Ruth McGregor

A new project is being launched at the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law that will investigate new inter-governmental structures that are forming and develop cutting-edge ideas and policy recommendations for managing these emerging relationships.

The Project on Federalism and Separation of Powers in a Global Era will be introduced as part of the College’s national conference, “Combating Human Trafficking: How Coordinating International, Federal and State Law can Prevent and Punish Exploitation While Protecting Victims.” The conference will be on Friday, March 11, in the Great Hall of Armstrong Hall on ASU’s Tempe campus, and is free and open to the public. (See http://conferences.asucollegeoflaw.com/humantrafficking for details and to register.)

The Project is led by Arizona Supreme Court Chief Justice Ruth V. McGregor (ret.), a Distinguished Jurist-in-Residence at the College of Law. McGregor, who will open the conference with U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor (ret.), also is teaching a Human Trafficking Seminar at the law school this semester.

“As our world becomes ever smaller, the need for governmental and non-governmental entities to cooperate and collaborate to resolve issues of common interest becomes greater,” said McGregor of the Project. “We developed this Project to answer that need. ‘Combating Human Trafficking,’ which is the Project's initial conference, recognizes the need to bring international, national and local entities together to discuss the best approaches to combat the devastation being caused by human trafficking.”

Topics for exploration within the Project include:
• the appropriate spheres of federal and state authority with regard to stimulus projects
• the costs to the states and management of various health insurance proposals
• state implementation of and resistance to international law norms
• the bifurcation of power regarding immigration
• comparative analyses of other federal systems around the globe

Paul Schiff Berman, Dean of the College of Law, said it has become clear that no community exists in a vacuum, and that no governmental entity can operate in isolation from other governments.

“Whether on matters of economic recovery, climate change policy, criminal justice, immigration, taxation or a host of others, local governments will – like it or not – be subject to pressures from other regional, national or international governance bodies,” Berman said. “At the same time, local governments are increasingly recognized as essential to political reform, essential to development, essential to sustainability, and so on. Thus, the interactions and influences flow in multiple directions.”