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Greasing the Squeaky Wheel of Justice: Networks of Venezuelan Lawyers from the Pacted Democracy to The Bolivarian Revolution
Manuel A. Gomez
Latin American lawyers have been commonly portrayed as members of a privileged social group with important influence in many areas. Lawyers have been seen as power brokers, social entrepreneurs, and nation builders. Over time, they have been able to form a permanent and steady elite, which has shaped the ways in which the public and private sectors operate. As described in previous work (Gomez 2003, 2008), Venezuelan lawyers are not the exception. The social and political conditions under which the country developed allowed networks of lawyers to attain significant power, thus enabling them to manipulate the ways in which different parts of the political system functioned, including the courts. This chapter describes how the operation of the Venezuelan judiciary has been traditionally controlled by networks of lawyers, judges and other political actors who have attained significant power and influence, and how members of the business sector have greatly benefited from this. It also explains how social and political changes occurred in that country during the late 1990s which modified the power balance, thus shifting the position of its different actors, but enabling the same social network structures to remain in place.
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Latin America
Manuel A. Gomez
This book examines the approach to costs and funding of civil litigation from a comparative perspective. Its first part sets out the results of a major study that was carried out by two of the research Centres of the Faculty of Law of the University of Oxford, namely the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies and the Institute of European and Comparative Law, in 2009. The study is based on a number of reports that were prepared by scholars and practitioners from all over the world. Some of these national reports are reproduced in the second part of the book. The study was conducted against the background of, and designed to feed into, a recent fundamental review of civil litigation costs in England and Wales. This was initiated by the then Master of the Rolls, Sir Anthony Clarke, in 2008. He appointed Lord Justice Jackson to conduct an enquiry with a view to making recommendations in order to promote access to justice at proportionate cost. The massive Final Report of the Jackson Review was published in December 2009 (a summary is provided in Chapter 8 of this book). It drew on a wide variety of sources, inter alia the preliminary results of our study, which had been published on the Social Sciences Research Network (SSRN). The Jackson Review sets forth a large number of suggestions for wide-ranging reforms of the English costs rules, and their implementation is currently discussed. We hope that this book can help to inform these discussions. We are extremely grateful to all those who helped us in conducting the study and producing this book. First of all, warm thanks are due to the many academics and practitioners who, within very tight schedules, provided information, data and written contributions for the initial study in 2009 and for this book. They are listed at pages xiii to xviii, below. We are equally indebted to Mr Francis Denning for processing the figures on the case studies and creating the charts and to Mr James Reardon for copy editing. We are also much obliged to international law firm CMS EEIG. They provided generous funding of the Oxford conference in July 2009 at which the preliminary findings of this study were discussed. Finally, we are most grateful to Richard Hart and his team at Hart Publishing who have assisted with their usual expertise and unflappable flexibility, not least in producing this book within a very short time frame.
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Globalization : Debunking the Myths, 2d ed.
Lui Hebron and John F. Stack Jr.
Globalization demystifies the rhetoric surrounding one of the most hotly debated topics among scholars, commentators, and policymakers. Presenting arguments for and against globalization, this brief text examines a wide range of views on the economic, political, cultural, and environmental dimensions of globalization and exposes their underlying frameworks, methodologies, and expectations. Throughout, Globalization compares rhetoric and reality and argues that there is no one way to understand this complex phenomenon.
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A Financial History of the United States
Jerry W. Markham
[v. 1.] From Enron-era scandals to the subprime crisis (2004-2006, [v. 2.] From the subprime crisis to the Great Recession (2006-2009)
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Corporate Finance : Debt, Equity, and Derivative Markets and their Intermediaries, 3rd ed.
Jerry W. Markham, José Gabilondo, and Thomas Lee Hazen
This casebook introduces students to the major instruments issued by corporations for funding and risk-management, including money market instruments, bonds and notes, junior and senior equity, government securities, futures, options, swaps, and other financial derivatives. Moving beyond the issuance market and instrument design, the book situates these instruments in their trading markets, giving students a comprehensive understanding of financial markets. The selected cases and materials highlight financial history, market structure, accounting standards, and a lawyer's professional standards. Chapter objectives help students to track their progress. This edition has been updated to reflect recent financial reforms.
