Announcements

The Center for Law, Society, and Culture (http://www.law.indiana.edu/centers/lawsociety/) is sponsored by the Indiana University School of Law - Bloomington. The Center actively supports and promotes multidisciplinary understanding of law and legal problems through scholarship, teaching, and discussion. The Center is located in the School of Law on the Bloomington campus of Indiana University, but produces, presents and coordinates research conducted by more than 70 scholars from schools and departments across Indiana University. The Center's affiliated scholars hold appointments in African-American studies, business, criminal justice, journalism, history, economics, English, law, and gender studies, among others, and are dedicated to an interdisciplinary approach to the study of the role of law in society and culture. The Center supports research related to the law in a broad sense, including the cultural aspects of law expressed through political theory and scientific aspects of law expressed through technological advances in biotechnology, environmental science and information technology.


LAW & SOCIETY: LEGISLATION ABSTRACTS
Sponsored by: Indiana University School of Law - Bloomington

"Localism and Voting Rights" Free Download

MICHAEL HALBERSTAM, Columbia Law School, Center for Law and Economic Studies
Email:

The Voting Rights Act's (VRA) preclearance regime requires covered jurisdictions to submit all law changes affecting elections to the United States Attorney General for approval before they can be enforced. This regime has been persistently characterized as a uniquely heavy-handed federal intervention into state and local lawmaking. In a constitutional challenge to the preclearance regime now before the Supreme Court, petitioners have called it "the most federally invasive law in existence." This article counters this conventional view by showing that the institutionalization of antidiscrimination policy by the VRA is consistent with decentralization and localism.

In so doing, this article pursues several goals. First, it challenges the standard opposition of localism and rights. By focusing on the implementation and institutionalization of voting rights, it emerges that the more decentralized approach of the VRA has been very successful. The article draws a contrast in this regard with the much more equivocal success of the more formal, precise, categorical approach of the one-person/one-vote rule. Finally, the understanding of the VRA's institutional architecture advanced in this article is then applied to other issues arising from the 2006 Reauthorization of the VRA. The paper argues, for example, that it is consistent with the methods and goals of the VRA that the Ashcroft fix in the new Section 5 be read as permitting trade-offs of majority minority districts for coalition districts, but only if the consent of local minority representatives is obtained. The paper addresses several other issues based on this approach.

"Words Count - How Interest in Stem Cells Has Made the Embryo Available: A Look at the French Law of Bioethics" Free Download
EUI Working Paper No. LAW 2008/19

STÉPHANIE HENNETTE-VAUCHEZ, EUI / Robert Schuman Center
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This paper aims at demonstrating the manner in which the recent focus of the public and legislative debate in France on the issue of embryonic stem cells has contributed to silencing the previously strong opposition to any kind of embryonic research. After explaining what the legal state of affairs was subsequent to the 1994 law of bioethics as far as the embryo was concerned, the article presents and analyzes the new provisions of the 2004 law of bioethics. It then stresses all the rhetoric tricks that have made the 2004 legalization of research on embryos and embryonic stem cells possible (ambiguous legal provisions, strategic uses of scientific imagery, opportunistic changes in vocabulary). Finally, it assesses the 2004 legislative construction as a compromise that embodies no particularly coherent axiological choice, thus as a fragile and unsettled agreement.

"A Guide to Interpretation of the 2005 Bankruptcy Law" Free Download
American Bankruptcy Institute Law Review, Vol. 16, 2008
Arizona Legal Studies Discussion Paper No. 08-28

JEAN BRAUCHER, University of Arizona - James E. Rogers College of Law
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As a bulge of new issues under the 2005 bankruptcy law works its way through the courts, this article makes two arguments about statutory interpretation: (1) to satisfy the Supreme Court in purposive mode, bankruptcy practitioners and lower court judges should always take into account the law's purposes and policies, and (2) despite the drafting and empirical errors of Congress, interpretation in light of purposes and policies is the best way to minimize unintended consequences. The stated purposes of the law, consumer protection, abuse prevention and fairness to debtors and creditors, are sound guides to interpretation. Judges must exercise their discretion wisely to reconcile these objectives and implement all three to the greatest extent possible. The Article first examines the Supreme Court's turn to purposes and policies, either as primary or partial guide, when interpreting bankruptcy law. It then discusses the mismatch between congressional assumptions and the actual workings of the bankruptcy system, giving examples of how courts can nonetheless interpret the law to keep the system running as efficiently as possible while also protecting consumer debtors, preventing abuse, and balancing the interests of debtors and various types of creditors.

