Global Health Research Center of Central Asia
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Driver for Contactless Payments
Get PDFAs a consumer, my primary experience with cash before the virus was standing in checkout lines observing the sluggish pace of cash transactions in front of me. Like so many things in our lives, the advent of the virus has changed the situation markedly. From the earliest days of infection, it has been far more unsettling to observe cash transactions knowing that the virus persists on paper and metal surfaces for days.
The dynamic that has driven the choices merchants offer in face-to-face retail transactions will change as well. Driven by the private exigencies of the retail environment, the last few decades have witnessed private mechanisms spreading cash-less retail transactions, predominantly card-based. In some countries, policymakers have supported that spread, reacting to the societal costs of a heavy reliance on cash by adopting rules that limit or even aim to eliminate the use of cash.More recently in this country, however, as a few businesses have refused to accept cash, local policymakers have pushed back, reasoning that a refusal to accept cash excludes less affluent purchasers (frequently unbanked) from fair access to commerce. Among others, Massachusetts,New Jersey,New York, Philadelphia, and San Francisco have banned cashless businesses. Indeed, the present Congress has considered two bills that would extend such a ban to the federal level.The likelihood that Amazon’s cashier-less stores (Amazon Go) would refuse cash payments has been a particular stimulant to those bills.
This essay makes two basic points about the effect of the virus on that mix of policy, legal, and institutional arrangements. First, policies fostering the use of cash in retail transactions are much harder to justify in the world of the virus, as it is harder to make those transactions safe for purchasers, cashiers, or the populace in general. Second, the slow pace of the shift from card-based payments from swipe to chip, with the slower drift to phone-based payments, is more worrisome now, where fully contactless payments are safer for all involved than authentication either by swipe or chip
To AB or Not to AB?: Dispute Settlement in WTO Reform
Get PDFRecent debates on the operation of the WTO’s dispute resolution mechanism have focused primarily on the Appellate Body (AB). We argue that this neglects the first-order issue confronting the rules-based trading system: sustaining the principle of de-politicized conflict resolution that is reflected in the negative consensus rule for adoption of dispute settlement findings. Improving the quality of the work of panels by appointing a roster of full-time professional adjudicators, complemented by reforms to WTO working practices that reduce incentives to resort to formal dispute settlement, can resolve the main issues that led to the AB crisis. Effective, coherent, and consistent WTO dispute resolution need not include an AB. An appropriately redesigned single-stage process can serve just as well, if not better
The Economics of Leasing
Get PDFLeasing may be the most important legal institution that has received virtually no systematic scholarly attention. Real property leasing is familiar in the context of residential tenancies. But it is also widely used in commercial contexts, including office buildings and shopping centers. Personal property leasing, which was rarely encountered before World War II, has more recently exploded on a world-wide basis, with everything from autos to farm equipment to airplanes being leased. This article seeks to develop a composite picture of the defining features of leases and why leasing is such a widespread and highly successful economic institution. The reasons fall under three general headings. (i) Leasing is an attractive method of financing the acquisition of assets, especially for persons who have limited capital or would like to conserve their capital and cash flows for other purposes. (ii) Leasing is a device for minimizing the risks that either lessees or lessors associate with owning assets; although leasing also creates risks, various lease modifications have been developed to manage these derivative risks. (iii) By dividing the rights to an asset between lessor and lessee, leasing permits the parties to specialize in different functions and to solve various impediments to contracting that would be difficult to overcome among separate owners. Understanding the economic advantages of leasing is an important first step in considering possible legal reforms of leasing
For Coöperation and the Abolition of Capital, Or, How to Get Beyond Our Extractive Punitive Society and Achieve a Just Society
No full textIn hindsight, the term capitalism was always a misnomer, coined paradoxically by its critics in the nineteenth century. The term misleadingly suggests that the existence of capital produces a unique economic system or that capital itself is governed by economic laws. But that\u27s an illusion. In truth, we do not live today in a system in which capital dictates our economic circumstances. Instead, we live under the tyranny of what I would call tournament dirigisme : a type of state-directed gladiator sport where our political leaders bestow spoils on the wealthy, privileged elite.
We need to displace this tournament dirigisme with a new legal, economic, and political paradigm that favors coöperation and collaboration between those who create, invent, produce, work, and serve others. Rather than corporations that extract capital for the few shareholders and managers, we need coöperatives, mutuals, and nonprofits that distribute the wealth they create widely to everyone in the shared enterprise.
