Why Would Anyone Want to Be a Public Interest Lawyer?

I can barely express how grateful the Law Center is to the Delaneys for their generous gift, or what an honor it is to be designated as the first Delaney Family Professor of Public Interest Law at this incredibly vibrant institution. But our celebration today is not merely the recognition of my scholarship or public service. What the Delaneys have done is to honor not only me but also the hundreds of Georgetown students, faculty, staff and alumni who perform public service. Whether they have achieved high office, like Senators Richard Durbin and Patrick Leahy, or provide free legal services for accused defendants in the local courts, or like April Delaney herself, do research, advocacy, or public education in nonprofit organizations, the public interest lawyers who have passed through the halls of Georgetown Law are all encompassed by the Delaneys\u27 vision that public service is the highest calling of those in our profession

Working Papers as Federal Records: The Need for New Legislation to Preserve the History of National Policy

This article deals with policy records at the front end of their lives; that is, preserving them from destruction by federal agencies in the decades immediately after their creation. It does not deal with the destruction of archived documents by Archives officials themselves. It discusses only in passing the related question of how long a policy record should be sealed off from public inspection; the literature includes a variety of opinions on that subject. The author is content to leave to others the problem of just where to draw the balance between making historical documentation available soon enough so that it can offer relevant lessons to citizens, but not so soon as to discourage officials from putting their candid thoughts and recommendations on paper or disk, for fear of public exposure and pressure. He focuses, instead, on the preservation of governmental records, and particularly of drafts, comments, and other working papers. Of course the issues of preservation and access are intimately linked: if records are routinely destroyed as soon as they are no longer needed by their creators, public access-even much delayed public access-becomes altogether impossible

The Future of District of Columbia Home Rule

This article begins by briefly reviewing the recent historical development of home rule. Next, it explores the ways in which the people of the District might obtain a greater voice in the national legislature and more genuine home rule. Finally, it suggests that the District\u27s citizens may have to make a political choice, which they have until now avoided, between seeking gradual improvements in their political rights and pressing strongly for statehood

Terry White: A Two-Front Negotiation Exercise

In the 1980s, teaching the theory and art of negotiation has become more important than ever in the curricula of law schools. As the cost of full-scale litigation has risen, the pressure on litigants to settle short of trial has increased, and the development of alternative dispute resolution mechanisms has become a priority of the bar. The literature on negotiation has multiplied, and law school texts have been published to support an increasing number of courses in negotiation. After a brief overview of the Terry White problem, this article becomes an instructor\u27s manual. It offers suggestions for those desiring to administer the exercise, including advice on modifying and supplementing the printed materials, acting in role as clients, and conducting the classroom evaluation. The exercise materials immediately following the article may be reproduced for distribution to students without further permission

Bleak House 1968: A Report on Consumer Test Litigation

The author presents the practical problems of consumer test-case litigation. Writing in an informal, anecdotal style, he addresses himself to law students, telling them of the many obstacles they will face in this type of practice. The author relates the innumerable and exasperating delaying tactics employed by his adversaries in several cases now being litigated. Looking beyond the theoretical efficacy of test-case litigation as a solution to the morass of consumers\u27 grievances, the author\u27s experiences suggest the need for basic reform of state procedure in order to permit more speedy resolution of the issues raised by such litigation

The Summary Affirmance Proposal of the Board of Immigration Appeals

The Board of Immigration Appeals is on the verge of making a tragic mistake, trading away a key element of fair adjudication--the written opinion--for the sake of what it hopes will be greater administrative efficiency. The cost of eliminating written adjudication is too great, and the Board has given no indication that it has sufficiently canvassed less drastic alternatives. The Board of Immigration Appeals (the Board ) is the primary appellate body for immigration law. The staple of its work is to decide appeals from decisions of Immigration Judges in removal proceedings, though it also hears appeals in several other categories, such as decisions of Immigration Judges on petitions for approval of preferred immigration status by virtue of close relationship to a United States citizen or permanent alien

Don’t Gut Political Asylum

For many years, the United States has granted political asylum to victims of persecution who come to our country and seek our protection. Now, however, Congress is on the verge of abolishing the right of political asylum. Congress is not proposing to repeal the asylum provisions of the Refugee Act of 1980. An outright repeal would probably never pass, because many in Congress, recalling America\u27s sorry treatment of refugees during the Holocaust, accept the humanitarian premises underlying asylum. Rather, the abolition is in the form of a new, apparently innocuous procedural requirement. The House Judiciary Committee recently adopted, as an amendment to this year\u27s immigration reform act, a proviso that denies asylum to any person who applies for it more than thirty days after arriving in the United States. A Senate subcommittee has approved a similar proposal

