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Pursuing Climate Justice: Learning the Lessons of the COVID-19 Response
Get PDFThe COVID-19 pandemic and the climate crisis have many parallels. Both are large disruptive events that pose foundational threats to humanity through the capacity to cause substantial harm and death to humans. Both pose complex and multifaceted challenges perpetuated by multiple factors that are difficult to interrupt or mitigate. Both are subject to evolving scientific understandings of their underlying causes and potential interventions. Both are novel challenges not previously faced by most humans alive today that comprise potential threats to human society over an extended time period. These similarities allow scholars and policymakers to extrapolate and understand how the responses to the COVID-19 pandemic could inform responses to the much larger threat presented by the climate crisis.
These two crises differ in substantial ways as well. The COVID-19 pandemic arises from an infectious disease caused by the spread of a novel virus, while the climate crisis stems from the rampant accretion of carbon dioxide from the combustion and release of carbon-based fuels by humans. Addressing these primary causes will require very distinct technologies and strategies. Yet, many of the systemic conditions that need to be navigated for an effective response—particularly legal, political, and social factors that dictate the contours of what is possible in our society—are the same or similar for both crises. These crises also differ in scope and duration. The impact and length of the COVID-19 pandemic likely will be dwarfed by the climate crisis, which will impose severe impacts on human societies for generations to come.
Nevertheless, the lessons from the COVID-19 response can illuminate a path forward to more effectively address the challenges of the climate crisis. Successfully mitigating the future risks of the climate crisis will require learning from, and applying different approaches to, many of the same areas where the legal and political governance of the COVID-19 response faltered. The lessons of the COVID-19 response can act as both a cautionary tale and a roadmap for a better future response. This Article identifies areas where important legal and policy reforms can reverse failed approaches used during the COVID-19 response, build on successful COVID-19 response strategies, and yield better outcomes that can help pursue and secure climate justice going forward.
Successful adaptation to a warming climate will require significant changes to our society and the thoughtful, proactive application of law and policy that fosters inclusive governance and health equity. If we heed its lessons, the COVID-19 pandemic may provide us with insights to fortify our social support infrastructure, reorient our priorities, invest in forward-looking technological and social changes, and reinforce our imagination and our solidarity to render our society more adaptable to the risks—both expected and unexpected—that the future holds
The Heat is On: Will Climate Change Suits Pressure the Supreme Court to Evolve Its Federal Question Jurisdiction?
Get PDFBook Review of Shaping the Bar: The Future of Attorney Licensing
Get PDFIn Shaping the Bar: The Future of Attorney Licensing, Professor Joan Howarth issues a clarion call to the academy, the legal community, and the judiciary to reform the way we license lawyers in the United States. In this book Howarth identifies the current crisis in law licensing, the history of racism that created this crisis, and the tools available to address it. Shaping the Bar challenges our entrenched notions of professional identity, and it forces us to confront vulnerabilities in attorney self-regulation. It does so in a manner that will stir even those not immersed in the current debate about law licensing.
What is the crisis in law licensing? Howarth answers that question and explains that the current crisis is twofold. First, the attorney licensing system fails at its stated purpose of public protection because it does not assess the skills and abilities new lawyers need to competently represent clients. Second, the attorney licensing system unjustifiably excludes people of color and those without financial resources. Throughout the book, Howarth connects the law licensing process to legal education, highlighting the symbiotic relationship between the two, and noting that as legal educators, we must accept responsibility for our part in creating, and hopefully now dismantling,/= / \u3ethis system.
In this review, we summarize some of the key issues Howarth raises about the problems with the current system of attorney licensure and the way we educate law students. We briefly expand upon some of her ideas and analyze the benefits and drawbacks of her suggestions for change. We do so without referencing the extensive sources she offers in support of her arguments. We use her work to provide a concise yet informative evolution of the systemic shortcomings in bar admission for those not conversant with the current crisis.