The COVID-19 pandemic and economic crash must not prevent us from working together to address the other crisis – climate change – still looming on the horizon. On the contrary, these times call for a legal, political, and economic revolution to ring in a new epoch of coöperationism. This will demand political will. It will not come from our political leaders, so beholden to corporate contributions and capital. It will have to come from us all united
BU S1E05
No full textLine art image of Leo E. Strine Jr., Ira M. Millstein Distinguished Senior Fellow at Columbia Law School\u27s Ira M. Millstein Center for Global Markets and Corporate Ownership.https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/beyond_unprecedented_podcast/1014/thumbnail.jp
BU S1E04
No full textLine art image of Timothy Wu, Julius Silver Professor of Law, Science and Technology at Columbia Law School.https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/beyond_unprecedented_podcast/1011/thumbnail.jp
Letter to Council Members Regarding Council Draft 4
Get PDFWe understand that the ALI Council will consider Council Draft 4 (CD4) of the Restatement of the Law, Copyright (Copyright Restatement) project at its meeting on January 16-17, 2020. We appreciate the opportunity to provide comments on CD4. We hope that you will give careful consideration to these comments and send CD4 back to the Reporters to address the problems we describe below
Compilation of Recommendations to Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions in New York State
Get PDFThe Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA) was passed by both houses of the New York State legislature and signed into law by Governor Andrew Cuomo in June 2019. It took effect on January 1, 2020. It requires total statewide greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to be 40% below 1990 levels in 2030 and 85% below 1990 levels in 2050, with an aspirational goal of a 100% reduction in 2050. It is one of the strongest climate change laws in the world, and people everywhere are watching its implementation for models of what can be done elsewhere.
The CLCPA establishes a Climate Action Council of 22 members (12 of whom are the heads of state agencies) to devise a “scoping plan” for how the law will be implemented. It will form several advisory committees, and will work with special advisory groups on environmental justice and on “just transition.” A draft plan is due in January 2022. After hearings and other public consultation, a final plan is due in January 2023. By January 2024, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation is required to promulgate regulations “to ensure compliance with the statewide emission reduction limits.” This process of requiring an agency to devise a scoping plan for implementation is modeled after California’s Global Warming Solutions Act, AB32
Legal Tools for Achieving Low Traffic Zones (LTZs): LEZ, ULEZ & Congestion Pricing in the U.S. Law Context
Get PDFCities around the world are looking to reduce greenhouse gas and other emissions from vehicles through the use of low emission zones and congestion pricing. These strategies have been employed to great success abroad, including in central London, where both congestion pricing and fees and restrictions on higheremitting vehicles are in effect. In the U.S. law context, these policy approaches give rise to significant legal issues that have not been well-explored. This Article proposes that these policy approaches be called “Low Traffic Zones” (LTZs), and surveys those legal considerations. The areas of law explored are: (1) potential for preemption of LTZ policies by U.S. federal laws; (2) U.S. constitutional considerations; (3) federal tolling authority; (4) state enabling laws; (5) laws to protect individual privacy and data security; and (6) other claims that may be raised in litigation. It concludes by outlining guidance U.S. lawmakers and policymakers may take into account in drafting LTZ policies to comport with U.S. and state law
When Politics Trump Science: The Erosion of Science-Based Regulation
Get PDFScience is science and facts are facts. My administration will ensure that there will be total [scientific] transparency and accountability without political bias.” That was the promise made in September 2016 by then-candidate Donald Trump when asked how he would protect federal scientists from political interference in their work. Since taking office, however, President Trump has led a concerted effort to undermine federal scientific research, particularly in areas where research findings contradict his own views or undermine the basis of his deregulatory agenda.
That effort is documented in the Silencing Science Tracker, an online database that records anti-science actions taken by the federal government. Drawing on three-and-a-half years of tracker data, this Comment analyzesthe Trump Administration’s evolving war on science and shows how it is changing the way federal agencies perform, use, and communicate scientific research. We focus primarily on climate science, which has been the subject of particularly fierce attacks under President Trump, though he has also targeted other areas. His actions could have long-lasting consequences, damaging the role of science in regulation for years to come