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Florida Wills, Trusts, and Estates: Cases and Materials, 2nd ed.
Elena Marty-Nelson, Eloisa C. Rodriguez-Dod, Gail Levin Richmond, and Donna Carol Litman
Florida Wills, Trusts, and Estates, Second Edition builds on the strengths of the first edition and provides extensive coverage of wills, trusts, and estates. Updated through July 2011, the second edition reflects extensive statutory, judicial, and scholarly developments since 2007. The chapters covering intestacy, reformation of wills, homestead, undue influence, and revocable trusts have been significantly revised to address legislative changes in Florida made in 2010 and 2011. In addition to its coverage of wills and trusts, this edition includes a chapter addressing the Florida Power of Attorney Act, enacted in July 2011, which is a complete revision of the laws governing both durable and nondurable powers of attorney and brings Florida in line with the Uniform Power of Attorney Act. Moreover, this edition includes an estate planning chapter that reflects changes made in 2010 to the Federal estate tax system. Despite widespread adoption of uniform codes, the rules governing wills and trusts continue to be state law driven. The authors’ philosophy is that students gain critical insights into complex issues in these areas by studying the laws of one jurisdiction as a whole and that Florida law is a perfect platform for this endeavor. Therefore, the second edition continues to be grounded in Florida law. Although Florida law is the focus, this edition includes discussions of the uniform codes and Restatements, particularly where they depart from Florida law. Thus, this book is an excellent choice for teaching wills, trusts, and estates in any jurisdiction. The book is invaluable for academicians, students, and practitioners, alike. The book includes an appendix with wills and trusts forms provided by Northern Trust Corporation and a comprehensive Teacher’s Manual.
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The Religious Challenge To International Relations Theory
John F. Stack, Jr.
In the wake of 9/11, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the War on Terror, and ethno-religious terrorism around the globe, religion has been pushed to the forefront of the world stage. Long before concern and hysteria zeroed in on Islam as a principal threat to the United States, it was apparent that religion, far from having disappeared, remained a powerful global force.¹ As Kiernan documents in his history of genocide, religion served as a potent catalyst for the mass slaughter of millions throughout the ages. Writing about the waning decades of the twentieth century and the first years of...
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The Assyrian Genocide: a Tale of Oblivion and Denial
Hannibal Travis
Unlike the Holocaust, Rwanda, Cambodia, or Armenia, scant attention has been paid to the human tragedies analyzed in this book. From German Southwest Africa (now Namibia), Burundi, and eastern Congo to Tasmania, Tibet, and Kurdistan, from the mass killings of the Roms by the Nazis to the extermination of the Assyrians in Ottoman Turkey, the mind reels when confronted with the inhuman acts that have been consigned to oblivion. Forgotten Genocides: Oblivion, Denial, and Memory gathers eight essays about genocidal conflicts that are unremembered and, as a consequence, understudied. The contributors, scholars in political science, anthropology, history, and other fields, seek to restore these mass killings to the place they deserve in the public consciousness. Remembrance of long forgotten crimes is not the volume's only purpose--equally significant are the rich quarry of empirical data offered in each chapter, the theoretical insights provided, and the comparative perspectives suggested for the analysis of genocidal phenomena. While each genocide is unique in its circumstances and motives, the essays in this volume explain that deliberate concealment and manipulation of the facts by the perpetrators are more often the rule than the exception, and that memory often tends to distort the past and blame the victims while exonerating the killers. Although the cases discussed here are but a sample of a litany going back to biblical times, Forgotten Genocides offers an important examination of the diversity of contexts out of which repeatedly emerge the same hideous realities.
