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Jaclyn Lopez, Can’t We Just All Get Along: Reconciling Pesticide Use and Species Protection, 33 Virginia Envtl. L. Journal 184 (2015)Clicking on the button will copy the full recommended citation.
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Royal C. Gardner et al., State of the World’s Wetlands and Their Services to People: A Compilation of Recent Analyses, (Ramsar Sci. & Technical Briefing Note no. 7, Ramsar Convention Secretariat) (2015)Clicking on the button will copy the full recommended citation.
Ramsar Resolution XI.17 requested the Convention’s Scientific and Technical Review Panel to report on the state of the world’s wetlands and their services to people. As a contribution to this task, this Briefing Note summarizes and highlights for Contracting Parties and other decision makers key points from select scientific reports and articles published in 2013 and 2014. In particular, the Briefing Note discusses wetland status and trends, the loss of wetland ecosystem services and future steps for data collection and assessment. The negative trends shown by recent studies should serve as a call to Contracting Parties to avoid further wetland loss and degradation and to strengthen wetland assessment, monitoring and restoration.
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Jason Bent, P-Values, Priors, and Procedure in Antidiscrimination Law, 63 Buff. L. Rev. 85– (2015)Clicking on the button will copy the full recommended citation.
This paper is the second in a series of two papers addressing the influence of priors in antidiscrimination law. The first paper, Hidden Priors, argued that Bayesian probability theory could harmonize two divergent strands of scholarship on the systemic disparate treatment theory of discrimination. This Bayesian approach challenges the conventional use of statistical evidence in systemic discrimination cases. Critically, the Bayesian approach acknowledges the operation of prior information about the likelihood of unlawful discrimination when evaluating statistical evidence. While a handful of scholars have contemplated a transition to a Bayesian antidiscrimination law, there has been no scholarly treatment of the second-order questions raised by the recognition of Bayesian priors. These second-order questions were highlighted at the conclusion of Hidden Priors. They include hard, but not intractable, questions such as: Whose priors matter? How should priors be incorporated into civil litigation procedures? And, what are legitimate sources of priors? The lack of attention to these questions may explain the stubborn refusal of courts, litigants, and employment law scholars to acknowledge the role of priors in systemic discrimination cases. This second article in the series is meant to spur a healthy scholarly discussion of the second-order questions, even if it cannot provide definitive answers to them. This article argues that the procedural devices of our civil litigation system – though imperfect – are actually well-suited to properly allocate responsibility among legislatures, appellate judges, trial judges, and fact-finders for estimating the prior likelihood of discrimination. This article demonstrates that, once acknowledged, priors can be transparently managed by thoughtful implementation of these procedural devices.
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Royal C. Gardner, Mitigation Enforcement, Breach of Contract, and the Law of Unintended Consequences, 37 Nat'l Wetlands Newsletter 11– (2015)Clicking on the button will copy the full recommended citation.
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Susan D. Rozelle, How to Eat the Elephant in the Legal Academy, 31 Columbia Journal of Gender and the Law 44 (2015)Clicking on the button will copy the full recommended citation.
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Rebecca C. Morgan, An Essay on Reform: Guardianship in the United States, Festschrift in Honor of Dr. Mokoto Arai (2015)Clicking on the button will copy the full recommended citation.
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Grant Christensen, Selling Stories or You Can’t Own This: Cultural Property as a Form of Collateral in a Second Transaction under the Model Tribal Secured Transactions Act, 80 Brook. L. Rev. 1219 (2015)Clicking on the button will copy the full recommended citation.
The Model Tribal Secured Transactions Act was recently proposed by the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws. This article takes the position that the model act, if adopted, will encourage economic development in Indian Country by creating a set of uniform rules which both non-Indians and Indians can utilize to promote lending. Critically – before it is widely adopted, this article implores the NCCUSL to consider including in the model act – language that would protect tribal cultural property; and in the absence of such language, encourages tribes to modify the act to accomplish this protection. The stakes include the potential loss of priceless real and personal, tangible and intangible, cultural property which itself form the linchpin of both tribal identity and cultural expression for many indigenous communities in the United States and beyond.
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Brooke J. Bowman, Editor’s Note, 20 Legal Writing iii (2015)Clicking on the button will copy the full recommended citation.
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Kirsten K. Davis, The First Year Legal Writing Course: Praxis Is Pivotal, 28 Second Draft 5 (2015)Clicking on the button will copy the full recommended citation.
This article suggests that the first-year legal writing class is important because it is the primary place where students engage in praxis by exercising judgment about both the means for accomplishing a legal task and the desired ends and enacting their knowledge, skills, and values.
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Klara Van der Ploeg, State Immunity in Jurisprudence of Czech Courts, 5 Czech Yearbook of Public & Private International Law 421 (2014)Clicking on the button will copy the full recommended citation.
This paper discusses the understanding and application of the doctrine of State immunity in the courts of the Czech Republic. In 2008, the Czech Supreme Court reversed its previous conceptualization of State immunity as absolute and introduced a restrictive approach. In doing so, the Court formulated the concept of so-called "functional State immunity", which comparatively sets Czech practice apart from the practice of other States, and could therefore constitute the very contribution of Czech courts to the development of the contemporary doctrine of State immunity in international law. The paper analyzes this concept and the Czech approach more generally through a comparison with other jurisdictions, as well as with jurisprudence of international courts and relevant international instruments. On balance, the Czech State immunity regime is still largely underdeveloped, and many issues remain open for judicial elaboration in future cases.