcommons.law.umaryland.edu Recent documents in DigitalCommons@UM Law en-us Fri, 20 Nov 2009 05:35:50 PST 3600 http://digitalcommons.law.umaryland.edu/fac_pubs/887 http://digitalcommons.law.umaryland.edu/fac_pubs/887 Fri, 20 Nov 2009 05:29:12 PST Law and the Environment: A Multi-disciplinary Reader brings together for the first time some of the most important original work on environmental policy by scientists, ecologists, philosophers, historians, economists, and legal scholars. Each of the book's four parts provides a different focus on the nature and scope of environmental problems and attempts to use public policy to address these concerns. Part I examines how ecology, economics, and ethics analyze environmental problems and why they support collective action to respond to them. Part II examines the history and present state of environmental law, from early attempts to engage the government to the current debate over the effectiveness of environmental policy. Part III explores the process by which environmental law gets translated into regulatory policy. Part IV considers the future of environmental law at a time when international environmental concerns have become a major force in global diplomacy and international trade agreements. In drawing together a wide variety of perspectives on these issues, Robert V. Percival and Dorothy C. Alevizatos offer a comprehensive examination of how society has responded to the difficult challenges posed by environmental problems. The selections provide a rich introduction to the complexities of environmental policy disputes. Robert V. Percival http://digitalcommons.law.umaryland.edu/fac_pubs/886 http://digitalcommons.law.umaryland.edu/fac_pubs/886 Thu, 19 Nov 2009 05:36:51 PST Willful blindness is not an appropriate substitute for knowledge in crimes that require a mens rea of knowledge because an actor who contrives his own ignorance is only sometimes as culpable as a knowing actor. This paper begins with the assumption that the classic willfully blind actor - the drug courier - is culpable. If so, any plausible account of willful blindness must provide criteria that find this actor culpable. This paper then offers two limiting cases: a criminal defense lawyer defending a client he suspects of perjury and a pain doctor who suspects his patient may be lying about her pain. The paper argues that each of these actors is justified in cultivating ignorance about his client's or patient's truthfulness. If this is right, then a good theory of willful blindness must distinguish these cases. The article argues that neither Husak & Callender's motivation-based account of willful blindness nor the recklessness account is able to do so. The paper proposes the following alternative: contrived ignorance constitutes culpable blindness when the decision to remain blind or to cultivate blindness is not itself justified. This Justification approach meshes with our institutions about willfully blind drug couriers as well as willfully blind lawyers and doctors. Deborah Hellman http://digitalcommons.law.umaryland.edu/fac_pubs/885 http://digitalcommons.law.umaryland.edu/fac_pubs/885 Wed, 18 Nov 2009 11:48:03 PST Linda Greer http://digitalcommons.law.umaryland.edu/fac_pubs/884 http://digitalcommons.law.umaryland.edu/fac_pubs/884 Wed, 18 Nov 2009 09:34:34 PST Online instruction has great potential for accommodating the learning styles and preferences of Millennial law students, as well as for the effective teaching of legal research in the digital age. While integrating instructional technology into a face-to-face classroom legal research course is highly desirable and relatively easy, designing and teaching a purely distance or hybrid distance course provides some unique challenges as well as some distinct benefits for both instructors and students. This article will first evaluate individual instructional technologies independently of each other, since any of them could be used to supplement traditional face-to-face research instruction, whether formal or informal. Consideration will then be given to special problems of teaching a graded legal research course entirely or predominantly online. Legal research instruction presents some opportunities for experimentation and innovation with online learning techniques that may serve students better, accommodate the librarian's technology skills and abilities and her time constraints, and inspire others at our law schools to follow suit. Susan Herrick http://digitalcommons.law.umaryland.edu/fac_pubs/883 http://digitalcommons.law.umaryland.edu/fac_pubs/883 Wed, 18 Nov 2009 07:43:53 PST In this Article Professor Banks argues that what makes many of filmmaker John Waters early films so subversive is his use of the "white-trash" body--people marginalized by and excluded from conventional white America--as countercultural heroes. He uses the white trash body as a surrogate for talk about race and sexuality in the early 1960s. I argue that in many ways Waters' critiques of mid-twentieth century American society reflect the societal changes that occurred in