October 31, 2007
Response: Just Following Orders
PENNumbra's featured works of October are now available at www.pennumbra.com.
The latest featured October Response on PENNumbra is Just Following Orders, by Roderick M. Hills, Jr. It is an analysis of Norman R. Williams's 2006 article, Executive Review in the Fragmented Executive: State Constitutionalism and Same-Sex Marriage. Professor Hills praises Professor Williams for recognizing that “whatever the merits of [the departmentalist and judicial supremacist] positions as interpretations of the U.S. Constitution, both are hopelessly unpersuasive when applied to state constitutions.” He then examines Professor Williams's defense of “a third method—‘the legislative model’—for determining when agencies should just follow orders from the legislature.” However, he ultimately concludes that “Professor Williams's theory ignores the facts about democratic accountability and expertise that most of us would regard as critical,” and argues that “this gap suggests a problem with his theory”—a gap that Professor Hills hopes Professor Williams fills in his next examination of executive review.
As always, please click on the PENNumbra link to read previous Responses and Debates, or to check out pdfs of the Penn Law Review's print edition articles.
Posted by University of Pennsylvania Law Review at 09:47 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 27, 2007
Responses: The Disability Integration Presumption
PENNumbra's featured works of October are now available at www.pennumbra.com.
As the legal wrangling over the cost of disability education rages on, Professors Samuel R. Bagenstos and Mark C. Weber each provide unique responses to Professor Ruth Colker's 2006 article, The Disability Integration Presumption: Thirty Years Later.
Professor Bagenstos writes in Abolish the Integration Presumption? Not Yet, that while Professor Colker's arguments are compelling, “[h]er article fails to establish that the IDEA's individualized integration presumption imposes significant costs, and . . . downplay[s] significant benefits of that presumption.” He concludes that the “supposed failure[s] of integration . . . reflect [more on] the education system's refusal to provide true integration” than on the presumption's validity.
Professor Weber, in A Nuanced Approach to the Disability Integration Presumption, applauds Professor Colker for attempting to look at the integration presumption in a new way, but worries that her stance on the presumption is misplaced. Rather than abandoning the presumption, Professor Weber argues that integration can work well as long as educators focus on “which services and protections are being offered to educate a child within general education. . . . The way to equality is to provide extra services, technology, and accommodations in regular classes so that the children with disabilities do not fall behind.”
As always, please click on the PENNumbra link to read previous Responses and Debates, or to check out pdfs of the Penn Law Review's print edition articles.
Posted by University of Pennsylvania Law Review at 02:31 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
October 24, 2007
Debate: Can Handguns Be Effectively Regulated?
PENNumbra's featured works of October are now available at www.pennumbra.com.
Recent reports on crime statistics published by the FBI show that violent crime has increased for the second straight year across the nation. In particular, the FBI's reports demonstrate that in major metropolitan areas, such as Philadelphia, homicides have increased by 6.7%.
In the midst of this upsurge in violent crime, Professors James B. Jacobs, of New York University, and David Kairys, of Temple University, reengage with America's long-running debate over the effectiveness of gun (specifically handgun) control regulation, in their debate, Can Handguns Be Effectively Regulated?
Both Professor Jacobs and Professor Kairys agree that the debate on handgun control "at its core is [related to] a personal, cultural, and political identification of guns with personal self-worth . . . , freedom, liberty, and . . . God and country." Whereas Professor Jacobs accepts this as a political reality and uses it as an anchor from which to engage in this discussion, Professor Kairys steadfastly disagrees: "The best hope for emerging from our disgraceful state of denial is to respectfully engage and challenge the cultural and political identification of guns with our nation's highest ideals and the deadly legacy of that identification as it is currently conceived."
As always, please click on the PENNumbra link to read previous Responses and Debates, or to check out pdfs of the Penn Law Review's print edition articles.
Posted by University of Pennsylvania Law Review at 02:30 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
September 25, 2007
September Responses
PENNumbra has recently featured a number of excellent new responses to several of the Penn Law Review's print edition articles:
Benjamin C. Zipursky, in Evidence, Unfairness, and Market-Share Liability: A Comment on Geistfeld, responds to Mark A. Geistfeld's The Doctrinal Unity of Alternative Liability and Market-Share Liability, arguing that the proposals in Geistfeld's “provocative and insightful” article may be too far-reaching, and specifically contending that Geistfeld's “arguments made from a normative point of view for the principle of evidential grouping are unsound.”
