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Meat Processing Workers and the COVID-19 Pandemic: The Subrogation of People, Public Health, and Ethics to Profits and a Path Forward
Get PDFThe COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted and exacerbated existing health injustices. People who are Latino/Latinx, Black, Indigenous or members of other minority groups have disproportionately paid with their very lives. The pandemic has also exposed the complex interdependence of worker health and well-being, community health, and economic security. Industries like meat processing facilities—with congregate and high-density workplaces staffed by workers who are already disadvantaged by structural discrimination—must reckon with decades of subrogation and exploitation of workers. During this pandemic, the industry has pushed that exploitation to a point of no return. Policies to protect workers need a reset to an orientation of solidarity, mutual respect, justice, and equity. It is time for the industry that has so often profited at the expense of worker safety to sacrifice their fair share. The ethical underpinnings here are applicable to other workers’ who have been relegated to the sidelines in other essential industries, such as agriculture, retail and public service, and long-term care. Making ethical decisions about workplace protections should account for those heightened risks and existing disadvantages and legal intervention may be necessary to reinforce ethical minimums
The Village of Billionaires: Fair Taxation and Redistribution Amid Relative and Absolute Poverty
Get PDFTax justice and principles underpinning the international tax regime are in vogue. The idea that companies and individuals need to pay their fair share , not just in the domestic sense but also the international sense, is now a mainstream position. This paper explores the problems relating to what might constitute a fair share by setting out what is meant when this expression is used. A reasonable assumption is to consider taxation as the means by which the state funds public services and in some jurisdictions, contributes to greater equality within society. Those goals, however, give rise to competing claims. This is especially the case when considering international tax challenges, for example those faced by the OECD\u27s 2019 work plan.This paper, in examining competing claims for tax revenues, considers the specific categories of relative as opposed to absolute poverty. If one accepts that taxation is to fund public services, the question arises, at least in international tax, which jurisdiction\u27s public services? If the motivation for raising tax is to tackle inequality, what has the greater claim, international inequality or national inequality? It is in answering these questions that we need to address the issue of which is more pressing, relative as opposed to absolute poverty?The contention in this paper is that there is a far stronger moral claim for tax to be redistributed on an international basis rather than on a nation basis. Further, this paper contends that purported moral claims which seek to address inequality within national borders are merely political demands made to further the economic interests of particular groups who themselves are among the most economically privileged, when viewed on an international spectrum
Regulatory Malfunctions in the Drug Patent Ecosystem
Get PDFPatent protection for several of the world’s best-selling and most promising drugs — biologics — has begun waning. Over the next few years, many other drugs in this category will lose critical patent protection. In principle, this should open the United States market to competition, as more manufacturers are now able to produce relatively cheaper versions of these expensive drugs, known as biosimilars. That, however, has not been the case. This Article examines this problem in the context of the articulation between anticompetitive behaviors and regulatory interventions in the biopharmaceutical arena, and argues for a novel solution: a timelier response provided by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the form of license revocation when follow-on innovators fail to compete.In one significant case, the FDA approved several biosimilar versions from different manufacturers that would in principle compete with the biologic drug Humira — the largest-grossing drug in the United States and worldwide — but the manufacturer of Humira entered into multiple agreements with biosimilar manufacturers to keep the drug out of the United States market until 2023, while making it available elsewhere from 2018 onwards.An abundant stream of scholarship has examined the relationship between pharmaceutical markets and antitrust mechanisms to curb anticompetitive behaviors. This Article moves the debate in a new direction. Because antitrust responses generally face a time lag, the Article posits that an additional regulatory intervention is needed outside antitrust law, and it argues that the FDA is institutionally well placed to provide a first-line checkpoint for anticompetitive agreements that result in non-commercialization of approved drugs. While novel, this proposal incorporates a solution that has been hiding in plain sight: the FDA regulatory framework allows the Agency to revoke licenses under certain circumstances, including some forms of inaction on the part of the licensee. This Article shows that the FDA not only has the authority, but also the statutory obligation, to revoke the licenses of biosimilar manufacturers who deliberately fail to bring their products to market within a reasonable period of time.Many of the biologics slated to lose patent protection in the first half of the 2020s are routinely used in the treatment of some of the most challenging medical conditions of our time, including certain cancers and auto-immune diseases. At a time when concerns over drug prices are at the forefront of political and social debates, finding ways to instill competition into post-patent markets remains a crucial task. The solution put forth in this Article furthers the interests of different parties, as it clears the pathway for motivated biosimilar manufacturers to bring their products to a profitable market while bringing down overall costs for health systems and, in particular, for patients in need of extremely expensive pharmaceuticals
