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Trump Brings the Racism and the Grift
No full textIn this episode, we discuss how Trump’s first week in office reflects what we already knew. Racism remains one of Trump’s favorite political tactics. He’ll use it to demean and delegitimize political opponents, and to distract from a separate pillar of his administration: massive self-dealing. As always, Florida stands out as a model for how opportunistic politicians can leverage racism, sexism and homophobia to grift the public and turn a profit, all while undermining every institution necessary for meaningful democracy. We also note that Trump’s racist rhetoric is effective, in part, because supposedly liberal institutions – like elite universities – have long failed to offer a compelling counter-narrative
Frequency and Nature of Generic “Design Around” of Brand-Name Patents in the United States
No full textBrand-name drug manufacturers commonly receive numerous patents covering their products to try to block price-lowering competition from generic manufacturers. However, under US law, generic manufacturers can develop clinically interchangeable versions that avoid some brand-name drug patents by creating new formulations that “design around” existing patents or skinny labels that do not include patented methods of use. Since generics nearly always lead brand-name manufacturers to file lawsuits, we sought to characterize the types of generic design around strategies by examining patent infringement litigation from 2000 to 2023. We used Lex Machina to identify cases and manually reviewed them to determine the drug involved and how generics designed around the patent. The cohort consisted of 153 cases involving 114 products. Twenty-eight cases (18%, 95% CI: 13–25) involved changes to how the product was used, including skinny labeling. The other 125 cases (82%, 95% CI: 75–87) involved alterations to the physical product or packaging. The most common physical change was to the formulation of the product (73 cases (48%, 95% CI: 40–56)). Changes to the active ingredient (18 cases (12%, 95% CI: 8–18)) or manufacturing process (15 cases (10%, 95% CI: 6–16)) were also common. Tablets and capsules were overrepresented in our cohort as compared to all approved drugs (the June 2023 Orange Book had 41% tablets and capsules, 95% CI: 39%–42%, P \u3c 0.001), as were extended or delayed-release formulations (making up 23/57 (40% [95% CI: 29–53]) of the tablet or capsule products in our cohort vs. 324/886 in the Orange Book, 15% [95% CI: 14–17], P \u3c 0.001)
Promises, Promises: Understanding Claims Made in Social Robot Consumer Experiences
Full text linkSocial robots are a class of emerging smart consumer electronics devices that promise sophisticated experiences featuring emotive capabilities, artificial intelligence, conversational interaction, and more. With unique risk factors like emotional attachment, little is known on how social robots communicate these promises to consumers and whether they adequately deliver upon them within their overall product experiences prior to and during user interaction.
Animated by a consumer protection lens, this paper systematically investigates manufacturer claims made for four commercially available social robots, evaluating these claims against the provided user experience and consumer reviews. We find that social robots vary widely in the manner and extent to which they communicate intelligent features and the supposed benefits of these features, while consumer perspectives similarly include a wide range of perceptions on robot and AI performance, capabilities, and product frustrations. We conclude by discussing social robots’ unique propensities for consumer risk, and consider implications for regulators, developers, and researchers of social robots
The Lost English Roots of Notice-and-Comment Rulemaking
Full text linkNotice-and-comment rulemaking is arguably the most important procedure in the modern administrative state. Influential accounts even frame it as the 1946 Administrative Procedure Act’s “most important idea.” But its historical origins are obscure. Scholars have variously suggested that it grew out of the constitutionally sanctioned practice of congressional petitioning, organically developed from the practices of nineteenth-century agencies, or was influenced by German conceptions of administrative rulemaking. These histories, however, are incomplete. Using original archival research, this Article demonstrates that notice-and-comment rulemaking was the product of a series of American transplantations of English rulemaking procedures that developed in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In the New Deal Era, influential American reformers tracked important developments in English rulemaking as they grappled with the rapidly changing American legal ecosystem. Yet, as this Article emphasizes, Americans only partially adopted the English procedural framework. While they transplanted the “notice” and “comment” dimensions of English procedure, the Americans ultimately decided not to import a legislative veto, which was a critical part of rulemaking procedures in England. By offering a revisionist account of the origins of notice-and-comment rulemaking, this Article makes two contributions. First, it takes an initial step toward recovering a largely forgotten world of Anglo-American administrative law. Second, it illuminates current debates about the legitimacy of notice-and-comment rulemaking. With many current critiques of notice-and-comment rulemaking centering on the procedure’s supposed lack of democratic accountability, the history this Article traces pushes us to ask whether belatedly transplanting an English-style legislative veto would legitimate the procedure
