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Race and Evidence
No full textThis chapter evaluates the role of race in evidence law. It explores ways in which attorneys use race and racism as de facto evidence, judges give White experience preferential admissibility treatment, and courts allow racial injustice to take on evidentiary value at trial. The chapter also considers how racial character evidence is at play in multiple ways in police killings of Black people. The use of racial character evidence is problematic from an anti-discrimination perspective and in light of core concepts of evidence law. With respect to the former, racial character evidence undermines the anti-discrimination principle that people should not be judged on the basis of their race. With respect to the latter, racial character evidence violates crucial commitments in evidence law. Nevertheless, racial character evidence often figures in litigation, unchecked and below the radar
U. S. Government
No full textIn the United States, the three branches of government at the federal and state level—legislative, executive, and judiciary—all produce law. The law takes the form of statutes enacted by the legislature, regulations promulgated by executive agencies, and opinions issued by the judiciary. These three sources of law are deeply interrelated and must be considered together. The United States is also a common law country, which means that the judicial opinions or cases noted above are more than mere interpretations of statutes, but rather constitute the law themselves even when decided in the absence of a statute. Earlier cases with similar facts serve as precedent or legal authority for later cases. The power of precedent derives from the hierarchical and territorial nature of the court system. Only cases from courts higher in the judicial hierarchy in a particular territorial jurisdiction are binding on lower courts in that jurisdiction. All other cases are simply persuasive
Why Judges Can\u27t Save Democracy
Get PDFIn The Specter of Dictatorship,1 David Driesen has written a learned, lively book about the dangers of autocracy, weaving together incisive observations about democratic backsliding in other countries with a piercing critique of American teetering on the brink of executive authoritarianism at home. Driesen draws deeply and faithfully on the extant literature on comparative constitutionalism and democracy studies. He also builds on the work of scholars of the American political system who have documented the largely one-way transfer of power over foreign affairs to the executive branch. Driesen\u27s thesis has a slight originalist cast, holding that the Founders aimed to establish institutions and customs capable of containing a President with \u27despotic\u27 tendencies, but that such mechanisms have since become eroded. 2 That much is not particularly novel, but Driesen\u27s nearly singular focus on the problem of judicial acquiescence helps the book to stand apart from approaches that focus more explicitly on questions of design,3 the production of norms, or perhaps even the cyclical nature of political decline and regeneration.4 The Specter of Dictatorship is timely, written in accessible prose, and takes seriously the possibility of a dictatorship in the United States.
Driesen\u27s choice to make the centerpiece of his book about the jurisprudence addressing presidential power, however, renders the project vulnerable to the criticism that both his diagnosis and his solutions may be a tad court-centric. In this essay, I will probe why Driesen\u27s account might lead him to miss important things that ail American democracy. Ultimately, those factors should lead us to be modest in predicting what beneficial role judges can play in constraining a president. There may be important moments when judicial decrees might be heeded and intervention would do some good, but judges alone cannot save democracy
A Comparative Perspective on Safe Third and First Country of Asylum Policies in the United Kingdom and North America: Legal Norms, Principles and Lessons Learned
Get PDFWealthy refugee-receiving countries across the global north have recently been experimenting with systems that they believe will allow them lawfully to remove or turn back asylum-seekers reaching their borders, without considering their claims for international protection. These include the Trump administration\u27s Asylum Cooperation Agreements (ACAs), the United Kingdom\u27s Nationality and Borders Act, and the recent amendments to Denmark\u27s Aliens Act that will allow asylum-seekers to be transferred to third countries for processing. Although these systems have many important differences, they rest on a shared premise that neither the Refugee Convention nor international, regional or domestic human rights laws prohibit such transfers, as long as they are to a safe first country of asylum, in which the transferees have previously had access to protection, or a safe third country, where they will in theory have access to protection in the future.
