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Is the United States Prepared for Ebola?
Get PDFThe West African Ebola epidemic is a humanitarian crisis and a threat to international security. It is not surprising that isolated cases have emerged in Europe and North America, but a large outbreak in the United States, with its advanced health system, is unlikely. Yet the handling of the first domestically diagnosed Ebola case in Dallas, Texas, raised concerns about national public health preparedness. What were the critical health system vulnerabilities revealed in Dallas, and how can the country respond more effectively to novel diseases in a globalized world
Advocates, Federal Agencies, and the Education of Children with Disabilities
Get PDFThe aim of this essay, prepared for a symposium on dispute resolution in special education held at The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law in February 2014, is to highlight ways that advocates for children with disabilities can use federal agencies to improve the implementation and enforcement of federal laws protecting children with disabilities in schools—that is, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, and the Americans with Disabilities Act as it relates to schools.
One can spend a lot of time engaging with the contemporary public conversation about the law surrounding the education of children with disabilities without seeing much about the relevant federal agencies: the Office of Special Education Programs in the Department of Education; the Office for Civil Rights in the Department of Education; and the Civil Rights Division in the Department of Justice. For example, a great deal of the scholarly and advocacy discussion about the enforcement regime for special education law focuses instead on the role of private parties in enforcing the law. This vision of the relevant enforcement universe can be misleading for advocates who are not currently taking advantage of what the federal agencies can provide. It can also be misleading for students planning to practice in this arena; the leading casebooks, like the trend in the scholarship and advocacy material, say very little about engagement with federal agencies.
This essay therefore takes a different tack. Instead of focusing on private enforcement, Congress, the courts, or the limitations of federal agencies, I want to capitalize on what is already possible within the agencies and explain how and why to take these possibilities seriously. The goal of the essay is to provide a guide to agency structure and jurisdiction that will help advocates understand more deeply how to approach each office in any given context. More generally, this essay is part of a broader agenda to conceptualize education law as a regulatory field, in order to expand the conventional understanding of both the field of education law and the workings of the regulatory state more generally
Duck-Rabbits and Drones: Legal Indeterminacy in the War on Terror
Get PDFIn the days and weeks immediately following the 9/11 attacks, “the law” offered little to lawyers or policy-makers looking for guidance. Indeed, for many the events of 9/11 became the legal equivalent of a Rorschach test: depending on the observer, the 9/11 attacks were variously construed as criminal acts, acts of war, or something in between, thus fitting into (or triggering) any of several radically different legal regimes.
Divergent interpretations of the law are common, of course. Legal rules often contain an element of ambiguity, and the “facts” to which law must be applied can frequently be construed in multiple ways. But in the wake of 9/11, lawyers and policy-makers faced an even more profound problem: different conceptualizations of what happened on 9/11 didn’t simply reflect or suggest a different interpretation of legal rules, but actually triggered radically different legal regimes. The “facts” could be described, with equal plausibility and honesty, in substantially different ways. As a result, there was no clear “legal” basis for choosing one legal regime over another, and law became not merely ambiguous, but effectively indeterminate
Disruptive Technologies and the Law
Get PDFIn the past two decades, the concept of disruptive technology has gone from theory, to buzz word, to the captivation of the popular imagination. Disruptive innovation goes beyond improving existing products; it seeks to tap unforeseen markets, create products to solve problems consumers don\u27t know that they have, and ultimately to change the face of industry. We are all the beneficiaries of disruption. Every smartphone carrying, MP3-listening, Netflix-watching consumer is taking advantage of technologies once unimaginable, but that now feel indispensable. Silicon Valley\u27s pursuit of disruption will continue to benefit and delight a world of consumers. But where disruption may once have been the secondary result of innovation, disruption has become a goal in and of itself. Today, I want to urge a cautionary note: The tech community\u27s solipsistic focus on disruption, to the exclusion of human and legal values, can be problematic. We can see these potential problems in the development of three areas: mass surveillance, 3D printing, and driverless cars
Originalism at Home and Abroad
Get PDFOriginalism is typically thought to be a uniquely American preoccupation. This Article challenges the conventional view that originalism enjoys little support outside the United States by showing that the story of originalism-both at home and abroad-is more nuanced than has been appreciated. This Article examines how originalism has developed in two unexplored contexts-Malaysia and Singapore-to show that originalism not only thrives outside the United States but that it takes on distinct variations reflecting the cultural, historical, and political conditions of individual nations. The Article argues that whether originalism thrives, and the form that it takes, is context driven and culturally contingent.