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An Institutional Perspective on the Duke Lacrosse Case
Howard Wasserman
We can organize the Duke lacrosse story around our three major sociopolitico-legal institutions. Like the mortal characters on Simon’s show, the team members—particularly, most obviously, Seligmann, Finnerty, and Evans—were acted upon and nearly crushed by those institutional forces. That the outcome of the case ultimately was successful seems beside the point. All still endured hardships largely perpetrated by the institutions themselves. Each institution failed to perform its role properly in the case, at least initially. A larger question is how to reconcile the ultimately successful outcome with the notion of institutional failure. Did the institutions right themselves and self-correct, producing the proper outcome? Or did the case resolve itself appropriately in spite of those institutions? To understand the Duke lacrosse controversy is to study these institutions and to answer questions about the performance of each: to learn what each did right and wrong, to learn why, and to consider how each can improve in the future.
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The Election's Imagined Identities: The Ghettoization of Muslims in The Race for The White House
Cyra Akila Choudhury
This chapter critically appraises the treatment of Muslims as citizens, subjects and outsiders by various campaigns in the 2008 Presidential elections. It focuses particularly on the Obama campaign and shows how Obama failed to include Muslims as part of mainstream America thereby exacerbating their outsider status.
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Heterosexuality as a Prenatal Social Problem: Why Parents and Courts Have a Taste for Heterosexuality
Jose M. Gabilondo
This chapter proceeds in three parts. First, I describe the heterosexuality offspring preference, show how it is a corollary of much critical theory, and argue that it is the socially constructed symbolic value accorded to heterosexuality that drives much of the demand for it, prenatally and elsewhere. To show how law subsidizes heterosexual reproduction, I discuss some recent state court decisions that provide so-called price support for it, despite judicial findings that heterosexual reproduction often involves disordered thinking and poor planning. Obviously, a more critical rethinking of the microeconomics of the parent-child relationship is in order, not only to protect sexual minority children from parental underinvestment, but also, more generally, to understand the role of projective preferences of would-be parents on demands for children.
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Political Activism and the Practice of Law in Venezuela
Manuel A. Gomez
In spite of the traditional involvement of Venezuelan lawyers in the country's social, political and economic life (Perez-Perdomo 1981, 1990, 2006) and their historic role as nation builders, social entrepreneurs and power brokers (Gomez 2008, 2009), the practice of law in Venezuela was largely traditional until the early 1990s. Venezuelan lawyers generally used their legal expertise, tools and resources without commitments to an ideological or social cause (Sarat and Scheingold 2001), and did not rely on litigation as a form of "moral activism" (Sarat and Scheingold 1998). Cause lawyering emerged during the postdictatorship transition in other Latin American countries (Meili 2001: 307); in Venezuela, cause lawyering began to develop during a period of political and social instability and gained even more salience during a decade of radical change in Venezuela's social, political, a1;1d economic institutions. Specific events in Venezuela during the last twenty years define three different stages in the emergence and transformation of cause lawyering and human rights activism and in the growing involvement oflawyers in the country's political debate. Each of these three stages corresponds to important changes in the conception lawyers have about their role. Each stage also corresponds to changes in the image that other actors have about members of the legal profession and their role in society.
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First Amendment Law: Freedom of Expression and Freedom of Religion, 2nd ed.
Arthur D. Hellman, William D. Araiza, and Thomas E. Baker
This new casebook rests on a straightforward premise: The First Amendment can be viewed as history, as policy, and as theory, but from a lawyer's perspective, it is above all law--albeit a special kind of law. One thing that is special is that the governing texts have receded into the background. The law is the cases, and the cases are the law. Close analysis of precedent is therefore the principal tool of argumentation and adjudication. The purpose of this casebook is to help students to learn the law in a way that will enable them to use it in the service of clients.
