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How Long Before Taking Tylenol While Pregnant Is a Crime?
No full textIn light of new data showing over 400 people have been prosecuted for pregnancy-related crimes, we should be wary of how Trump’s directives may be used against women
Recognizing a Palestinian State as Gaza Still Burns
No full textDuring the eightieth meeting of the United Nations General Assembly, a number of countries—Andora, Australia, Belgium, Canada, France, Luxembourg, Malta, San Marino, the United Kingdom, and Portugal—have either recognized or announced their intention to recognize a Palestinian state. They added their names to some 150 out of over 190 UN member nation-states that have already recognized the Palestinians’ right to a state of their own, although not all agree on the nature of such a state or the extent of its territorial integrity and sovereignty. However, the realization and establishment of such a state remains contingent upon approval of the UN Security Council where the United States has wielded its veto power against it because of its blind support for Israel.
Arab Center Washington DC (ACW) asked its fellows and affiliates to provide their perspectives and opinions on different aspects of this recognition and how it might impact the situation on the ground in Palestine, international law considerations, the Arab world, Israel, and the United States. Their responses are below
Boundary-Setting and Choice-Making with No Adult in the Room: Professional Identity Formation Opportunities for 1Ls in the Transactional Context
No full textLaw schools are now required by the American Bar Association’s Standard 303(b)(3) to provide students with opportunities for professional identity formation throughout their legal education. It is critical that those opportunities be well-balanced and tied to the realities of practice. Yet until recently, we, as 1L lawyering skills professors at Boston University School of Law, only provided those opportunities in the litigation context. Further, our 1L lawyering skills curriculum was, since its inception, almost entirely steeped in litigation. This litigation focus matches neither the career trajectory nor the upper-level experiential opportunities of the majority of our students. In fact, transactional opportunities for second and third year law students have exploded in recent years, with meaningful clinic and externship programs abounding. Further, more of our law students will engage in transactional practice than in any other area. Thus, there was a mismatch that needed to be rectified.
During the 2023-24 academic year, we made a change to our curriculum to address this mismatch. We, along with all other professors in our department, added a six-week, comprehensive transactional simulation into the spring semester of our 1L lawyering skills curriculum. In so doing, we created an opening to add professional development formation opportunities, in the transactional context, to our curriculum. Due to the unique and complex role of transactional attorneys, most notably in-house counsel, it is critical for students entering practice in this area to have these learning opportunities.
As discussed in our prior scholarly work, we do not teach professional identity through long, amorphous discussions on the topic. Rather, we focus on teaching what we have coined as inward-facing and outward-facing character-based skills. Inward-facing character-based skills, which refer to the inner life and identity of a lawyer, include choice-making, boundary-setting, mindfulness, and more. Outward-facing character-based skills, which refer to the way in which lawyers interact with, and are perceived by, other stakeholders in the legal world, include active listening, empathy, and more. By introducing our students to these skills through assignments and exercises, allowing them to practice them within the context of assignments, and providing opportunities for reflection, we force students to “back into” professional identity formation in the transactional context in a structured, non-amorphous manner.
In Part I of this article, we discuss the definitions of professional identity and transactional lawyering to lay a foundation for the remainder of the piece. In Part II, we discuss the unique and complicated nature of transactional lawyering generally, and of the in-house counsel role specifically, and the consequential need for transactional lawyers to possess strong professional identities. We further elaborate on the specific inward- and outward-facing character-based skills needed in transactional practice. Finally, in Part III, we discuss specific examples of transactional attorneys who have faced professional identity crises, the fallout from those crises, and how we already use, or plan to use, those examples in the exercises we created to teach character-based skills in a way that spurs professional identity formation in the transactional context. Through this article, we hope to inspire our colleagues within the lawyering skills universe to expand professional identity formation instruction to the transactional context to best serve students as they march toward practice
Toward a Safer World by 2040: The JAMA Summit Report on Reducing Firearm Violence and Harms
No full textImportance Since the start of the 21st century, more than 800 000 firearm deaths and more than 2 million firearm injuries have occurred in the US. All categories of firearm violence—homicide, suicide, unintentional—result in reverberating harms to individuals, families, communities, and society. The collective responsibility of society is to safeguard the health and safety of its members, including from firearm harms. The JAMA Summit on Firearm Violence convened 60 thought leaders from a wide array of disciplines to chart an innovations roadmap that will lead to substantial reductions in firearm harms by 2040.
Observations The vision for 2040 is a country where firearm violence is substantially reduced and where all people and communities report feeling safe from firearm harms. The vision centers on practical solutions with an understanding of the country’s constitutional protections for firearm ownership. Achieving the 2040 vision will require expansion of proven evidence-based strategies and the development of new, innovative approaches rooted in equity, accountability, and collective responsibility. Discussions centered on projecting a safer world, community violence interventions, technologic innovations, federal and state-level oversight of firearms, ethical considerations, and primordial prevention of firearm violence. The Summit charted a roadmap of 5 essential actions in the next 5 years to achieve this vision: (1) focus on communities and change fundamental structures that lead to firearm harms, (2) harness technological strengths responsibly, (3) change the narrative around firearm harms, (4) take a whole-government and whole-society approach, and (5) spark a research revolution on preventing firearm harms.
