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Black Male Exceptionalism? The Problems and Potential of Black Male-Focused Interventions
Get PDF“Black male exceptionalism” is the premise that African American men fare more poorly than any other group in the United States. The discourse of Black male exceptionalism presents African American men as an “endangered species.” Some government agencies, foundations, and activists have responded by creating “Black male achievement” programs. There are almost no corresponding “Black female achievement” programs. Yet empirical data does not support the claim that Black males are burdened more than Black females. Without attention to intersectionality, Black male achievement programs risk obscuring Black females and advancing patriarchal values. Black male achievement programs also risk reinforcing stereotypes that African American males are violent and dangerous. An intersectional approach would create space for Black male focused interventions, but require parity for Black female programs
Why Changing Norms is a More Just Solution to the Failed International Regulatory Regime to Protect Whales than a Trading Program in Whale Shares
Get PDFWhales capture the public\u27s imagination like no other wild animal. They have played a central role in the social construction of modern ecological thought. Indeed, the survival of whales has been a symbol of the environmental movement since the latter quarter of the twentieth century, when the slogan \u27save the whales\u27 was a call to arms to save the planet from humanity\u27s folly. Stories about whale conservation implicate cultural clashes, interspecies morality, and global politics. They offer lessons in how not to manage a natural resource, and simultaneously show how both governmental and individual activism can overcome this mismanagement and give whales a chance at survival. These stories also show that the current international approach for the conservation of whales administered by the International Whaling Commission (IWC) has failed to prevent substantial declines in whale stocks to a point where the survival of some species is uncertain. Major whaling countries like Norway, Russia, Japan, and Iceland have either opted out of this regulatory regime or taken advantage of various loopholes in the International Convention on the Regulation of Whaling (ICRW) allowing the unregulated take of whales for scientific research or subsistence purposes
Civil Rights for the Twenty-First Century: Lessons from Justice Thurgood Marshall\u27s Race-Transcending Jurisprudence
Get PDFThis Essay pays tribute to justice Thurgood Marshall\u27s race-transcending vision of universal human dignity, and explores the importance of building cross-racial alliances to modern civil rights advocacy. justice Marshall\u27s role as a Race Man is evident in much of his jurisprudence, where he fought for years to promote equal opportunity and equal justice. As an advocate for all marginalized people, justice Marshall viewed equal justice as transcending race, and this Essay suggests that the multi-racial coalition that supported President Obama aligns with Marshall\u27s vision. The Essay evaluates the civil rights movement through the lens of Justice Marshall\u27s equality analysis, and calls for a multiracial coalition that transcends identity boundaries
The Wonder-Clause
Get PDFThe Greek debt crisis prompted EU officials to embark on a radical reconstruction of the European sovereign debt markets. Prominently featured in this reconstruction was a set of contract provisions called Collective Action Clauses, or CACs. CACs are supposed to help governments and private creditors to renegotiate unsustainable debt contracts, and obviate the need for EU bailouts. But European sovereign debt contacts were already amenable to restructuring; adding CACs could make it harder. Why, then, promote CACs at all, and cast them in such a central role in the market reform initiative? Using interviews with participants in the initiative and those affected by it, as well as observations at policy and academic meetings, we attempt to shed light on the puzzle and draw implications for the role of contract techniques in market construction
Tobacco Endgame Strategies: Challenges in Ethics and Law
Get PDFThere are complex legal and ethical tradeoffs involved in using intensified regulation to bring smoking prevalence to near-zero levels. The authors explore these tradeoffs through a lens of health justice, paying particular attention to the potential impact on vulnerable populations. The ethical tradeoffs explored include the charge that heavy regulation is paternalistic; the potentially regressive impact of heavily taxing a product consumed disproportionately by the poor; the simple loss of enjoyment to heavily addicted smokers; the health risks posed by, for example, regulating nicotine content in cigarettes—where doing so leads to increased consumption. Turning to legalistic concerns, the authors explore whether endgame strategies constitute a form of ‘regulatory taking’; whether endgame strategies can be squared with global trade/investment laws; whether free speech rights are infringed by aggressive restrictions on the advertisement and marketing of cigarettes
Breaking the Mexican Cartels: A Key Homeland Security Challenge for the Next Four Years
Get PDFAlthough accurate statistics are hard to come by, it is quite possible that 60,000 people have died in the last six-plus years as a result of armed conflict between the Mexican cartels and the Mexican government, amongst cartels fighting each other, and as a result of cartels targeting citizens. And this figure does not even include the nearly 40,000 Americans who die each year from using illegal drugs, much of which is trafficked through the U.S.-Mexican border. The death toll is only part of the story. The rest includes the terrorist tactics used by cartels to intimidate the Mexican people and government, an emerging point of view that the cartels resemble an insurgency, the threat—both feared and realized—of danger to Americans, and the understated policy approach currently employed by the U.S. government. This short article only scratches the surface by identifying the Mexican Situation as a pressing U.S. homeland security issue requiring a renewed strategic effort by the United States over the next four years. Involving a complex web of foreign policy, law enforcement, intelligence, military, border security, drug consumption and public policy considerations, breaking the Mexican cartels is no easy feat. But it is a necessary one to secure our southern border, eliminate the presence of dangerous cartels in our cities, reduce Americans’ contribution to the drug trade and resulting violence, and play our role in restoring the Mexican citizenry to a society free from daily terror
Tackling the Global NCD Crisis: Innovations in Law and Governance