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The International Criminal Court on Trial
Charles C. Jalloh
Navi Pillay is a modern icon in the world's efforts to protect humanity through international law and policy. She played a leading role in the multi-national operation to clean up the humanitarian dross left on the essence of modern civilization by the Rwandan Genocide of 1994. Her contributions in that effort were in virtue of her role as a judge--and, eventually, as the President--of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. From there, she went on to serve as one of the first appeal judges at the newly established International Criminal Court--another international endeavour aimed at protecting humanity through law. In time, she was fittingly appointed the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, just ahead of a call to honour her with a book of essays in international law and policy, for the contributions that she had already made in the international enterprise of protecting humanity. Inspired by Pillay, some of the modern legends and experts in international law and policy have, in this volume, shared their experiences and thoughts on how better to protect humanity in our time. In the book, we read the wise words of Nobel laureates and other envoys of peace, renowned international judges and famous scholars, as well as those of energetic younger minds with great promise. Some chapters are in French.
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Andrés Bello, Sucesiones, y el Código Civil Francés de 1804
Matthew C. Mirow
Este artículo examina el uso del Código Civil francés (el Code Napoléon) por Andrés Bello como fuente y modelo en la redacción de las reglas sobre suseciones en el Código Civil chileno. Aunque el Código Civil francés no está considerado como una fuente muy importante en el campo de sucesiones del código de Bello, tuvo una influencia de cierta manera. Este artículo toma posición en el sentido que en el área de sucesiones, Bello consideró el código francés y aceptó o rechazó el modelo en materia de sucesiones según el tipo de regla que él necesitaba. Por ejemplo, cuando Bello necesitó una regla que tenía que ver con la administración de la propiedad, examinó el código francés con más cuidado. Cuando necesitó una regla sobre los herederos de la propiedad, rechazó el modelo del código francés por modelos que vinieron del derecho colonial y español.
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La Contribución de Ignacio Vallarta al Constitucionalismo Mexicano: Algunos Aspectos Norteamericanos
Matthew C. Mirow
En esta contribución me gustaría enfocarme en el trabajo del gran jurista Ignacio Vallarta, no solamente como un destacado actor en la historia del derecho antes de la Revolución, sino también como alguien que ha definido los términos del debate sobre el constitucionalismo mexicano después de la Revolución. Como sabemos, Ignacio Luis Vallarta nació en Guadalajara en 1830 y murió en la ciudad de México en 1893. Fue licenciado en leyes por la Universidad de Guadalajara en 1854 y fue diputado en el Congreso Constituyente que discutió la Constitución Mexicana de 1857. Fue juez y gobernador del estado de Jalisco. En 1877 y 1878 fue ministro de Relaciones Exteriores con Porfirio Díaz. En este puesto fue decisivo en el reconocimiento de México por Estados Unidos y trabajó en mejorar las relaciones entre los dos países. Fue presidente de la Suprema Corte de Justicia entre 1878 y 1882. Conociendo estos datos, mi breve ponencia será sobre Vallarta y su herencia al mundo del constitucionalismo mexicano. Muchas veces pensamos más en los cambios que traen las revoluciones, y no tanto en la continuidad que existe antes y después de las revoluciones. En el campo del derecho existen continuidades que son evidentes e importantes en el desarrollo de los Estados y de las sociedades. La educación legal, el conservadurismo de los profesores y jueces, y la resistencia al cambio de los abogados impiden las transformaciones rápidas que las revoluciones contemplan. Por ejemplo, en las primeras décadas de Estados Unidos, Blackstone, autor inglés, fue una fuente imprescindible. En México después de la Independencia, las reglas y procedimientos españoles regían antes de que los códigos estatales y federales fueran adoptados. De la misma manera, el pensamiento constitucional de Vallarta sobrevivió a la Revolución y tuvo una influencia importante en el camino del constitucionalismo mexicano hasta hoy.
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Military Orders as Foreign Law in the Cuban Supreme Court 1899-1900
Matthew C. Mirow
This chapter explores the use of military orders of the United States as foreign law in the Cuban Supreme Court in its first two terms under United States occupation. It examines orders related to the creation of the new court and its appellate jurisdiction. Cases resolving questions of appeals within the new system of courts shed light on the court's perception of itself within the newly established structure and on its method of resolving cases under the new orders. The chapter concludes that despite being faced with seemingly foreign sources, these judges exhibited little interpretive dissonance that such possibly foreign sources might cause and employed standard interpretive tools associated with domestic sources.