"Is America Finally Ready to Elect a Black President?" Free Download
Desert Sun (Palm Springs, CA), October 16, 2008

F. MICHAEL HIGGINBOTHAM, University of Baltimore School of Law
Email:

In its 220 year history, America has yet to elect a president who is not white. In the 2008 presidential election, Barack Obama, the only black member of the United States Senate, has received the nomination of the Democratic Party, the first minority candidate to ever receive a major party nomination. This article argues that Americans must not let fear or prejudice squander this historic opportunity.

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Solicitation of Abstracts

LAW & SOCIETY: LEGISLATION, edited by Luis Fuentes-Rohwer, is dedicated to the distribution of empirical or theoretical scholarship on legislation law topics from any disciplinary perspective. Covered topics include: the qualifications of legislators, elections, election laws, voting rights, apportionment, the operation of legislatures, the role of legislatures in democracy and the interpretation of legislative history.

To submit your research to SSRN, log in to the SSRN User HeadQuarters, and click on the My Papers link on the left menu, and then click on Start New Submission at the top of the page.

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Directors

LAW & SOCIETY JOURNALS

RONALD J. GILSON
Stanford Law School, Columbia Law School
Email: rgilson@leland.stanford.edu

A. MITCHELL POLINSKY
Stanford Law School, National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)
Email: polinsky@stanford.edu

BERNARD S. BLACK
University of Texas at Austin - School of Law, McCombs School of Business, University of Texas at Austin, European Corporate Governance Institute (ECGI)
Email: bblack@law.utexas.edu

Please contact us at the above addresses with your comments, questions or suggestions for LSN-LS.

Advisory Board

Law & Society: Legislation

ALFRED C. AMAN
Director, Center for Advanced Studies, Roscoe C. O'Byrne Professor of Law, Indiana University School of Law-Bloomington, Dean Alfred C. Aman, Jr., Suffolk University Law School

JEANNINE BELL
Professor of Law, Indiana University School of Law-Bloomington

PETER CARSTENSEN
George H. Young-Bascom Professor of Law, University of Wisconsin Law School

KENNETH GLENN DAU-SCHMIDT
Co-Director, Center for Law, Society and Culture, Willard and Margaret Carr Professor of Labor and Employment Law, Indiana University School of Law-Bloomington

LAUREN B. EDELMAN
Director, Center for the Study of Law and Society, Agnes Roddy Robb Professor of Law and Professor of Sociology, University of California, Berkeley - Jurisprudence & Social Policy Program and Center for the Study of Law and Society

HOWARD S. ERLANGER
Voss-Bascom Professor of Law, Professor of Sociology, President, Law and Society Association, Review Section Editor - Law & Social Inquiry, Director - Institute for Legal Studies, University of Wisconsin Law School

LUIS E. FUENTES-ROHWER
Associate Professor of Law, Adjunct Professor of Latino Studies, Adjunct Professor of Political Science, Indiana University School of Law - Bloomington

MARC GALANTER
John & Rylla Bosshard Professor of Law, University of Wisconsin Law School, Madison

MICHAEL GROSSBERG
Co-Director, Center for Law, Society and Culture, Professor of History & Law, Indiana University School of Law - Bloomington

WILLIAM D. HENDERSON
Associate Professor of Law, Indiana University School of Law-Bloomington

ANNA-MARIA MARSHALL
Editorial Advisory Board, Law and Society Review, Assistant Professor, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign - Department of Sociology

LYNN MATHER
Director - The Baldy Center for Law and Social Policy; Professor of Law and Political Science, University at Buffalo Law School, SUNY

SALLY ENGLE MERRY
Marion Butler McLean Professor in the History of Ideas, Wellesley College - Department of Anthropology

JOYCE STERLING
Professor of Law, University of Denver - Sturm College of Law

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