Conclusions and Relevance A safer world will require investing in the discovery, implementation, and scaling of solutions that reduce firearm harms and center on the people and communities most affected by firearm violence.
JAMA Summits are part of the mission of JAMA and the JAMA Network to advance some of the most pressing issues in science, medicine, and public health. On March 25-26, 2025, a JAMA Summit on Firearm Violence convened a broad group of 60 thought leaders from medicine, nursing, public health, criminology, sociology, social work, history, engineering, law, industry, political science, community violence interventionists, and public policy. Invitations were extended based on known expertise and referrals to the Summit planners. While the participants did not include firearm rights advocates, it did include members of industry and firearm owners. The goal was to chart an innovations roadmap that will lead to substantial reductions in firearm violence, injuries, and harm in the US by 2040. Sessions included Projecting a Safer World for 2040, Community Violence Interventions, Innovations in Technology to Enhance Safety, Innovations in Federal and State-Level Oversight of Firearms and Ammunition, Importance of Ethical Consideration When Working With all Communities, and Innovations in Primordial Prevention of Firearm Violence. This article presents a summary of these discussions and a vision for achieving a safer future
An Originalist Case for Birthright Citizenship of Unlawful Immigrants\u27 Children: Anti-Gypsy and Anti-Chinese Restrictions as Context
No full textThe Trump administration and other opponents of birthright citizenship for the children of “unlawful immigrants” make the following originalist claim about the Fourteenth Amendment: Even if the clause meant birthright citizenship, it applies today only to “lawful immigrants,” because the category of “unlawful immigrant” or “illegal immigrant” did not exist in the 1860s, when the clause was written and ratified. Opponents also argue that the Fourteenth Amendment’s citizenship clause originally implied a “loyalty” or “allegiance” requirement.
These assertions are historically inaccurate.
To the contrary, the concept of “unlawful immigrants” existed in the 1850s-60s, and Americans ratified birthright citizenship without indicating any doubt that citizenship would extend to their children. The English established such a category for “Gypsy” or “Roma” immigrants, as recorded in major legal treatises with which Americans were familiar. In the congressional debates in 1866, members overwhelmingly agreed that the proposed clause would extend citizenship to “Gypsy” immigrants’ children, regardless of “allegiance” or “unlawful” status.
Next, this paper summarizes recent historical scholarship documenting a political movement against Chinese immigrants in western states and territories – especially California – leading to state restrictions against Chinese immigrants in the 1850s and early 1860s, followed by early federal restrictions in 1862 and debates over broader exclusion.
These early immigration restrictions were mostly a system of deterrent taxes, fees, fines, and licensing requirements targeted at Chinese immigrants, plus criminal penalties on U.S. citizens who engaged in illegal transit. These early immigration restrictions established a concept of “unlawful” immigrants. They also demonstrated the rise of a powerful political movement that sought more direct exclusion, so that the nation had notice of the modern category of unlawful immigrants. In 1866, the congressional debates over the citizenship clause explicitly confirmed that the text would grant citizenship to Chinese immigrants, without raising a concern about this category of immigrants.
If the public thought the citizenship clause might not apply to Chinese immigrants who were plausibly “unlawful , someone would have asked. No one raised that concern. Many Americans portrayed Chinese immigrants as “Coolies,” a racist slur that referred to indentured servitude, loyalty to foreign masters, and only temporary plans to stay in the U.S. Only one Senator raised such objections, and his arguments were entirely rejected. Thus, the up-to-date historical record of original public meaning confirms an original bright-line birthright citizenship rule that applied to the children of unlawful immigrants, regardless of any doubt about “allegiance.
Do Bans on Conversion Therapy Impose a Governmental Orthodoxy About Sex and Gender?
