Monthly Archives: February 2013

Life Without Parole

Brooklyn Law School Professor I. Bennett Capers recently posted Defending Life on SSRN. It appears as Chapter 5 in Charles J Ogletree and Austin Sarat’s book Life Without Parole: America’s New Death Penalty? The BLS Library has the book in its Main Collection (KF9750 .L54 2012). The abstract of Defending Life reads:

This chapter interrogates what it means to defend LWOP as an alternative to death. In demanding the abolition of the death penalty — as cruel and unusual, as violative of equal protection, as immoral, and as an inefficient deterrent — have abolitionists unwittingly erected another evil, another type of death, LWOP? One of the most visible flaws in the imposition of the death penalty has been its linkages, historically and now, to race. What does it mean that LWOP, by contrast, is largely invisible, rendering race largely invisible? What does it mean to defend LWOP, that other death, in a society where the resources to defend are miniscule compared to the resources to defend actual death? Finally, what does it mean to us as citizens to live in these new cities, newly configured, sanitized, and purged — again, often along racial lines, and almost always along class lines — via the tool of LWOP?

New (or Revised) Sources for International Law Research

Bruno Simma, ed., The Charter of the United Nations: A Commentary (Oxford, 2013)

  • This is the third edition of a classic source that provides article-by-article commentary on the UN Charter.  The new edition includes a chapter on UN reform. 

James Crawford, Brownlie’s Principles of Public International Law (Oxford, 2012)

  • Crawford’s clear writing and substantial revision of this classic treatise make it an excellent starting point for public international law research.  

Treaty Section of the UN’s Office of Legal Affairs, Treaty Handbook (2012)

  • Revised in 2012, this publicly-accessible online Handbook highlights many aspects of treaty law and practice.  It provides many cites to relevant articles of  the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties.  It also includes a helpful glossary of key treaty terms (such as accession and ratification), which begins on p. 62.

Duncan B. Hollis, ed., The Oxford Guide to Treaties (Oxford, 2012)

  • This new source reviews concepts ranging from making to terminating treaties.  It includes a chapter on the Vienna Convention rules about treaty interpretation.

 

The State’s Affirmative Duties to Promote “Just” Property Allocation

Brooklyn Law School Professor Christopher Serkin recently posted on SSRN an article entitled Affirmative Constitutional Commitments: the State’s Obligations to Property Owners. The article is scheduled for publication later this year in William & Mary Law School’s Brigham-Kanner Property Rights Conference Journal. The abstract for the article reads:

This Essay argues that social obligation theories in property generate previously unrecognized obligations on the State. Leading property scholars, like Hanoch Dagan, Greg Alexander, and Eduardo Peñalver, have argued that the institution of property contains affirmative duties to the community as well as negative rights. This Essay argues that those affirmative duties are two-way streets, and that moral bases for social obligations also generate reciprocal obligations on the State to protect property owners. The social obligation theories rely upon a dynamic not static vision of property rights. The community’s needs change, the conditions of ownership change, and the appropriate allocation of benefits and burdens within a society changes over time. Therefore, a legal obligation that is justified and permissible at the time it is enacted because it is consistent with moral obligations may become impermissible over time, even if the content of the legal obligation does not change. At the extreme, the State’s failure to respond to certain kinds of changes in the world can lead to a regulatory taking.