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Reconsidering Constitutional Protection for Health Information Privacy
Get PDFWhat kinds of health information should be reported to government for civil purposes? Several competing trends encourage efforts to reassess the scope of constitutional protection for health information: the social and commercial value of health information; the amount of data held by third parties, from health care providers to internet servers; critiques of the third party doctrine exception to Fourth Amendment protection; and concerns about the loss of privacy. This article describes a variety of civil purposes for which health information is collected today. A close analysis of cases applying the third party doctrine, administrative search principles, and the special needs doctrine, as well as Fifth and Fourteenth Amendment cases examining health information privacy reveals quasi-precedents of limited relevance for evaluating mandatory reporting of health information. This lack of clarity calls for a more sophisticated approach to contemporary civil uses of health data
No Person May Go Armed : A Forgotten Chapter in the History of Gun Regulation
No full texthttps://scholarship.law.bu.edu/clark_speakers/1008/thumbnail.jp
Dismantling of Dissent: Militarization and the Right to Peaceably Assemble
Get PDFThis Note argues that the ritualized use of extreme police force on peacefully assembled groups is a violation of the Assembly Clause as it was originally intended to function. Part I gives a general account of the Assembly Clause, its creation, and its original intention to safeguard minority views. Part II recounts part of the history behind the militarization of police forces. Part III suggests a balancing test the courts should use when evaluating violations of the freedom to peaceably assemble in order to conform to the original meaning of the First Amendment
Confronting Automated Law Enforcement
No full textThe time has come for a cohesive approach to automated law enforcement. The ubiquity of sensors, advances in computerized analysis and robotics, and widespread adoption of networked technologies have paved the way for the combination of sensor systems with law-enforcement algorithms and punishment feedback loops. While in the past, law enforcement was manpower intensive and moderated by the discretion of the police officer on the beat, automated systems scale efficiently, allow meticulous enforcement of the law, provide rapid dispatch of punishment and offer financial incentives to law-enforcement agencies, governments, and purveyors of these systems. Unfortunately, laws were not created with such broad attempts at enforcement in mind and the future portends significant harms to society where many types of violations, particularly minor infractions, can be enforced with unprecedented rigor. This chapter provides a framework for analysis of automated law-enforcement systems that includes a conceptualization of automated law enforcement as the process of automating some or all aspects of surveillance, analysis, and enforcement in an iterative feedback loop. We demonstrate how intended and unintended consequences can result from the automation of any stage in this process and provide a list of issues that must be considered in any automated law enforcement scheme. Those deploying automated law-enforcement schemes should be extremely cautious to ensure that the necessary calculus has been performed and adequate safeguards have been incorporated to minimize the potential for public harm while preserving the benefits of automation
Ebola and Human Rights: Post-9/11 Public Health and Safety in Epidemics
Get PDFIn public health practice, the concepts of health and safety are often conflated. However, protecting and promoting health is radically different from protecting and promoting safety. Since 9/11, the distinctions between health and safety have changed and are in the process of merging. In our terrorism-obsessed world, public health has been increasingly militarized and enlisted, often without protest, into the service of protecting the safety of the public and the security of the nation. But safety and security are the proper purposes of law enforcement and the military, not of public health. More importantly, using public health to combat terrorism is often counterproductive to the population\u27s health, and undermines human rights. Using the Ebola epidemic of 2014, this Article suggests how the post-9/11 reframing of public health goals as including disaster preparedness and counterterrorism, and the new military metaphors we have adopted to describe public health, have deformed our public health agencies, and have made them less trusted by the public. In turn, these agencies are therefore less able to prevent and respond to new infectious diseases. The United States\u27 response to Ebola gives us an opportunity to reconsider the merger of public health and public safety domestically and globally. This Article suggests that a deeper commitment to human rights, especially to the right to health, has the theoretical and practical strength to act as a countervailing force and refocus public health on the health of populations rather than on safety and national security
Friedrichs and the Move Toward Private Ordering of Public Employee Wages and Benefits
Get PDFIn its recent Harris v. Quinn opinion the U.S. Supreme Court (in particular Justice Alito) seemed to welcome a future opportunity to reconsider the 1977 landmark Abood decision in which public sector closed shop employees were not required to join a union but could be subject to fees that cover the costs of “collective bargaining, contract administration, and grievance adjustment purposes.” Supporters of the Abood approach argue that it is a reasonable compromise that prevents non-members from free riding on the union’s efforts (i.e. enjoying the wages and benefits negotiated by the union without sharing the costs incurred.) Detractors and the plaintiffs in Friedrichs argue that free riding concerns are insufficient to overcome serious First Amendment objections. The central idea is that all bargaining in the public sector is inherently political. Public sector pay, tenure and benefits (especially expensive retiree health care and pension promises), it is claimed, now profoundly affect the ability of state and local governments to function in many jurisdictions. This article briefly reviews the major claim in Friedrichs -- that public sector agency agreements violate the First Amendment -- and considers the implications of a decision that, but for Justice Scalia’s unexpected death almost certainly would have overturned Abood. What would this mean for financially strapped state and local governments? To understand what a victory for the Friedrichs plaintiffs would mean, this paper looks at recent data from Wisconsin which dramatically constrained public sector agency agreements a few years ago and has seen public union membership, union revenue and political power plunge as a result. If Friedrichs had overturned Abood during the 2016 term, we would now expect to see national patterns similar to those observed in Wisconsin. In many places around the country a drop in public sector union political power would be expected to translate into a climate more supportive of reduced future expenditures on public pensions and health care
Emanuel Crunchtime for Administrative Law, 4th ed.
No full textEmanuel CrunchTime provides a comprehensive topic breakdown and critical information review all in one tool. The application flow charts can be used all semester long, but the capsule summaries are ideal for exam preparation. Each title offers capsule summaries of major points of law and critical issues, exam tips for identifying common traps and pitfalls, multiple choice-questions with answers, short-answer practice questions with answers, and essay questions with model answers.https://scholarship.law.bu.edu/books/1003/thumbnail.jp
Gay Rights and the Constitution
No full textConsiderably shorter than other casebooks, this accessible and engaging title focuses on the controversies over constitutional interpretation leading up to the United States Supreme Court\u27s holdings in Lawrence v. Texas (2003) and Obergefell v. Hodges (2015): namely, that the Constitution\u27s commitments to liberty and equal protection encompass rights of same-sex intimacy and marriage. It also takes up emerging conflicts between protection of constitutional rights for gay men and lesbians, on the one hand, and First Amendment claims of freedom of association and religious liberty by persons who oppose protection of such rights, on the other. This book will be suitable as either the basic text of a one-semester course or as a supplementary text for courses in civil liberties.With five original scholarly essays written by esteemed constitutional scholars, this book looks beyond judicial doctrine and asks whether the current constitutional status of gay rights is consistent with principles that trace back to the American Founding and the Civil War Amendments and that continue to animate American politics.https://scholarship.law.bu.edu/books/1013/thumbnail.jp
On Empathy
Get PDFProfessor Wheeler discusses the deadly mass shooting of June 12, 2016, in Orlando, Florida, and his belief that more empathy is needed in the world. Wheeler then relates, through personal anecdotes, his own journey toward empathy. He concedes that there is no recipe for empathy, but believes that sharing personal stories can spur conversation, thinking, and collective action