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Dirty Water
Full text linkPlastics are taking over. Every day, humans are exposed to plastic pollutants in a variety of ways. From the water we use to water crops in the field, to the water in our taps, to the liquids we drink from plastic containers, it can be found virtually anywhere you look. Not only is it everywhere in the environment, but it is also within us. It builds up in our bodies. Plastics have become a major public health concern; researchers estimate that the total healthcare cost related to plastic chemicals may be as much as $250 billion.[1]
Water has always been an avenue for harmful substances to enter the human body and detrimentally affect health. Early on it was through waterborne illnesses, but thanks to the disinfection process in water treatment plants, waterborne illnesses in the United States are no longer the major threat they once were.[2] Now, plastic contaminants can enter these water sources and can slip past water treatment if not properly addressed.[3] Sometimes, the plastic contaminants are part of the packaging of our food and beverages, slowly leaching in prior to being consumed directly.[4] Other times, the plastics are found in the food we eat because that food was grown with fertilizer made of sewage sludge or the fish being consumed were caught from an ocean riddled with plastics.[5]
There are tens of thousands of unregulated industrial substances manufactured and used in the United States.[6] This Article focuses on three specific to plastic and its manufacturing process: microplastics, phthalates, and BPAs. These substances have been attributed to many known health harms and potentially more that have yet to be identified. The research is still new and much is emerging, but what we do know is who is creating the problem. From big oil companies and plastics manufacturers to creators of textiles and tires to investors who all contribute to the problem, how can these entities be held accountable for the problems they caused? Existing regulations do not encompass much, with federal agencies less able to act due to Congress and the courts.
One path that could hold manufacturers accountable for the products that are raising public health red flags is through Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR).[7] This places the burden on manufacturers to take responsibility for their products at all stages of the product’s lifecycle.[8] Public health litigation (PHL) can deter manufacturers by holding them accountable for health harms.[9] Extended Producer Responsibility and Public Health Litigation can work together: once EPR laws and standards are in the books, plaintiffs can use PHL to further their efforts by making sure manufacturers are following the rules
2025--Contemparary Challengers in International Humanitarian Law: Is there Hope for the International Order?
No full textOut of the 122 ongoing armed conflicts in the world, certainly two conflicts (Russian intervention in Ukraine and the War in Gaza) have raised important and critical concerns about how war is being conducted. The way the different parties to the conflicts have interpreted and applied the Laws of War (International Humanitarian Law) is a matter of intense debate. When and how, who and what can be targeted, the role of new technologies of warfare, and the mechanisms of accountability are the issues that will gather 17 world-renowned academics at the 2025 SLU LAW Center for International and Comparative Law and Saint Louis University Law Journal Symposium.
The SLU LAW Center for International and Comparative Law and SLU LAW Journal are proud and grateful to contribute to the international discussion on the current challenges of International Humanitarian Law.https://scholarship.law.slu.edu/lj_cicl_symposia/1002/thumbnail.jp
Beyond Hysteria: Prosecuting Women for Abortion Is More Likely Now Than Before Roe
Full text linkWhen Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health first overturned long-standing precedent protecting a woman\u27s fundamental right to abortion, pro-choice leaders issued warnings about the possibility of prosecuting women for abortions. These concerns were dismissed as hysterical or as political theatrics because, in the past, women were rarely prosecuted for their own abortions. This note analyzes the history of illegal abortion before the Supreme Court’s ruling in Roe v. Wade to demonstrate that women were targeted, used as leverage against abortion providers, and sometimes arrested for their roles in the procedure. Further, this note argues that nationwide panic over gender roles, increasing politicization around abortion, and the use of other criminal statutes to punish women show that this new era of illegal abortion could mean harsher penalties for women, including not only fines or jail time, but also public humiliation and vitriol. The concerns around prosecuting women are more than just hysteria—they are justified by history and emerging, nationwide trends
Reverberations of Magna Carta: Work Injuries, Inkblots, and Restitution
Full text linkThis article argues that workers in the United States have been unconstitutionally undercompensated for their work injuries for at least a century. This provocative fact, coupled with statistics showing that over 120,000 people per year die from workplace injury and occupational disease, suggests a looming post-pandemic struggle for better injury remedies and safer workplaces. Workers’ compensation, the current state-based system by which American workers receive compensation for work-related injury and death, was obtained from legislatures as a “Grand Bargain,” the value of which has significantly deteriorated over time; and the constitutional coherence of which has been impacted by the obvious inadequacy of worker remedies. The bargain, in other words, has been breached; and the article argues for a “New Bargain” driven by worker consciousness of employer unjust enrichment from the original bad bargain.
