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Contract Clauses Under Scrutiny: COVID-19
Get PDFForce majeure clauses have saved many businesses that have been unable to perform their contractual obligations during the COVID-19 pandemic. In this article, Mike Zawalski discusses case law on force majeure provisions in the time of the COVID-19 pandemic.https://scholarship.law.slu.edu/lawjournalonline/1063/thumbnail.jp
Reversing Progress: The Trafficking of Cuban Baseball Players Continues After Cancellation of MLB-FCB Agreement 103
Get PDFIn December of 2018, Major League Baseball (“MLB”) signed an agreement with the Cuban Baseball Federation that would forever change how the MLB acquires its Cuban talent. The agreement established a formal process of immigration from Cuba to the United States for professional baseball players, replacing the decades-old practice of smuggling players into the United States with the help of dangerous human trafficking organizations. In April of 2019, during its decision to revert back to the traditional foreign policy strategy with Cuba, the Trump Administration scrapped the deal in its entirety, bringing the process back to square one. This Note tracks the political history between the United States and Cuban since the Cuban Revolution, and expounds on its effect on America’s pastime. While the agreement has been nullified, the groundwork has been laid to finally do away with the archaic process of Cuban defection. However, until lawmakers in Washington D.C. decide to address the human rights abuses that ultimately put Cuban baseball stars in America’s stadiums, the status quo will remain
“One of the greatest human tragedies of our time”: The U.N., Biden, and a Missed Opportunity to Abolish Immigration Prisons
Get PDFChildren in cages, rampant sexual abuse, lack of access to life-saving medical treatment, and more. These human rights violations continue to occur in immigration prisons in the United States today, and given the scope, many, including the United Nations, are pushing the United States to abolish immigration prisons altogether. However, the Biden administration has demonstrated that is not interested in supporting the abolition of immigration prisons, not even in the international human rights arena.
After providing a brief overview of international human rights law prohibiting immigration prisons, this essay explores U.N. recommendations on immigration prisons from each of the Universal Periodic Reviews of the United States over the past ten years, as well as the U.S. responses to those recommendations. Through that exploration, it is made clear that while the Biden administration has showed an eagerness for reform in other areas, the administration missed an important opportunity this year to step up as a global leader and demonstrate commitment to the progressive realization of the full spectrum of human rights of migrants and set the United States on a path towards the abolition of immigration prisons
Gaps in Worker Protections that Increase Essential Workers’ Exposure to COVID-19
Get PDFStates and localities designated more than 55 million Americans as essential workers. Essential workers not only comprise those employed by the health care and food and agriculture industry, but also include teachers, grocery store workers, transit and airline workers, mail and delivery workers, energy sector and utility workers, and domestic workers (Petition for Emergency, 2020). Racial and ethnic minorities are disproportionately employed as essential workers, with Black Americans the most likely to be essential workers (Petition for Emergency, 2020). Essential workers have been left vulnerable to workplace COVID-19 infections and deaths in large part due to the federal and state government’s failure to enforce health and safety laws (Yearby, 2020). Volume I discussed the need to issue airborne infectious disease specific laws and regulations to prevent workplace COVID-19 infections and deaths. This Chapter will examine how the lack of protective equipment, punitive attendance policies, and the failure to track workplace infections have left essential workers vulnerable to workplace COVID-19 infections and deaths. This paper was prepared as part of the COVID-19 Policy Playbook: Legal Recommendations for a Safer, More Equitable Future, a comprehensive report published by Public Health Law Watch in partnership with the de Beaumont Foundation and the American Public Health Association
Stop Electronic Amplification of Lies
Get PDFAmerican democracy is in trouble. According to Freedom House, “the United States’ aggregate Freedom in the World score has declined by 11 points,” from 94 to 83, between 2010 and 2020. The Economist downgraded the United States from a “full democracy” to a “flawed democracy” in 2016. Leading scholars who have studied democratic decay in other countries warn that “the guardrails of American democracy are weakening.”
Several factors have contributed to the erosion of democratic norms and institutions in the United States. The electronic amplification of lies and misinformation is a major contributing factor. The term “electronic amplification,” as used here, refers to a variety of technologies—including radio, broadcast television, cable television, social media, blogs, and podcasts—that enable speakers to deliver their messages to large audiences almost instantaneously.