This article will first look at the history of safe country rules and procedures in North America before exploring litigation over such rules in the United Kingdom, in order to identify emerging legal norms limiting or prohibiting safe country transfers. We will argue that although there is a clear legal consensus that transfer cannot take place without an individualized assessment of whether it would put an asylum-seeker at risk of refoulement or inhuman and degrading treatment, there is so far little indication of consensus on the need to ensure access to the positive benefits of refugee status, such as housing, education, employment and eventual integration, or on the relevance to the legality of the transfer of social and cultural ties or private and family life
New State Consumer Protections Against Medical Debt
No full textMedical debt represents a substantial financial issue for many US health care consumers, affecting an estimated 19% of households and exceeding all other forms of debt.1 Among those with medical debt, the mean amount owed is 2000.1 Medical debt is more common among historically marginalized communities and in 2017, an estimated 27.9% of households with a Black householder and 21.7% of households with a member of Hispanic origin had outstanding medical bills.1 Oncologists suggested the concept of “financial toxicity” to describe how the cost of medical care can cause financial distress and result in personal bankruptcy.2 The problem of medical debt is not limited to oncology, but rather applies across the medical system, and also impinges health care access, adherence, mental health, and health outcome
The Power of Langston Hughes\u27s \u27Melancholy Citizenship\u27
No full textTo better understand what it’s like to deal with democratic heartbreak, we would do well to pay more attention to artists such as Langston Hughes (1901-67), a committed political radical. Hughes’s poetry speaks to anyone ‘vitally concerned’ about their country’s ‘mores, its democracy, and its well-being’. He gives us an inspiring account of what a political community could look like and what a citizen might do in the face of injustice and neglect. Hughes’s advice is twofold: first, to see the community as it is, forged through material contest. Second, Hughes shows how to practise the ethics of melancholy citizenship. In doing so, he offers a style of democratic politics that taps into people’s pain to lift them to opportunity and more meaningful forms of belonging
Liberal Feminist Jurisprudence: Foundational, Enduring, Adaptive
Get PDFLiberal feminism remains a significant strand of feminist jurisprudence in the U.S. Rooted in 19th and 20th century liberal and feminist political theory and women’s rights advocacy, it emphasizes autonomy, dignity, and equality. Liberal feminism’s focus remains to challenge unjust gender-based restrictions based on assumptions about men’s and women’s proper spheres and roles. Second wave liberal legal feminism, evident in Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s constitutional litigation, challenged pervasive sex-based discrimination in law and social institutions and shifted the Supreme Court’s interpretation of the Equal Protection Clause to a more skeptical review of gender-based classifications. Liberal feminists have developed robust conceptions of autonomy, liberty, privacy, and governmental obligations to promote gender equality, including in the family. Addressing internal feminist critiques, liberal feminism shows the capacity to evolve. Maintaining its focus on disrupting traditionally-conceived gender roles and fostering meaningful autonomy, it adopts more complex, nuanced discourse about sex, gender, and the gender binary and embraces new demands for inclusion and equality
A Pandemic Instrument Can Start Turning Collective Problems into Collective Solutions by Governing the Common-Pool Resource of Antimicrobial Effectiveness
Get PDFTo address the complex challenge of global antimicrobial resistance (AMR), a pandemic treaty should include mechanisms that 1) equitably address the access gap for antimicrobials, diagnostic technologies, and alternative therapies; 2) equitably conserve antimicrobials to sustain effectiveness and access across time and space; 3) equitably finance the investment, discovery, development, and distribution of new technologies; and 4) equitably finance and establish greater upstream and midstream infection prevention measures globally. Biodiversity, climate, and nuclear governance offer lessons for addressing these challenges
James Fleming Discusses Constructing Basic Liberties
No full textHarvard Book Store and the Edmond & Lily Safra Center for Ethics welcome law professor JAMES FLEMING for a discussion of his new book Constructing Basic Liberties: A Defense of Substantive Due Process
Patient access in fourteen high-income countries to new antibacterials approved by the FDA, EMA, PMDA, or Health Canada, 2010-2020
Get PDFIn 2010, the Infectious Diseases Society of America called for 10 new antibiotics by 2020 [1]. This goal was achieved in terms of the number of drug approvals, but actual patient access requires commercial launches in many countries, which itself requires sustainable commercial markets. Prior work has described limited access to new antibacterials in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), in part due to the inability of many to afford these drugs [2]. This study examines patient access for new antibacterials in the G7 and 7 other high-income countries in Europe, to better understand other barriers to patient access to effective antibacterial therapy