A New Bargain may be contractually renegotiated by labor unions in unionized industries; or it may emerge as a series of “shock absorbers” in reaction to national emergencies, like pandemics and extreme weather events; or expanded disease coverage, which COVID-19 revealed is virtually nonexistent. The New Bargain should be aggressively sought in brusque disregard of the fiction that workplace harm is necessarily accidental and thus damnum absque injuria. This tale was built on misinterpretations of the constitution that simply will no longer do. The article discusses “unenumerated rights” and contends that they exist and include federal guarantees to adequate remedies for tortious harm. More importantly, the article asserts that worker embrace of this idea can energize a spirit of restitution: what has been taken may be regained through mandatory federal bargaining and state-specific statutes.
The article takes issue with inadequate benefits like, for example, arbitrary cutoffs in which workers receive paltry sums like $155,000 (total) for a lifetime of total disability (the maximum recovery in Kansas as of this writing). Given such shocking numbers, it can only be hoped that “welfare” or “social security” will fend off worker poverty. Although partially disabled workers were originally, in the early 20th century, entitled to a weekly benefit based on a percentage of the amount of wages lost as a result of a work injury, or on some estimate of the reduction of an injured worker’s earning capacity after the injury, for the full duration of the injury, this right is no longer recognized in most states. Instead, partially disabled workers are compensated under arbitrary benefit “schedules” bearing no articulated relationship to wages lost, or even to an explicit projected loss of earning capacity. All of this, the article contends, is broadly subject to worker revision, and this article provides an outline of first steps out of the morass
I’m Not Lovin’ It: Re-Thinking Fast Food Advertising
Full text linkIn 1971, the Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”) and the Food and Drug Administration (“FDA”) agreed to prevent injury and deception to the consumer in advertising, detailing their respective roles in a Memorandum of Understanding (“MOU”).1 The MOU proscribes that the FTC regulates truth in advertising relating to foods, drugs, devices and cosmetics while the FDA controls labeling and the misbranding of foods, drugs, devices, and cosmetics shipped in interstate commerce.2 The MOU has been amended and an addendum added since 1971, but the material provisions have remained consistent for over a half-century.3
Importantly, the FDA and the FTC have varying goals and differing structures. The FDA is part of the Executive Branch and is primarily responsible for the protection of public health via the regulation of certain health-related products, so that those products can achieve a certain efficacy or social “value.”4 On the other hand, the FTC is an independent agency that interacts with all three branches of the federal government, ensuring the integrity of the market process rather than focusing on a product’s specific social “value”.5 Typically, the FDA ensures compliance on the front end by approving consumer disclosures in advance while the FTC provides back end relief by regulating specific claims that have already been advertised.