Part I juxtaposes the purpose and reality of public protection through bar exams. Part II rolls back a curtain to much that is unknown and unexamined about assessing minimum competency for the practice of law. Part III explores exclusionary practices and outcomes in character and fitness assessments, and discusses Professor Howarth’s solutions to improve the process. In Part IV, we recount Howarth’s innovative, and eminently workable, suggestions to improve the current system of attorney licensure. It is here, specifically, that Howarth’s creativity and practicality meet to make this book a road map for those seeking to implement a better process for bar admission, one that is both valid and fair
2022 Panel 3--Covering the Court
No full textThis year’s annual Childress Lecture, to be delivered by University of Texas School of Law Professor Stephen Vladeck, will provide both a historical introduction to and a modern reassessment of the shape and size of the Supreme Court’s docket — and will argue that both academic and public discourse about the work of the Court has increasingly failed to account for holistic shifts in the kinds of cases that the Justices are (and aren’t) choosing to decide. A proper accounting of the ‘Business of the Supreme Court,’ Professor Vladeck will argue, helps to show just how significantly the Court’s role in our legal system has changed in recent years — without almost anyone noticing.https://scholarship.law.slu.edu/childress_lecture/1005/thumbnail.jp
The Role of Prosecutorial Discretion in the Constitutionality of DACA
Get PDFDACA has been a controversial immigration program for almost a decade, as it winds its way through the United States\u27s court system. In this article, Olivia Dixon argues that federal judge Andrew Hanen\u27s most recent holding, that DACA is unconstitutional, is wrong, specifically looking at the role prosecutorial discretion plays in the program\u27s constitutionality.https://scholarship.law.slu.edu/lawjournalonline/1090/thumbnail.jp
Missing Link: League Punishments of Team Executives
Get PDFIs it lawful for a professional sports league to punish an executive of a team when that executive isn’t employed by the league and, unlike a player, isn’t a member of a union that collectively bargains with the league?
The answer to this question has long been presumed as “yes,” despite the non-employing league lacking a contractual link to the executive—a third party—it fines, suspends, or even bans from employment with businesses owned by others.
This Article challenges that presumption. It does so by applying employment law, franchise law, and private association law to the unique relationship between sports leagues and their independently owned franchises. The Article balances the absence of a contractual relationship with league interests in fair play and orderly structure.
To date, this topic has been overlooked in legal scholarship. Yet it is timely given recent high-profile punishments of team executives in several of the major leagues
The Future of the ADA: Understanding Title III’s Application to Websites
Get PDFIn recent years, the Americans with Disabilities Act has become a significant source of confusing and controversial litigation over website accessibility. This confusion and controversy stems from the fact that the Americans with Disabilities Act and its accompanying regulations offer zero explanation as to how the Act applies to websites. Faced with a circuit split, due process concerns, and a lack of any meaningful technical guidance from administrative agencies, defendant website operators are desperate for clear guidelines for how to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act. Adding to this desperation is a barrage of opportunistic lawsuits, dubbed “surf-by lawsuits,” being filed nationwide against thousands of businesses whose websites are not entirely accessible. Because courts are unwilling to declare a measurable level of accessibility that satisfies the Americans with Disabilities Act as a matter of law, these defendants are forced to either spend the tens of thousands of dollars required to litigate their cases all the way, or settle.
On the surface, it may seem like a good thing that these lawsuits are making the internet more accessible. However, the practical result of the current legal landscape is that almost every defendant will settle, regardless of how accessible its website is and regardless of whether any individual with a disability has actually been denied equal access. Most of the settlement agreements contain only a vague promise by the defendant to make the website more accessible. Furthermore, the disabled individual is unable to recover damages; only attorney’s fees are recoverable under the Act. This has led many to believe that the involvement of the disabled plaintiff is often pretextual. Rather than accept this flawed system, this author believes there are legal solutions to the confusion surrounding the Americans with Disabilities Act, which could be fairer to both defendants and individuals with disabilities.
Part I of this Note begins by providing some background on the Americans with Disabilities Act and the standards used for measuring website accessibility. Part II describes the current state of the law, including a discussion of the circuit split, due process concerns, and judicial articulations of what the ADA requires from a technical standpoint. Finally, Part III advocates how to move forward with resolving the circuit split and creating clear technical standards for website accessibility