Taking the Politics Out of Vaccines: Increasing Vaccination Rates Without Repealing Exemptions
Get PDFVaccinations have become a vital part of disease prevention and public health; however, they remain a controversial topic in our society today. Non-medical exemptions to mandatory vaccination laws are the core of most of the controversy surrounding vaccinations. This Comment examines the controversy surrounding vaccinations and proposes interventions communities can adopt to increase vaccination rates without repealing non-medical exemptions to mandatory vaccination laws
Mapping Misinformation in the Coronavirus Outbreak
Get PDFThe coronavirus outbreak has sent ripples of fear and confusion across the world. These sentiments—and our collective responses to the outbreak—are made worse by rampant misinformation surrounding the new strain of the virus, COVID-2019. In this post, I survey some of the most pervasive areas of tentacular coronavirus-related misinformation that has proliferated online -- as well as the responses of social media companies like YouTube, Facebook, Pinterest and TikTok that may ultimately prove inadequate given the magnitude of the problem
COVID-19 and Public Accommodations Under the Americans with Disabilities Act: Getting Americans Safely Back to Restaurants, Theaters, Gyms, and “Normal”
Get PDFTHIS IS A PRELIMINARY EXPEDITED VERSION OF THE OFFICIAL ARTICLE TO BE ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN SAINT LOUIS UNIVERSITY LAW JOURNAL VOLUME 65 NUMBER 2
COVID-19 permanently changed the way places of public accommodation like restaurants, theaters, medical facilities, arenas, gyms, and many other proprietors of mainstream American activities must operate in order to accommodate people with newly-defined, COVID-19-related disabilities under Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). The required modifications will affect all patrons and employees of these establishments. Under the ADA, places of public accommodation are barred from discriminating against people with disabilities in the full and equal enjoyment of goods, services, and facilities. Infectious diseases like tuberculosis and HIV have been categorized as disabilities under the ADA, and COVID-19 is defining new categories of individuals with disabilities (including individuals vulnerable to COVID-19 complications) as revealed in this paper. Places of public accommodation will be required to establish non-discriminatory methods to identify “direct threats,” to modify policies and procedures for COVID-19-related disability groups identified here, and remove structural barriers that discriminate against those same groups. Controversial measures like fever checkpoints, mandatory face masking, and required social distancing are discussed in depth and analyzed in light of the ADA’s requirements.https://scholarship.law.slu.edu/lawjournalonline/1000/thumbnail.jp
The Future of Electioneering in Wyoming
Get PDFWyoming\u27s electioneering law is among the most expansive in the country. In this article, Alex Beezley examines a recently filed lawsuit challenging the law and predicts how the court will decide the case based on the Supreme Court\u27s reasoning in Burson v. Freeman.https://scholarship.law.slu.edu/lawjournalonline/1041/thumbnail.jp
The End of Cash Bail: As Simple as Sending a Text Message?
Get PDFPre-trial detainees make up more than 70% of the U.S. jail population. Dylan Ashdown discusses the frequently discriminatory bail practices across the United States and how some jurisdictions are starting to do away with cash bail.https://scholarship.law.slu.edu/lawjournalonline/1043/thumbnail.jp
Uniform International Tax Collection and Distribution for Global Development, a Utopian BEPS Alternative
Get PDFUnder the guise of compelling multinational enterprises (MNEs) to pay their fair share of income taxes, the OECD and other multinational agencies have introduced proposals to prevent MNEs from eroding the income tax base of developed economies by continuing to shift income artificially to low or zero tax jurisdictions. Some of the proposals have garnered substantial multinational support, including recent support from the new U.S. presidential administration for a global minimum tax. This Article reviews many of those international proposals. The proposals tend to concentrate the incremental tax revenue from the prevention of base erosion into the treasuries of the developed economies although the minimum tax proposal known as GloBE encourages low tax countries to adopt the minimum rate. The likelihood that zero tax countries will transition successfully to imposing the minimum tax seems uncertain.
Developed economies lack a compelling moral claim to incremental revenue so this Article argues that collecting a fair tax from MNEs and other taxpayers should be a goal that is independent of claims on that revenue. This Article maintains that to prevent tax base erosion, the income tax base and administration must be uniform across national borders and the Article recommends applying uniform rules administered by an international taxing agency. The Article explores the convergence of tax rules under such an international taxing agency.
Distribution of tax revenue by the international agency should follow contextualized need. In addressing the conundrum of absolute poverty in the undeveloped and developing world vis á vis relative poverty in the developed world, the Article proposes that the taxing agency should distribute all incremental revenue from the uniform tax where the need is greatest to ameliorate absolute poverty and improve living standards without regard to income source. The location of income production, destination of the produced goods and services generating the income, and residence of the income producers should not determine the tax revenue distribution. Rather, the use of contextualized need for distribution determination will enable developed economies to receive sufficient revenue to maintain their existing infrastructures and governmental services. Developed economies should forego new revenue, for which they have not budgeted, in favor of improving worldwide living conditions for all. The proposals for uniform, worldwide taxation and revenue sharing based on contextualized need are admittedly aspirational and utopian but designed to encourage debate on sharing of resources in our increasingly globalized world