In response to the obstruction by the United States of the Kyoto protocols and its subsequent agreements, American environmental NGOs and state governments have filed a range of lawsuits to force the current U.S. administration, automobile manufacturers, and regulatory actors to combat global warming. This essay first very briefly sketches some of the strategies by litigants to force compliance with Kyoto, an agreement which reflects nearly all of the international community's desire to schedule reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. The essay then describes a strategy that perhaps is the most conventional in terms of international law, but requires a nation which is either desperate enough, or else sufficiently free of U.S. influences to challenge its policy lapses in international tribunals.
This essay considers the basis for the Washington State's Growth Management Act's (GMA) affordable housing goal, considers the relationship between its achievement and the reduction of urban sprawl. It also links the GMA's goal of an equitable distribution of housing resources to a fundamental social aspiration described by the United States Congress as a "decent home and living environment for all Americans." Indeed, it will be argued that the economic disparity and inequity directly linked to urban sprawl-both a cause as well as an effect-are locked ineluctably to a pathological social process in which they feed upon each other. Continued environmental degradation, which has spawned the salmon crisis, has exacerbated the housing crisis, making more challenging its resolution. However, legislative gridlock frustrates efforts at crafting a strategic and regionally coordinated response to the challenge of affordable housing.
Professor McGee introduces two papers submitted to the 1990 UCLA School of Law seminar entitled Law and Development in Latin America. The first paper, written before the onset of negotiations for a free trade treaty between Mexico and the United States, deals with the then new regulations of the Mexican Secretary of the Treasurer (Secretaria de la Hacienda) designed to sweep away a labyrinth of rules and procedures which had traditionally vexed foreign investors who dealt with the Mexican bureaucracy. The second paper concerns the irony which inheres in Mexico's treatment of Central American immigration, a problem relatively undiscussed in the United States, but with significance for labor markets in both nations.
The article begins with a discussion of the social and political background that influenced the emergence of the constitutionally guaranteed right to counsel in Spanish law. Next, it traces the constitutional development and legislative refinements of the right to counsel. It then considers judicial refinements of that right. The article concludes with a comparison of the Spanish process of articulating the right to counsel with the parallel process in the United States and what such differences bode for U.S. scholars.
Professor McGee reviews THE ANTITRUST PARADOX: A POLICY AT WAR WITH ITSELF, by Robert H. Bork. Professor McGee argues that it would be easy to balance the allocative efficiency and the productive efficiency effects of various transactions if we could generate information for the economic models as easily as it is done in the model of perfect competition-simply by assuming it. Since information is costly in the real world, however, we must develop proxies or general rules, formed with the guidance of economic analysis, that seem likely to produce more good than harm as the law is applied to various kinds of business arrangements. Professor McGee explains that the main thrust of Bork's book is to develop and justify a set of such proxies. To do this Bork discusses the legislative history of the Sherman Act and examines the role and capabilities of the institutions that decide antitrust cases. Bork then develops an economic analysis of antitrust and applies it to a wide range of different types of transactions and arrangements that make up the main grist for the antitrust mill. Professor McGee basically agrees with Bork's approach, with most of his analysis, and with the main body of his conclusions. He argues that perhaps one should not review a book with which he is in such basic agreement. He proceeds, nonetheless, by attempting to extend Bork's basic analysis in certain areas, criticizing it with moderation in others, and by suggesting some different ways of looking at some of the issues and cases that Bork did discuss.
A decade of litigation in which the central issue of discrimination essentially was uncontested thus far has failed to disestablish racial segregation or produce desperately needed low-income housing for Chicago blacks. Recently, the unconcluded litigation has produced a unanimous United States Supreme Court decision exposing suburban racial sanctuaries to the possibility of integrated public housing units. Although the first-named plaintiff in the suit, Dorothy Gautreaux, did not survive the decision, the extent of her posthumous triumph is the central theme of this article. Although Gautreaux superficially indicates that a federal judge has the power to desegregate federally subsidized housing and thereby spearhead a breakout strategy for inner-city-trapped minorities, more recent land use decisions have strengthened the power of racially segregated suburbs to maintain economic, and hence, racial "purity." Indeed, within a few weeks of the Gautreaux decision, the Court upheld an exclusionary land use device by permitting the residents of Eastlake, Ohio to veto by referendum a land use change approved by both a planning commission and city council. The practical result of this classic demonstration of "devotion to democracy" was to halt the construction of a multifamily, high-rise apartment building. Although the exclusionary implications of the decision did not escape the notice of the Ohio Supreme Court justices, the United States Supreme Court ignored the exclusionary effects and focused instead on the due process rights of the landowner. This article will discuss the contradictions and conflict between Gautreaux's use of a metropolitan area remedy and the Supreme Court's land use decisions. First, however, this article will explore both the reality and the illusion of Gautreaux.
Professor McGee discusses Chester McGuire's comprehensive, provocative and good-humored assessment of the Housing and Community Development Act of 1974 (HCDA). McGuire suggests both ominous and benign trends in the shift of political power and allocation of material resources in the United States. In analyzing the McGuire's assessment of the HCDA, Professor McGee addresses how the act affects minority groups, particularly Black Americans.
Professor McGee reviews Discretionary Justice: A Preliminary Inquiry, by Kenneth Culp Davis. Davis, suggesting both that we are a government of men as much as of laws and that discretion begins where law ends, sets out to determine how much unnecessary discretionary power can be contracted and how necessary discretionary power can be both confined and structured.
This article discusses the Brazilian Amazon rain forest and its remarkable biological diversity. Many scientists believe the world's largest jungle serves as a regional and perhaps even "global thermostat." It is therefore essential that vigorous efforts be directed toward its preservation. This article will examine Brazilian attitudes toward its preservation, and possible solutions to the forest destruction with reference to domestic and international law.