This essay builds on the work of other scholars who have explained how electronic amplification of lies and misinformation is eroding the quality of democratic governance in the United States and elsewhere. Instead of diagnosing the problem, my goal here is to sketch the outlines of a possible legislative solution. The proposal developed here is intentionally provocative. I do not pretend to have all the answers, but I do want to stimulate a conversation that I think is vitally important for the future of American democracy
Rights Not Fundamental: Disability and the Right to Marry
Get PDFDisabled people have long been systematically excluded from marriage, despite its personal, religious, cultural, and symbolic importance, and despite it being treated as a fundamental right in other contexts. This exclusion has been perpetuated by arcane laws that require Social Security and Medicaid beneficiaries to include their spouse’s income and assets in eligibility calculations. Since eligibility is contingent upon very little income and very few assets, couples who marry and intend to keep benefits are forced to live far below the poverty line in order to meet income and asset criteria, and many people are unable to make such a serious financial sacrifice. As a result, disabled people who are dependent on benefits are often forced to choose between a long-term relationship and needed health care services that are exclusively offered by Medicaid. This disability marriage penalty runs afoul of both disability rights and marriage policies that assure, on one hand, that presence of a disability does not preclude a person from enjoying full rights to inclusion in the United States, and on the other, that marriage is a fundamental right that should not be curtailed for most reasons related to identity. Partial solutions to the disability marriage penalty have been proposed and, in some cases, implemented, but no complete solution yet exists. However, there is some promise that the Biden administration and Congress as it currently stands will begin to take legislative or executive action to abolish this outdated penalty and finally allow people with disabilities the freedom to marry without fear of losing the benefits that enable their continued independence and survival
Data Privacy: One Universal Regulation Eliminating the Many States of Legal Uncertainty
Get PDFAlthough privacy has been around for quite some time, it has picked up speed within the last fifty years or so. Triggered by the advancements in technology that make the collection, storage, and use of data commonplace in today’s data-driven world, new privacy regulations and data protection standards have begun to spread like wildfire across the globe. Consumers continue to advocate for their right to privacy as they face the privacy paradox—the desire to protect one’s own privacy, while at the same time being forced to give it up as the cost of doing business in our data driven world. With the prevalence of data breaches, which are costly to individuals and organizations alike, the European Union took big steps to protect consumer data. In the United States, companies of all sizes like Amazon and Evite are scrambling to achieve compliance with these standards as they come up one at a time. However, the differences between individual regulations make it quite onerous for companies to comply with them all. The ability to comply is directly related to the number of resources an organization possesses. The more resourceful the organization is, the more likely it will achieve compliance. The less resourceful, the less likely the organization will achieve compliance resulting in dangerous practices like feigning ignorance or actively avoiding compliance efforts altogether. Noncompliance hurts consumers as evidenced by the effects of data breaches and identity theft, but it also hurts organizations through loss of business because they cannot compete the way that other organizations can. The best way to ensure data protection is for the United States federal government to implement a universal standard for its companies to adhere to. If this singular standard can incorporate the prominent aspects of other privacy regulations from around the world, organizations will be better equipped to compete and secure their place in the international market
The Urban Trauma Drama: The Intersecting Path of Criminal Justice and Public Health Revealed During the COVID-19 Pandemic
Get PDFOur society often operates under the delusion that more incarceration in urban areas will make us safer. Crowded cities and the problems for its inhabitants are not new. Those problems often fall more heavily on minority groups. Failed education, healthcare unavailability, and a lack of decent housing have made it difficult for cities to cope with addiction and crime. The COVID-19 pandemic has made the issues in the criminal system harder to ignore. Decline of major manufacturing jobs in cities like the steel and auto industries removed key opportunities for those seeking to overcome poverty and raise families. Debilitating riots during the late 1960s caused a retreat from the inner city and flight to the suburbs. Drug addiction growing from the 1950s further agitated the challenges of urban life. We should use this crisis as an opportunity to reset and launch new initiatives that have some chance of success.
The so-called “War on Drugs” that began in the 1970s has also had a lasting effect on current approaches to people being unable to get off of the “hamster wheel” of the criminal system. This “Urban Drama Trauma,” as I define it, is the failure of our criminal justice and health care infrastructure to address the root problems of urban living among marginal populations. The opioid crisis of the early 21st-century has also magnified the challenges of major cities in ways that have never been contemplated. Despite these dire circumstances, this crisis may create an opportunity to reset our focus and not repeat the mistakes of the past. Re-directing drug abuse through the healthcare system rather than the criminal system makes sense from an economic and public policy perspective. By addressing the trauma issue directly and focusing on job creation and workforce development for those hampered by the criminal system, we can experience better long-term outcomes