AI Renaissance: Pharmaceuticals and Diagnostic Medicine
Full text linkThe explosive growth of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the modern era has led to significant advancements in the world of medicine. In drug discovery, AI technology is used to classify proteins as drug targets or non-targets for specific diseases, more accurately interpret and describe pharmacology in a quantitative fashion, and predict protein structures based on only a protein sequence for input. AI methods are used in drug development to generate predictive models for drug screening purposes, refine and modify candidate structures of drugs to optimize compounds, and predict a drug’s physiochemical properties, bioactivity, and toxicity. For medical devices, the advancement of AI technology in the areas of colonoscopy, percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI), acute stroke and intracranial hemorrhage (ICH), vascular surgery, and ophthalmology may offer increased efficacy as compared to traditional patient-care techniques in diagnostic medicine.While use of AI in pharmaceutical development processes and diagnostic medicine increases, the rapidly growing technology has substantial barriers to overcome. The combination of AI with other novel technologies (e.g., nanotechnology) is anticipated to provide solutions to problems in drug development, model selection, drug screening, and even in clinical trials. Advancements in AI-enabled imaging analysis will be increasingly used in the fields of radiology and pathology, bringing with it increased efficiency in traditional patient-care techniques. Challenges in data representation, data labeling, small sample sizes, data privacy, ethical concerns, and interpretation of models present barriers for AI developers and interested clinicians to overcome when further developing AI technology in the pharmaceutical and medical diagnostics industries. These industries must also consider the importance of patent rights in the considering whether to invest in further development of AI technology, as the United States and other countries debate whether AI-assisted invention should be patentable.As governments consider the implications of an AI-enabled world, it will be crucial for the United States government to develop comprehensive legislation and regulations for the increasingly widespread technology. As sentiment from American citizens, corporate leaders, and government officials grows increasingly available, President Biden’s Executive Order on the Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence stands out as a substantial starting point for anticipated legislation. Debate as to how AI should be regulated points to a logical conclusion: Congress should create a new federal agency with the sole purpose of regulating AI technology, developers, and sellers. This newly created agency must consider appropriate regulatory schemes, the need for interaction between all interested agencies and industries, and proper enforcement techniques such as licensure, monitoring, and legal penalties
Immunity Through Bankruptcy for the Sackler Family
Full text linkIn August 2023, the U.S. Supreme Court temporarily blocked one of the largest public health settlements in history: that of Purdue Pharma, L.P., reached in bankruptcy court. The negotiated bankruptcy settlement approved by the court would give a golden parachute to the very people thought to have ignited the opioid crisis: the Sackler family. As the Supreme Court considers the propriety of immunity through bankruptcy, the case has raised fundamental questions about whether bankruptcy is a proper refuge from tort liability and whether law checks power or law serves power.
Of course, bankruptcy courts often limit liability against a distressed company, but here, the Sacklers did not themselves declare bankruptcy. Instead, they added about 600 billion in annual costs from the opioid crisis, by some estimates—and are allowed to keep any remaining profits. The bankruptcy court justified immunity on the grounds that the Sacklers’ money was protected in offshore accounts and trusts and therefore could not be reached through tort liability—all the better to have them participate voluntarily. In other words, the Sacklers laid the groundwork for their own immunity by sheltering the money they withdrew from Purdue.
We have doubts that a single court should have the enormous power of shielding the Sackler Family from all future civil liability for the opioid crisis, simply to enlarge a settlement. Public health litigation has the power to address root causes of public health crises by disincentivizing unscrupulous actors. Granting these actors immunity may insulate them from public criticism while undermining the important role of courts as an avenue of recourse. Upholding immunity for the Sackler family would lay the groundwork for future executives to ride a company into the ground, at the expense of public health, golden parachute ready and waiting
The Use of Force Against Terrorist Attacks: The Two Facets of Self-Defence
Full text linkThis article considers the legality of the use of defensive force by a state against terrorists on the territory of a third state from where terrorists launched the attack. It first considers justifications based on attribution and on the “unable and unwilling” test. It concludes that these constructions leave many legal, factual, and conceptual questions unsettled. It thus goes on to put forward a construction based on the two facets of self-defence: a primary rule and substantive right which justifies the use of force against terrorist attacks; and a circumstance precluding wrongfulness (CPW) which excuses responsibility for the incidental breach of the territorial state’s sovereignty. The article then argues that the territorial state can claim compensation for any material loss caused by the self-defence action. This construction offers a more coherent understanding of the operation of self-defence and a stronger legal basis for using defensive force against terrorists on the territory of third states