Coordinating Loan Repayment Assistance Programs with New Federal Legislation

For decades, law school administrators, faculty members, students and graduates have worried about the problem of the ever-increasing cost of attendance at the nation’s law schools, and the rapidly rising average debt of graduating law students. The problem was particularly acute for students who desired careers in public service, because starting salaries in the government and non-profit sectors failed to keep pace with the increase in educational debt of law school graduates. In response, many law schools created loan repayment assistance programs (LRAPs), through which they subsidized loan repayment for some or all of their graduates who undertook public service jobs or careers. Most of these programs are insufficiently funded to meet the needs of their graduates who desire to use them, and demand for financial assistance for lower-income graduates has particularly accelerated as the recession that began in 2008 caused private sector firms to reduce their hiring, prompting more student interest in public sector employment. In addition, many law schools had no LRAP programs at all. Fortunately, Congress has significantly alleviated this problem, passing four laws between 2005 and 2010 that collectively reduce the debt repayment burdens on graduates, particularly (though not exclusively) those in public service. The new legislation also makes it possible for law schools to create or restructure LRAP programs in a way that provides a great deal of debt relief to graduates in public service at the lowest possible cost to the law school. As of this writing (in the summer of 2010), at least seven law schools—the University of California at Berkeley, Georgetown, UCLA, Duke, Northwestern, Virginia, and Suffolk—have altered their LRAP programs to take maximum advantage of the federal legislation, and several others are currently considering modifications. This article, together with an associated web-based calculator, provides guidance for law school administrators and faculty members who desire to coordinate law school LRAP benefits with those provided by federal law, and for law students and alumni who might want to suggest LRAP improvements to their schools

Carrying a Big Carrot: Linking Multilateral Disarmament and Development Assistance

This article proposes, as a new element of the liberal internationalism that should characterize the post-Cold War world, a simultaneous solution to these three problems. The nations of the world should negotiate a series of multilateral agreements to stop the spread of advanced weaponry, and include in each of them, as an overt incentive for developing states to accept the disarmament and verification obligations, provisions that explicitly require the affluent, developed states to make specified monetary and in-kind transfers to the third world parties. The new regime should also provide stronger-than-customary treaty procedures for clarifying ambiguities, adjudicating claims, and resolving disputes, and should designate one or more multilateral administrative and enforcement agencies dedicated to furthering the agreements. In short, the wealthy countries, which stand to benefit the most from the establishment of a more stable international military environment, should be willing to pay for it. They should provide aid and commercial grants to the developing states that, in turn, should agree to accept significant, verifiable limitations, particularly on high-technology armaments, as an explicit condition for these important financial advantages. While this package approach will not by itself solve all the security difficulties of the next century, it offers the best hope for gaining control over some of them and for channeling our collective energies into productive and mutually beneficial enterprises. The argument of the article is developed in the following six parts. Part I examines the problem of multilateral disarmament, summarizing the progress registered to date and the areas in which more needs to be done. It also demonstrates that the coming decades, even after the ending of the Cold War, will present stark new threats to United States security and world peace, threats that existing arms control institutions and treaty regimes have been unable to anticipate and preempt. Part II addresses the problems of economic development, drawing on the literature describing the importance of judicious foreign assistance in promoting sound economic growth in marginal economies, and assessing the international community\u27s currently inadequate response to this need. It describes the third world\u27s stake in economic development and presents the case for the advanced societies to do more--out of sheer economic and political self-interest, if nothing else. Part III then suggests that future arms control imperatives will present challenges and dangers that are systematically different from those that the world has confronted--and resolved inadequately--in the past. It marshals the evidence for the propositions that the world\u27s current strategies for dampening international conflict through existing types of treaty regimes are already insufficient, and that the trend is worsening. Part IV presents our proposal for a tradeoff, with the developed states frankly buying the arms control they need, and paying for it with guaranteed levels of development assistance that the poor states need. This Part then outlines seven principles that underlie the proposal as a whole and presents some of the nuts and bolts that could make it operational. While the suggestion may seem radical at first blush--legalized bribery or economic imperialism in some eyes--we think it offers a realistic, efficient solution to otherwise intractable global threats. Part V deals with some of the most serious objections that might be raised against our strategy, discussing the morality of the tradeoff, its political acceptability, the precedents for it, and possible alternatives to it. Finally, the Conclusion offers some observations about the proposal as one component in an overdue, more subtle, conceptualization of national security. The author’s thesis is that international agreements linking multilateral disarmament and economic development, though novel and potentially risky, offer the most promising way out of the international community\u27s emerging security impasse. Their program would give both developed and developing states what they need. It would fashion a flexible, enforceable scheme for dealing with the complex fears and incentives that are otherwise unaddressed or confined to under-the-table bargaining. Explicit trading may not seem palatable at first, but equipping future treaties with both positive incentives and negative sanctions, rather than relying exclusively upon negative sanctions alone, could prove to be far more tolerable than any of the alternatives

Law Reform in Estonia: The Role of Georgetown University Law Center

On June 19, 1992, we and seven other members of the Georgetown University Law Center community landed in Tallinn, the capital of Estonia, to help the Estonian government draft laws to support a market economy. Our group consisted of six students, two professors, and an alumnus. The country to which we had come had declared its independence from the Soviet Union less than one year before. After fifty years of imposed communism, the Estonian leaders wanted to understand and adopt the basic foundations for a Western legal system that would support democratic and market institutions