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Visions of Cádiz: The Constitution of 1812 in Historical and Constitutional Thought
Matthew C. Mirow
This chapter examines the ways the Spanish Constitution of 1812, also known as the Constitution of Cadiz, has been viewed in historical and constitutional thought. The document is a liberal constitution establishing constitutional rights, a representative government, and a parliamentary monarchy. It influenced ideas of American equality within the Spanish Empire, and its traces are observed in the the process of Latin American independence. To these accepted views, one must add that the Constitution was a lost moment in Latin American constitutional development. By the immediate politicization of constitutionalism after 1812, the document marks the beginning of constitutional difficulties in the region. This chapter has sections addressing: national sovereignty and popular representation, historical justification in the Cadiz process, liberal constitutionalism and constitutional rights, American equality and independence, and the politicization of constitutional texts and processes.
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Citizenship and Its Exclusions : a Classical, Constitutional, and Critical Race Critique
Ediberto Román
Religion is one of the most powerful forces running through human history, and although often presented as a force for good, its impact is frequntly violent and divisive. This provocative work brings together cutting-edge research from both evolutionary and cognitive psychology to help readers understand the psychological structure of religious violence. These insights are applied to both Judaism and Christianity, and their texts, to illustrate how our evolved mind shapes religious beliefs and influences human events. Contrary to the popular belief that religious violence is a corruption of true religion, carried out by individuals who twist its teachings, Teehan argues that religious violence is in fact grounded in the moral psychology of religion. This controversial argument is illustrated with reference to the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and the response to the attacks from both the terrorists and the President. In the Name of God represents a fundamentally new approach to the analysis of religion. By applying evolutionary psychology, we can gain a fresh perspective on religious texts, and a better understanding of their contradictions and complexities, essential to combating religious violence and promoting a mora moral society.
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Genocide in the Middle East : the Ottoman Empire, Iraq, and Sudan
Hannibal Travis
Genocide in the Middle East describes the genocide of the Armenians, Greeks, and Assyrians of the Ottoman Empire in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; of the Kurds and other persons living under Saddam Hussein in northern Iraq in the late 1980s; and of the Dinka, Nuba, Fur, Masalit, and Zaghawa peoples of Sudan from the 1970s to the present. It situates these crimes in their historical context, as outgrowths of intolerant religious traditions, imperialism and the rise of the nation-state, Cold War insurgencies and counterinsurgencies, and the global competition for resources and markets at the expense of indigenous peoples. This requires a more thorough investigation of the case law on genocide than has been attempted in the literature on genocide to date, including detailed accounts of the prosecutions of the leaders of the Ottoman Empire after World War I, of Saddam Hussein and other Iraqi officials after Operation Iraqi Freedom, and of President Omar Hassan al-Bashir and other leaders of Sudan by the International Criminal Court. Finally, the book explores emerging problems of genocidal terrorism, cultural genocide, and structural genocide due to starvation, disease, and displacement.
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Human Rights in Disaster Policy: Improving the Federal Response to Natural Disasters, Disease Pandemics, and Terrorist Attacks
Hannibal Travis
Megadisasters such as 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, and existing and emerging pandemics such as HIV/AIDS and bird flu are likely to outdo even those scourges of the twentieth century, war and economic collapse, in destroying American lives and undermining the democratic constitution of the U.S. In a matter of days, these events claimed more fatalities than months of intense war fare or unremitting poverty (see Rao, 1973; Specter, 2004). Given that the September 11th World Trade Center attack triggered a recession, a hurricane strike on New York or bird flu pandemic could put enough people and infrastructure out of commission that another Great Depression could ensue (Crouch, 2006). Twenty-first century national emergencies in the U.S. also aggravate long- standing human rights crises involving racial, ethnic and class-based disparities. America's urban centers are at gravest risk for such global threats as terrorism, mass casualty earthquakes and the flooding of coastal cities, heat waves, and pandemics of infectious disease spread via international travel and shipping (Lies, 2005; Schmid, 2005). These urban centers, in turn, and inhabited by some of the nation's least powerful residents, including racial and ethnic minorities and recent immigrants, the unemployed residents of our deindustrialized inner-city neighborhoods, single mothers and their children, and the elderly struggling to survive on fixed incomes (U.S. Census Bureau, 2005; Williams, 2001; Wilson, 1996). Minority communities in particular tend to suffer Disproportionately from disasters because their financial reserves are frequently Insufficient to ride out displacement or job losses, their housing is less resilient, Their neighborhoods more exposed to storms or flooding, and government and Private assistance are slower arriving in their areas (Salmon, 2005).