The account that this Article provides of how originalism is practiced in the world beyond the United States tests familiar assumptions in the mainstream debates over originalism. First, it shows that existing accounts of the origins of originalism are incomplete and questions the claim that originalism inevitably follows from judicial interpretation of a written constitution. Second, the experiences of countries elsewhere demonstrate that originalism is not necessarily- or even typically-associated with constraining judges. Originalistsf requently claim that originalism is uniquely capable of limiting judicial discretion. Yet judges in various contexts employ originalism in support of expansive constitutional interpretation and to empower courts against the political branches. Third, this analysis sheds light on why certain nations-the United States included-are attracted to particular originalist approaches, such as original intent or original meaning
“I’m a Lawyer, Not an Ethnographer, Jim”: Textual Poachers and Fair Use
Get PDFThis short article, written for a festschrift for Henry Jenkins, discusses the influence of his work on media fandom in legal scholarship and advocacy around fair use
Intellectual Diversity in the Legal Academy
Get PDFElite law faculties are overwhelmingly liberal. Jim Lindgren has proven the point empirically. The author adds his impressions from Georgetown Law School to reinforce the point. Georgetown Law School is a faculty of 120, and, to the author\u27s knowledge, the number of professors who are openly conservative, or libertarian, or Republican or, in any sense, to the right of the American center, is three—three out of 120. There are more conservatives on the nine-member United States Supreme Court than there are on this 120-member faculty. Moreover, the ideological median of the other 117 seems to lie not just left of center, but closer to the left edge of the Democratic Party. Many are further left than that.
But at least there are three. And the good news is that this number has tripled in the last decade. The bad news, though, is that, at Georgetown, the consensus seems to be that three is plenty—and perhaps even one or two too many
We the People: Each and Every One
Get PDFIn his book series, We the People, Bruce Ackerman offers a rich description of how constitutional law comes to be changed by social movements. He also makes some normative claims about “popular sovereignty,” “popular consent,” “higher law,” and “higher-lawmaking.” In this essay, I examine these claims and find them to be both highly under-theorized and deeply problematic. Ackerman’s own presentation of what he considers to be an informal process of constitutional amendment illustrates the importance of formality in protecting the rights retained by the people. And he assumes a collective conception of popular sovereignty without considering the serious normative problems raised by majority and supermajority rule. Rule by a majority or supermajority is not the answer to the problem of constitutional legitimacy; it is the problem that requires a normative solution. As an alternative to collective or majoritarian conceptions of popular sovereignty, I identify an individualist conception that yields fundamentally different conclusions about the purpose of a written constitution, including the importance of written amendments in safeguarding the rights retained by a sovereign people, each and every one. Finally, in a Postscript I respond to Professor Ackerman’s reply to this essay
More than a Feeling: Emotion and the First Amendment
Get PDFFirst Amendment law has generally been leery of government attempts to change the marketplace of emotions—except when it has not been. Scientific evidence indicates that emotion and rationality are not opposed, as the law often presumes, but rather inextricably linked. There is no judgment, whether moral or otherwise, without emotions to guide our choices. Judicial failure to grapple with this reality has produced some puzzles in the law.
Part I of this Symposium contribution examines the intersection of private law, the First Amendment, and attempts to manipulate and control emotions. Only false factual statements can defame, not mere derogatory opinions. Yet trademark law allows exactly the kind of control over nonfactual, emotional appeals that modern defamation law precludes. These two bodies of law thus stand in contrast, one constrained by the First Amendment to cover only facts and the other allowed to reach much further into the dark heart of emotional manipulation.
Part II turns to compelled speech, and again finds two contrasting regulations united by their emotional mechanisms, but divided by their constitutional fates. Courts have struck down mandatory smoking warnings in visual form, but have approved mandatory abortion disclosures and ultrasound requirements that operate in the same emotional register. Regardless of whether the regulation involves a direct government mandate or private parties claiming competing rights to influence the audience’s emotional state, then, current First Amendment law doesn’t have a consistent account of the proper role of emotion in speech regulation.
Part III suggests that the contradictions of current doctrine could be ameliorated by less distrust of emotion and more acceptance that where information is being conveyed, emotion will regularly follow. Our focus then should not be on whether deployment of emotion is “manipulative,” but whether it is part of a discriminatory or factually misleading regulation. When the government can otherwise constitutionally mandate disclosure, the fact that these disclosures have emotional resonance is not an independent constitutional barrier
The Difference Prevention Makes: Regulating Preventive Justice
Get PDFSince the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the United States and many other countries have adopted a ‘‘paradigm of prevention,’’ employing a range of measures in an attempt to prevent future terrorist attacks. This includes the use of pre textual charges for preventive detention, the expansion of criminal liability to prohibit conduct that precedes terrorism, and expansion of surveillance at home and abroad. Politicians and government officials often speak of prevention as if it is an unqualified good. Everyone wants to prevent the next terrorist attack, after all. And many preventive initiatives, especially where they are not coercive and do not intrude on liberty, are welcome. But the move to a ‘‘preventive justice’’ model also creates potential for significant abuse. These risks suggest that we should be cautious about adopting preventive approaches, especially where they involve coercion. In part I of this essay, I articulate why preventive coercion is a problem. I respond, in particular, to a recent essay by Fred Schauer, ‘‘The Ubiquity of Prevention,’’ which argued that ‘‘it is a mistake to assume that preventive justice is a problem in itself [because] preventive justice is all around us, and it is hard to imagine a functioning society that could avoid it.’’ In part II, I outline the formal constitutional and other constraints that are implicated by preventive measures in the United States, and I demonstrate that these constraints play a relatively small role in the actual operation of preventive measures. In part III, I maintain that informal constraints may actually play a more significant operational role in checking the abuses of prevention