Faith-Based Emergency Powers

This Article explores an expanding phenomenon that it calls Faith-Based Emergency Powers. In the twenty-first century, conservatives have come to rely heavily on Faith-Based Emergency Powers as a legal strategy in the culture wars. This typically involves carving faith-based exceptions to rights of women and LGBT people. The novel concept of Faith-Based Emergency Powers is developed in this Article through an analogy to “traditional” emergency powers. In the war-on-terror, conservatives have argued that judges, legislators and the public must defer to the President and the executive branch in matters involving national security. As scholars have shown, this position has three key components: (1) a rhetoric of war, emergency or catastrophe; (2) a legal argument for suspension of existing human rights; and (3) a designation of decision-makers in real or perceived emergencies who are allegedly more qualified than courts or legislatures to address the national-security emergency. The consequence is temporary suspension of human rights in real or perceived national-security emergencies. The principal claim of this Article is that in contemporary culture wars, conservative politicians, lawmakers, and litigants have imported these emergency powers rationales to a range of legal contexts including marriage-equality, the Affordable Care Act (ACA), and general antidiscrimination laws. For example, the Supreme Court has recently granted certiorari in the case of a Denver baker who refused to sell a wedding cake to a same-sex couple. In its 2017-2018 session the Court will decide whether an individual’s religious or moral objection to same-sex marriage trumps state public accommodations laws. In this case and in many others, the conservative position typically follows the rationales of traditional emergency powers in (1) applying rhetoric of war and emergency; (2) arguing for suspension of legal rights of women and sexual minorities and; (3) claiming deference to religious or moral dissenters. The end goal, as in the war-on-terror, is to suspend or diminish legally recognized individual rights. The Article concludes that lawmakers ought to defend the rule-of-law and individual rights by rejecting Faith-Based Emergency Powers

Research methodology for ethnostatistics in organization studies: towards a historical ethnostatistics

Purpose: While quantification and performance measurement have proliferated widely in academia and the business world, management and organization scholars increasingly agree on the need for a more in-depth focus on the complex dynamics embedded in the construction, use and effects of quantitative measures (pertaining to the thread of research called ethnostatistics). This paper develops a pluralistic method for conducting ethnostatistical research in organizational settings. Whilst presenting practical techniques for conducting research in live settings, it also discusses how historical approaches which focus on source criticism and contextual reconstruction could overcome the limitations of ethnostatistics. Design/methodology/approach: The methodological approach of this paper encompasses an in-depth discussion of the ethnostatistical method, its underlying assumptions and its methodological limitations. Based on this analysis, the authors propose a pluralistic method (model) for conducting ethnostatistical research in organizational settings based on the integration of 1) research practices employed by one of the authors conducting ethnostatistical research in a large multinational organization and 2) best practices from ethnographic and historical research. Findings: This paper suggests how historical approaches can successfully join ethnostatistical enquiries in an attempt to overcome some limitations in existing conventional methods. The developed framework explores four levels of analysis (ethnography, statistics at work, rhetoric of statistics and history of statistics) and suggests practical approaches for each level that can contribute to strengthening the research output and overcoming limitations when using ethnostatistics. Originality/value: This paper contributes to the ethnostatistical field by discussing the intersection between history and ethnography and the ways for their complementary use in organizational and management research on quantification processes. As such it offers unique insights and hands-on experience from conducting ethnostatistical enquiries in live organizational settings

Canadian Graduate Legal Education: Past, Present and Future

Canadian graduate legal education has seldom been the subject of scholarly inquiry This article seeks to fill the vacuum by describing and evaluating various features associated with master s and doctoral programs offered by the nation s /ao schools. A number of criteria are used in this analysis, some of which have been garnered from the broader literature on higher education The article concludes with a series of specific programmatic and policy reform proposals aimed at strengthening the state of graduate legal education in this countr

U.S. Torture as Tort

Now that the United States has used torture in the war on terrorism and the victims of this torture have begun to sue, it is useful to analyze the potential liability of the United States and its officials for torture under current domestic law. This Article conducts that analysis, and, based on it, assesses the adequacy of current law. The Article concludes that the United States and its officials have no more than minimal liability for torture under current law. The Article also concludes that current law is inadequate. It is inadequate because it is based on considerations of when the government should be liable for mere torts, and official torture is far removed from ordinary torts. The Article argues that, instead of being treated like a tort, torture should be treated like a civil rights and a human rights violation. Specifically, the United States should be liable for torture under at least the same circumstances as units of local government would be under the civil rights statute, 42 U.S.C. § 1983; and U.S. officials should be liable for torture under at least the same circumstances as state and local officials would be under § 1983, or as foreign officials would be under the Torture Victim Protection Act of 1991

Exceptional Circumstances: The Material Benefit Rule in Practice and Theory

The collapse of Starr\u27s seemingly meritorious claim and the court\u27s interestingly inconsequential mention of Section 86 raise the motivating questions of this article. First, is Section 86 and the material benefit rule it embodies ever applied in court, and, if so, can a unifying theme be found between those cases in which courts choose to enforce the post-benefit promise and those in which they do not