David D. Meyer, in The Geography of Family Privacy, responds to Laura A. Rosenbury's Between Home and School, praising Rosenbury for “calling attention to the lack of scholarship addressing the childrearing that takes place” outside of the home and school environs, but noting that he remains unconvinced that it wouldn't be better to use location “not as an organizing principle, but as a more indeterminate factor in calibrating the strength of justification required of the state for any intervention in childrearing.”
Paul E. McGreal, in In Defense of Complete Preemption, responds to both Gil Seinfeld's The Puzzle of Complete Preemption and Trevor W. Morrison's response to Seinfeld, Complete Preemption and the Separation of Powers, arguing that both Geistfeld and Morrison fail to fully conceptualize the well-pleaded complaint rule and asserting that “the complete preemption doctrine and the bar on pleading anticipated defenses are simply two sides of the well-pleaded complaint coin.”
As always, please click on the PENNumbra link to read previous Responses and Debates, or to check out pdfs of the Penn Law Review's print edition articles, including Issue 6 of Vol. 155—the Symposium Issue, featuring the culmination of the conversation that began last November when the Penn Law Review held a Symposium on the topic, “Responses to Global Warming: The Law, Economics, and Science of Climate Change.”
Scholars interested in participating in a debate on PENNumbra, or in writing a response to any print edition article, PENNumbra debate, or previous PENNumbra response should send an email to online@pennumbra.con.
Posted by University of Pennsylvania Law Review at 07:54 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
September 18, 2007
Debate: Consumer-Driven Health Care
PENNumbra has recently published this debate between Professor Kristin Madison of the University of Pennsylvania and Professor Peter Jacobson of the University of Michigan:
You won’t hear many health experts claim that the American healthcare system is functioning perfectly in terms of core considerations such as cost, access, and quality. The question that arises with the advent of any new policy approach seeking to improve the system is obvious: Does the change represent a step forward or backward? Professors Kristin Madison, of Penn, and Peter Jacobson, of the University of Michigan, take up this question in regard to the latest innovation in health care policy—consumer-directed healthcare (CDHC).
Professor Madison argues that while CDHC is not a panacea, “[e]ven if its shortcomings prevent its full diffusion through the American health care system, CDHC will still . . . help[] to establish a foundation for future reforms in health care finance and delivery, [and] has the potential to improve the health care system in the long run.” Professor Jacobson’s response? “CDHC is a direct attack on the idea that health care differs from other market commodities because of its moral aspirations . . . . For those who believe that equity should be a fundamental attribute of health care delivery, CDHC represents a huge step backwards.” Nonetheless, Professor Madison is convinced that CDHC will be a lightning rod that stirs the American health care system out of its complacency and “forces us to confront the tradeoffs inherent in any health care system in a resource-constrained world.“ Professor Jacobson is not content to wait and see how the American public reacts to CDHC: “If the policy focus is on CDHC, equity will be subordinated. If universal coverage dominates, CDHC proponents are probably right that cost and quality issues will be subordinate. For me, it’s an easy choice—helping those without insurance to have a minimal acceptable level of care.”
Posted by University of Pennsylvania Law Review at 01:09 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 24, 2007
Announcing the Law Review Forum Project
I am very pleased to announce a new project here at Concurring Opinions – the Law Review Forum Project. We will be hosting online forums for several law reviews. Increasingly, law reviews are creating online forums as companions to their regular law review issues. These forums contain very short response pieces, essays, debates, and other works that attempt to bridge the gap between regular legal scholarship and the blogosphere.
Journals seeking to create their own online forum face two daunting challenges. First, they must create and actively maintain a web presence. Second, they must find ways to attract readers, which is difficult in an age where so many blogs and other websites exist. A wide readership for a website depends upon having daily content. Law review forums produce content sporadically throughout the year at intervals that are not regular enough to attract a significant readership.
Therefore, we have invited a number of law reviews to participate in a partnership with our blog. Throughout the year, each law review will periodically post forum essays here at Concurring Opinions. We are not requiring an exclusive license, so participating law reviews can also cross-post at their own websites.
We see this as a mutually-beneficial arrangement. We can bring great content to our blog, and law reviews can reach our significant audience without the pressures of having to build and maintain an online readership or of having to produce content with regularity.
Law reviews currently with and without existing forums will be participating. Thus far, the following law reviews have agreed to participate:
* Harvard Law Review
* Virginia Law Review
* Michigan Law Review
* University of Pennsylvania Law Review
* Northwestern Law Review
* UCLA Law Review
* George Washington Law Review
In the near future, we hope to be expanding the list of participating law reviews.
Posted by Daniel J. Solove at 01:04 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
