On December 17, 2010, a young Tunisian street vendor protesting an abusive police official set off a wave of democratic uprisings throughout the Arab world. In rising up against their governments, the peoples of the Arab countries were confronting an age-old problem in political theory: When is it acceptable to rise up against an unjust authority? This question is not only of great importance...
Interbank Discipline
As banking has evolved over the last three decades, banks have become increasingly interconnected. This Article draws attention to an effect of this development that has important policy ramifications yet remains largely unexamined—a dramatic rise in interbank discipline. The Article demonstrates that today’s large, complex banks have financial incentives to monitor risk taking at other banks. ...
A Proposal for U.S. Implementation of the Vienna Convention’s Consular Notification Requirement
The Vienna Convention on Consular Relations (Vienna Convention), to which the United States is a party, requires signatories to notify the consulates of and to grant consular officers physical access to foreign criminal defendants. While the treaty has mostly functioned well for its states parties, the United States has recently encountered substantial problems—and international ill will—for its...
After the Choice: Challenging California’s Physician-Only Abortion Restriction Under the State Constitution
Women in California have the right to abortion protected by statute and the state constitution. Yet for many women, the “right” to abortion is illusory. Most clinics and hospitals that provide abortions are concentrated in urban areas, leaving many counties without a single abortion provider. Practical barriers to access are compounded by California’s sheer size and geography, resulting in...
2013 William Rutter Award Acceptance Speech
Each year, the UCLA School of Law presents the Rutter Award for Excellence in Teaching to an outstanding law professor. On March 13, 2013, this honor was given to Professor Patrick D. Goodman. UCLA Law Review Discourse is proud to continue its tradition of publishing a modified version of the ceremony speech delivered by the award recipient.
The New Investor Cliffhanger
In a recent UCLA Law Review article, The New Investor, 60 UCLA Law Review 678 (2013), Professor Tom Lin argues: Technological advances have made finance faster, larger, more global, more interconnected, and less human. Modern finance is becoming an industry in which the main players are no longer entirely human. Instead, the key players are now cyborgs: part machine, part human. Modern finance is...
Custody Rights of Lesbian and Gay Parents Redux: The Irrelevance of Constitutional Principles
Disputes over custody and visitation can arise when a marriage ends and one parent comes out as gay or lesbian. The heterosexual parent may seek custody or may seek to restrict the activities of the gay or lesbian parent, or the presence of the parent’s same-sex partner, during visitation. A gay or lesbian parent’s assertion of constitutional rights has not been an effective response to such...
Will We Sanction Discrimination?: Can “Heterosexuals Only” Be Among the Signs of Today?
Across the country, we see institutions and businesses advocating for the right not to comply with anti-discrimination mandates on the grounds that doing so violates their religious beliefs. Bucolic inns and bakeries close their doors to same-sex couples, businesses seek to deny their workers insurance coverage for contraception, and religiously affiliated schools fire employees because they are...