Stakeholder Views on Lessons Learned for the Antimicrobial Resistance Panel from Previous International Science Panels [version 1]
Full text linkThe United Nations General Assembly called in September 2024 for the establishment of an independent panel for actionable evidence against antimicrobial resistance (IPEA). The task of designing the panel was given to the Quadripartite Joint Secretariat (QJS) on Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) with a delivery timeline of 15 months. To promote stakeholder thought and input around what this panel should look like and how it should work, which could feed into the QJS’s consultation process, we independently commissioned seven papers to examine lessons that could be learned from other high-level scientific panels. We then called a convening of stakeholders that were primed with the background papers. The stakeholder workshop was attended by 85 invitees, comprised of AMR stakeholders with expertise in all One Health sectors. The workshop, held in Lagos, Nigeria in April 2025, drew representation from around the world. Most stakeholder attendees were based in a low- or middle-income country and Africa sent more attendees than any other continent. Stakeholder input around preferences for IPEA’s structure and governance, science and content, and goals and output was collated in small group roundtable discussions, and plenary polling. Summary outputs were shared in plenaries and are documented in this perspective and stakeholder attendees were urged to contribute to the formal consultation, which is managed by the QJS
Limiting Legal Remedies for Medicaid Prioritizes Politics over Access to Care
No full textIn the first U.S. Supreme Court case involving access to abortion after the 2024 election, a 6-3 majority allowed states to block Medicaid patients from choosing their own health care provider. Medina v. Planned Parenthood South Atlantic involved a diabetic Medicaid patient seeking comprehensive health care at Planned Parenthood South Atlantic (PPSA). In 2018, South Carolina blocked PPSA from Medicaid unless it would agree not to provide any abortions. Under federal law, Medicaid already only pays for abortions in cases of rape, incest, or to save the life or health of the patient. But that wasn’t enough for South Carolina policymakers, who in 2022 also voted to severely restrict abortion access.
Medina shows that states are emboldened to limit access to medical care after the Dobbs decision overturned the right to access abortion. At the same time, this decision allows states to defy safeguards for people enrolled in federal spending programs, like Medicaid, reflecting a long campaign to weaken the American safety net. Together, the implications for access to medical care across different states cannot be overstated
Do Academic Researchers Care About Patent Infringement? A PCR Case Study
No full textBecause much cutting-edge academic research involves building on other new technologies, university research often involves making or using a patented invention—an act of patent infringement. The problem of how patents affect academic researchers has attracted considerable attention, but legal scholars are divided on the magnitude of patents’ potential impact. Many scholars fear that patents will entirely hobble academic scientific research, while others find that academic researchers entirely ignore patents and thus that they have little impact. This Article adds a piece of empirical evidence to the debate by studying the example of polymerase chain reaction (PCR) technology. In the early 1990s, PCR was involved in patent litigation. The lawsuit was between corporations, but academics were individually named (but not sued) as patent infringers. I show that academics adjusted their behavior in response to the PCR lawsuit, evidence that, at least in this specific context, university researchers were enormously sensitive to patents, even before the Federal Circuit’s 2002 decision in Madey v. Duke University
SAILS Symposium Launch on International Law Scholarship: What We Write, Where We Publish, and Why it Matters
No full textDespite the centrality of international law scholarship in international law, little work has been done to understand the contours and forces at work in what international law scholars write, where they publish that work, who reads international law scholarship, and scholarship\u27s relationship to the policy world. For international lawyers, identifying answers to these questions and appreciating the impact of our collective work is essential, particularly at a moment of profound political struggle in communities around the world. We have remarkably few data as to what topics, methodologies, and perspectives of international law scholarship journals and publishers print, by whom, in what languages, through what media, and subject to what parameters.