Get PDF35 million people die annually of non-communicable diseases (NCDs), 80% of them in low- and middle-income countries—representing a marked epidemiological transition from infectious to chronic diseases and from richer to poorer countries. The total number of NCDs is projected to rise by 17% over the coming decade, absent significant interventions. The NCD epidemic poses unique governance challenges: the causes are multifactorial, the affected populations diffuse, and effective responses require sustained multi-sectorial cooperation. The authors propose a range of regulatory options available at the domestic level, including stricter food labeling laws, regulation of food advertisements, tax incentives for healthy lifestyle choices, changes to the built environment, and direct regulation of food and drink producers. Given the realities of globalization, such interventions require global cooperation. In 2011, the UN General Assembly held a High-level meeting on NCDs, setting a global target of a 25% reduction in premature mortality from NCDs by 2025. Yet concrete plans and resource commitments for reaching this goal are not yet in the offing, and the window is rapidly closing for achieving these targets through prevention--as opposed to treatment, which is more costly. Innovative global governance for health is urgently needed to engage private industry and civil society in the global response to the NCD crisis
Better Health, But Less Justice: Widening Health Disparities After \u3ci\u3eNational Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius\u3c/i\u3e
Get PDFAt the time it was enacted in 2010, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) was widely applauded by health activists, as it meant that the United States would at last join the overwhelming majority of industrialized countries in providing its population with guaranteed access to affordable health care. Roughly half of the increase in access to health insurance was to come from the expansion of Medicaid eligibility to all U.S. citizens and legal residents with income below 138% of the Federal Poverty Level. However, the Supreme Court’s 2012 ruling in National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius (NFIB) essentially converted the Medicaid expansion into an option for states, and many (fourteen at the time this article went to press, including states with enormously high rates of uninsured residents, such as Texas) have chosen not to participate. Since NFIB, the Congressional Budget Office has reduced its initial estimate of the number of individuals who were to gain coverage under the ACA, from thirty-two to twenty-nine million. But the accuracy of these estimates is subject to question; given the number of states that are opting out, the number could well be far higher. In a turn of events entirely unanticipated when the ACA was enacted, the legacy of the ACA may be that it contributes to widening health disparities rather than the reduction that had been expected by its supporters.
This result is an injustice that cries out for reform. A first step in that direction is ensuring that states are in possession of—and made to acknowledge—accurate information regarding the economic costs of the Medicaid expansion, which are far less than the potentially bankrupting amount that has been portrayed in some corners. A second step is to emphasize the importance of the incorporation of public health in health policy analysis and design; in addition to benefiting individual health, universal access to health services improves public health. Finally, and most critically, strong voices must demand that health policy be implemented such that it achieves justice for the poorest and most vulnerable among us. Without action to rectify the ACA’s unintended consequences, the United States seems likely to consign its poorest and most vulnerable residents to a continued tenuous health status, in which the only options for care are emergency rooms and those institutions that are willing to provide free or nearly free health services
The Law of Armed Conflict, the Use of Military Force, and the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force : Hearing Before the S. Committee on Armed Services, 113th Cong., May 16, 2013 (Statement by Professor Rosa Brooks, Geo. U. L. Center)
Get PDFMr. Chairman, almost twelve years have gone by since the passage of the AUMF on September 14, 2001. The war in Afghanistan–-the longest war in U.S. history--has begun to wind down. But at the same time, a far more shadowy war has quietly accelerated
Realizing the Right to Health Through a Framework Convention on Global Health?
Get PDFThis article introduces a special issue of Health and Human Rights (volume 15, issue 1) that features articles exploring potential elements of and key questions and issues surrounding the Framework Convention on Global Health (FCGH). The FCGH is a proposed global health treaty that would be grounded in the right to health, with the aim of closing domestic and global health inequities. It would set standards and ensure financing for health care and public health services, while also addressing social determinants of health. The FCGH would raise the priority of health in other sectors, ensure effective private sector regulation, and incorporate community engagement and special measures to support the needs and rights of marginalized populations. It would include a robust regime of monitoring and enforcement, one that balances global standards with national ownership and initiative.
Articles in this special issue can be clustered around three topics. First, several address accountability for realizing the right to health, including through a proposed judicial mechanism based on the Latin American experience, utilizing human rights bodies and responding to the interdependent nature of all human rights, clarifying right to health responsibilities of pharmaceutical companies with respect to access to medicines, and addressing traditional medicines. Second, two articles address global health funding and governance. One proposes an umbrella mechanism to develop common standards for all financing mechanisms, and the other proposes right to health-based standards for global health organizations, including addressing for their interactions with other sectors and potential for right to health capacity building. And third, several articles explore the role of the FCGH in social mobilization, including its potential to support HIV/AIDS advocates and several specific ways the treaty could mitigate threats to continue progress of the HIV movement. Another of these articles emphasizes the importance of the process towards an FCGH being one that facilities popular mobilization around the right to health. In addition, an opening editorial to the special issue highlights the value of a treaty with an all-encompassing goal of the right to health and health equity, while a final article offers several risks to the FCGH that must be considered.
Finally, we emphasize that the critical thinking and robust debates about the FCGH and how it can best ensure the right to health must continue. The process of developing the treaty must give voice above all to marginalized populations, who suffer most from the health inequities that the FCGH is intended to redress