Full text linkIn Part I, this Essay evaluates how orthodoxy arguments featured in Mr. Tingley’s challenge to Washington’s ban on conversion therapy. Part II offers a preliminary analysis of Chiles v. Salazar, 42 which the Court will hear during its 2025-2026 Term. I illustrate how the arguments made against Washington’s law by Chiles and her amici draw from the anti-orthodoxy and marketplace of ideas rhetoric found not only in Justice Thomas’s Tingley dissent and his NIFLA opinion but also in Justice Gorsuch’s majority opinion in the 303 Creative decision.43 Woven together with these speech arguments are appeals to the Court’s protection, in cases like Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, 44 of the ability of conservative Christians, like Brian Tingley and Kelly Chiles, to “live out their faiths in daily life,” even when doing so conflicts with state regulation of licensed health care professionals.45
While the primary focus of this Essay is conversion therapy bans, there are some significant parallels to arguments for and against state bans on gender-affirming care. As Joanna Wuest demonstrates in her analysis of the Skrmetti case for this symposium, casting doubt on medical “expertise” or “consensus” and on the safety and efficacy of gender-affirming care is a prominent tactic in defenses of bans on gender-affirming care.46 By attacking a “gender ideology” that distinguishes “biological sex” from gender, defenders of such bans appeal to biology, “reason,” common sense, or to God’s “created order,” in which one’s “biological sex” is an immutable gift.47 State bans express a purpose of helping minors affirm or become comfortable with their “biological sex.”48 So too, licensed counselors who challenge state bans on conversion therapy appeal to this supposed doubt about gender-affirming care to insist that the state must permit an “uninhibited marketplace of ideas,” in which they can warn against the harms of such treatment. They seek to counsel (willing) minors about how to become comfortable with their God-given sex and, if they experience same-sex attraction, to resist it and embrace heterosexuality.49
As discussed below, this worldview itself is an orthodoxy about traditional gender roles and performances: that sex is binary (male/female) and that a person’s “gender” and gender roles can be no other than that of their biological sex (male/masculine; female/feminine). To use the term “gender” to suggest that one’s sex and gender do not align reflects a dangerous fluidity. As contrasted with a concept like “sex assigned at birth,” which reflects an “egalitarian concern” that the circumstances of one’s birth should not dictate “a person’s life course,” the concept of “biological sex,” used by opponents of transgender rights, furthers “an ideological project of transgender exclusion, not a scientific project of accurate classification.”50 Further, this conservative orthodoxy also entails that normative sexual orientation is heterosexual and the normative site for sexuality is heterosexual marriage open to procreation. All persons should fall on one side or the other of this binary.5
Birthdate Phaseout
Full text linkThis article explores the Nicotine Free Generation (NFG) policy, an emerging endgame strategy for tobacco products that employs a completely novel legal design. Tobacco remains the leading cause of preventable death, killing almost half of its users and imposing $600 billion in social costs each year. We see two basic choices for regulating sales: Prohibition, or a legal age-gate, such as 21 for retail sales. NFG charts a third way. Recognizing the dire harm of tobacco, and the serious consequences of abrupt prohibition, NFG lays the groundwork for a gradual transition to a sales sunset. In place of the 21 age-gate, NFG creates a divide between those who are of age and those who are not when the law passes, using a birthdate to divide the two cohorts. For those of age when the birthdate is set, NFG leaves the existing market in place, and so it delivers no shock to the market or social practices. It focuses instead on preventing the creation of future demand by preventing sales to everyone born after the designated birth date. NFG\u27s gradualism is in stark contrast to Prohibition\u27s comprehensive ban, which removed a product from people who used it. The market for tobacco products exists at the juncture of addiction and adolescence. Both are essential to its continued existence, with adolescence being the spark and addiction the fuel to long-term sales revenue. NFG takes addiction seriously, by exempting from the regulation\u27s impact those people who are currently dependent on the product. NFG has been adopted in seventeen cities and towns in Massachusetts and introduced in five state legislatures, as well as in a number of other countries. This article is the first to evaluate NFG\u27s legal design, explaining the way it finesses the challenges of adolescence and of addiction to provide a hopeful path and to set an example for endgame strategies in other fields
Defending Care
No full textThe article discusses the potential risks faced by young people if the US Supreme Court upholds state bans on gender-affirming care, focusing on Tennessee\u27s complete ban on such care. It highlights the medical risks and harms associated with these bans, arguing that they may violate the equal-protection doctrine of the Constitution by discriminating based on sex. The article emphasizes the importance of preserving gender-affirming care for positive health outcomes and warns against the potential negative consequences of denying access to such treatments
Rebalancing Retirement: How 401(k) Plans Exacerbate Inequality and What We Can Do About It
Full text linkIncentives for individuals to save for retirement currently total 1.5% of US GDP. For that substantial investment, we get a system that actually deepens wealth inequality. The top 10% of earners capture 60% of the associated tax benefits, and employer matching contributions disproportionately favor the highest earners. Although defined contribution plans have long been subject to non-discrimination requirements aimed at ensuring that benefits do not accrue predominantly to the wealthiest participants, these rules have little bite. In an irony, we estimate that the entire 401(k) system would fail the non-discrimination test that every employer offering such a plan is expected to pass. This Article examines the structural causes of these disparities, including growing income inequality, critiques the shortcomings of the non-discrimination rules, and proposes practical reforms to the 401(k) system, alongside a supporting increase in the minimum wage. Our reforms would realign public policy to address the related needs for more economic equality and to provide equitable incentives for retirement savings for the many, not just the few. Ultimately, these reform proposals seek to get the most value for the American public out of the considerable retirement tax expenditures under §401(k)
Considering Telehealth Across State Lines in Uncertain Times
No full textResearchers have shown that physicians’ fear of providing abortion care that runs afoul of these laws is high, even when following the standard of medical care for preserving a patient’s life.5 Yet, despite threats of criminal penalties and the uncertainty and moral distress that has come with confusing wording and variation among state laws, the national number of abortions has not declined after Dobbs. On the contrary, people are still seeking abortions, clinicians are performing abortions, and abortion rates have increased since June 24, 2022.6 Although many possible reasons for the upward trend exist, an important factor is the rise of telehealth as a tool for a wide spectrum of medical care, and for abortion care specifically, in conjunction with new abortion-protective state actions. In this issue of JAMA, Aiken and colleagues7 examine trends in telemedicine use for abortion access