The SAILS project—the Consortium for the Study and Analysis of International Law Scholarship—seeks to fill this gap.Footnote2 SAILS is an effort by a committed group of international law scholar-practitioners to cultivate this sustained attention to international law scholarship, and its interaction with practice. The purpose of the consortium of doctrinal, clinical, and library faculty from around the world is to elucidate answers to these many lingering questions to help us understand our own discipline as well as the forces behind it and that it unleashes. SAILS investigates the relationship among theory, research, and practice to address international law\u27s twenty-first century challenges.
This panel, which also served as a launch event for the first SAILS essay symposium, was charged with some stocktaking and some introspection on these matters. First, the moderators—three student editors from the Georgetown Journal of International Law, the Virginia Journal of International Law, and the Yale Journal of International Law—recognized their recent publication of the symposium. Each of the three journals published three essays as part of the symposium, reflecting the bread of and interest in the SAILS network. Second, the moderators invited five distinguished speakers to reflect on their own scholarship and that of the symposium to explore how leading scholars approach their contributions to the field. They asked the speakers to describe who they consider to be their audience, and whether they write with international law journals in mind as compared to other types of scholarly outlets. They invited the speakers to consider whether the field is oversaturated with publication outlets such that the collective impact of international law scholarship may be diminished. They also pursued distinctions between international law scholarship in the United States and international law scholarship in other parts of the world, among other issues.
At the core of the panel, the speakers were asked to consider whether the current system of international law scholarship relates to the values that the speakers believed international law should reflect, and more squarely: does international law scholarship support international law? The speakers grappled with this important query, and then turned to the fundamental issue of scholarship\u27s impact on international law practice. The speakers likewise engaged in a conversation about how international law practitioners consume and benefit from some forms of scholarship.
This overview sets the scene for the two written contributions that follow from Professor MJ Durkee and Professor Steven Arrigg Koh. Also participating on the panel were Professors Julian Arato, Rebecca Ingber, and Neha Jain. Their discussion opened up several lines of inquiry that future SAILS participants and contributors will benefit from unpacking in future years
In Memoriam: Robert Cooter
No full textRobert Cooter, who died on September 8th, 2025, was a man of the mythical past – rugged, plain spoken, and undaunted by any physical or intellectual challenge
Opening Brief for Plaintiff-Appellant Emery Barron
No full textBy the time Emery Barron sued Pennsylvania Department of Corrections officials in 2021, they had kept him caged for almost six years in solitary confinement without providing a pathway for him to reenter general population. Department of Correction policy calls for officials to review the ongoing need for solitary confinement after an initial ninety-day stint in disciplinary confinement. However, procedural carve outs allow officials to leave people like Barron in solitary indefinitely without an opportunity to be heard by a decisionmaker and without requiring officials to assert any legitimate penological interest behind the confinement.
Under this scheme, which violated both the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments, Barron languished in rodent infested cells where loud music blasted for twelve hours a day and other individuals yelled from their cells to one another constantly, depriving him of rest. Barron was confined to his cell for all but thirty minutes a week for a period of over a year. In any limited time out of his cell, Barron was still caged, shackled, and separated from others. Although Defendants were aware that prolonged solitary confinement can have disastrous consequences for incarcerated individuals’ physical and mental well-being, they continued to confine him in solitary without meaningful process.
Being in prolonged solitary confinement created both a risk of and actual substantial harm to Barron’s mental health, in part because of his unique and deteriorating physical health circumstances, which Defendants knew about. Indeed, Defendant Cronauer prevented Barron from receiving treatment for his sarcoidosis—a condition that led Barron to become legally blind during his solitary confinement.
The district court granted Defendants’ motion for summary judgment, holding that despite leaving him in these conditions for years, Defendants had not violated the Eighth or Fourteenth Amendments. Because these conclusions cannot be squared with the law, this Court should reverse