the last forty years of that century. These societal changes resulted from the civil rights, gay pride, student, anti-war and women's movements, all of which used social protest and the legal process as vehicles for social change. Waters used his films not only as counter-narratives of mid-twentieth century mores but also as critiques of the increasingly disruptive effect of media forces in glamorizing criminality. Although the films Professor Banks discusses in this Article are set largely in the 1960s, many of the themes they raise - acceptance of difference, a rejection of exclusionary mores and the media's disruptive role in the quest for justice - continue to have currency. Taunya Lovell Banks http://digitalcommons.law.umaryland.edu/fac_pubs/882 http://digitalcommons.law.umaryland.edu/fac_pubs/882 Tue, 17 Nov 2009 08:45:00 PST Susan Herrick http://digitalcommons.law.umaryland.edu/fac_pubs/881 http://digitalcommons.law.umaryland.edu/fac_pubs/881 Tue, 17 Nov 2009 05:30:50 PST The federal hazardous waste cleanup program and its state progency have been in decline for more than a decade, victims to a campaign of sabotage waged by industry and neglected by the Bush administration. Meanwhile, stakeholders do their best to ignore the program's sorry state. A sad story, but there may be a surprise ending in store. Rena I. Steinzor http://digitalcommons.law.umaryland.edu/fac_pubs/880 http://digitalcommons.law.umaryland.edu/fac_pubs/880 Mon, 16 Nov 2009 12:33:11 PST Rena I. Steinzor http://digitalcommons.law.umaryland.edu/fac_pubs/879 http://digitalcommons.law.umaryland.edu/fac_pubs/879 Mon, 16 Nov 2009 06:31:27 PST After a century of disregard, the question of whether patents are entitled to protection under the Fifth Amendment's Takings Clause has recently become a topic of scholarly and judicial debate. While one might have expected this issue to have been settled long before, it is only the recent burgeoning of patentholders' regulatory takings claims that has made this question one of pressing interest. Thus far scholarship on the issue has focused on whether or not patents have historically been characterized as property. Meanwhile, last year's rejection by the Federal Circuit of a patentholder's right to assert a Takings Clause claim led to both external criticism as well as a vocal dissent by an esteemed member of that court. Considering the issue from a new angle, this article demonstrates that determination of patents' status as property is a relevant but incomplete analysis of the constitutional question. That is because the Supreme Court has already concluded that some property interests, particularly federal benefits, are entitled to Due Process Clause protection but are not entitled to Takings Clause protection. Patents are similar federal entitlements, offered only because they serve society, and thus they are not entitled to the full panoply of constitutional protections. Moreover, if patentholders could assert regulatory takings claims, the fear of costly claims could very well deter the government from making worthwhile policy changes. For instance, there is currently significant public concern about the high prices of pharmaceuticals resulting from drug companies' patent privileges. Refusing to grant patentholders the right to a Takings Clause remedy will prevent society from being stuck with earlier suboptimal patent policies. In sum, permitting patents to trigger takings claims is neither compelled by modern Supreme Court precedent nor wise as a policy matter. Davida H. Isaacs http://digitalcommons.law.umaryland.edu/iclc_papers/7 http://digitalcommons.law.umaryland.edu/iclc_papers/7 Thu, 12 Nov 2009 12:04:55 PST Although the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women ("CEDAW" or the "Convention") has succeeded in some respects, even its supporters acknowledge broad failures. CEDAW's weakness draws on the titular mistaken diagnosis: "women" are not the issuegender disparities are. The 1970's drafting of CEDAW focused on bringing women to their place at the international law table. What's wrong with women's rights? In the international context, CEDAW attempts to empower women but fails to respect other gender inequality. As the preeminent treaty on gender inequality, CEDAW cannot succeed in creating gender equality if its scope remains limited to women. Men are external to core debates over gender inequality. CEDAW's focus on "women" enshrines the male/female binary in international law, when it should seek the elimination of the categories themselves. Under this model, women are the victims, while men are presumed to be the perpetrators. Catharine MacKinnon recently asked "Are women human?," and CEDAW's answer, by its existence outside of human rights, is that they are not. The Convention removes women's issues from human rights discussions, isolating their concerns. The identitarian category of "women" serves to reify rather than undermine gender disparities. For international law to foster gender equality, it is imperative that CEDAW undergo a radical refashioning. Darren Rosenblum