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Democracy and Terrorism in Colombia
Victor M. Uribe-Uran and Harry Mora
Since ancient times, terror tactics have been used to achieve political ends and likely will continue into the foreseeable future. Preserving national security and the safety of civilian populations while maintaining democratic principles and respecting human rights requires a delicate balancing act. In democracies, monitoring that balance typically falls to the courts. Courts and Terrorism examines how judiciaries in nine separate nations have responded, not just to the current wave of Al Qaeda threats, but also to nacro-trafficking, domestic terrorism, and organized crime syndicates. Terrorism is not a new phenomenon, and even though the reactions have varied significantly, common themes emerge. This volume discusses eleven case studies and analyzes the experiences of these various nations in their battles with terrorism to reveal the judicial quandary for democratic governance and the rule of law in the twenty-first century.
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Conclusion: Lessons Learned
Mary L. Volcansek and John F. Stack Jr.
"Since ancient times, terror tactics have been used to achieve political ends and likely will continue into the foreseeable future. Preserving national security and the safety of civilian populations while maintaining democratic principles and respecting human rights requires a delicate balancing act. In democracies, monitoring that balance typically falls to the courts. Courts and Terrorism examines how judiciaries in nine separate nations have responded, not just to the current wave of Al Qaeda threats, but also to nacro-trafficking, domestic terrorism, and organized crime syndicates. Terrorism is not a new phenomenon, and even though the reactions have varied significantly, common themes emerge. This volume discusses eleven case studies and analyzes the experiences of these various nations in their battles with terrorism to reveal the judicial quandary for democratic governance and the rule of law in the twenty-first century"--Provided by publisher.
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Legislation and Criminalization Impacting Renters Displaced by Katrina
Olympia Duhart and Eloisa Rodriguez-Dod
Even today, more than two years after Katrina laid waste to the Gulf Region, it is hard, if not impossible, for many people to return home. The powerful storm decimated parts of Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana. It also displaced a record number of men, women, and children. Some estimates are as high as 800,000. But while governmental agencies, volunteer efforts, and charities have rushed to rebuild the homes of those displaced by the storm, a huge number of Hurricane Katrina victims have been left with little or no assistance. Beyond the camera lens and often overlooked in the vivid portrayals of hurricane damage are renters, who comprise almost half of those displaced by Hurricane Katrina. Renters: are often last in line for government benefits and other assistance. Moreover, the hostility to renter's rights that continues to pervade the community. after Katrina has created additional obstacles for low-income renters attempting to resettle in the area. Further, even one-time homeowners have been forced to turn to rental housing as the long, slow recovery assistance process works its way through the region. The difficulties facing renters in the New Orleans region after the storm are emblematic of the difficulties confronting many “evacuees” who are forced to find temporary housing following a disaster. The hurdles facing renters in the region are varied and extensive. Among the obstacles for renters in the New Orleans region are the scarcity of land on the south shore of Lake Ponchartrain, increases in labor and material costs for repairs, higher insurance, infrastructure uncertainty, rental property inflation, poverty, construction problems, zoning restrictions, and, criminalization. Some of these problems can serve as a "snapshot" of sorts for the obstacles for renters who must find housing following a temporary, unforeseen displacement.
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