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The Coronavirus Pandemic 1 Year On—What Went Wrong?
Get PDFJanuary 30, 2021, marked the first anniversary of the declaration by the World Health Organization (WHO) of COVID-19 as a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC). Thus far, the world has been no match for SARS-CoV-2, with more than 100 million cases and 2.5 million deaths. The US has been among the world’s poorest performers in addressing the pandemic, with more than 500 000 deaths.
Vaccines offer the best chance of returning to normal, but circulating variants pose a major obstacle, particularly the emergence of variants that are more transmissible and are developing partial resistance to vaccines against SARS-CoV-2. With rampant global circulation, SARS-CoV-2 will have ample opportunity to mutate further.
What went wrong and how can society learn from its greatest failures
How to Conclude a Brief
Get PDFThis essay discusses the conclusion section of an appellate brief and its relationship to problems of argument ordering in multi-issue appeals. The essay first reviews the relevant federal appellate rules--Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 28(a)(9) and Supreme Court Rule 24.1(j)--and explains the author\u27s preference for short, precise, remedy-oriented conclusions, shorn of repetitive argument. It illustrates these points with examples from recently filed appellate briefs. The essay then turns to problems of argument ordering in multi-issue appellate briefs, with an emphasis on ending with a bang not a whimper, while sticking with the short, non-argumentative conclusion. The argument-ordering discussion is also illustrated with examples from real-life briefs
Constitutional Skepticism and Local Facts
Get PDFAre written constitutions evil? In his new book, Constitutional Idolatry and Democracy, Brian Christoper Jones argues that they are. He claims that written constitutions fail to unite societies, degrade democratic engagement, and obstruct necessary constitutional maintenance. This review of his book argues that he is mostly right about the effects of the American Constitution, but that the effects of other constitutions will vary depending upon local facts
Sharing Technology and Vaccine Doses to Address Global Vaccine Inequity and End the COVID-19 Pandemic
Get PDFAlthough COVID-19 cases are declining rapidly in the US, they have reached record highs in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). The nucleus of the pandemic has shifted decidedly to the global south. The South-East Asia region and Latin America now represent 75% of global weekly deaths. On June 22, the Latin America region reported more than 1 million weekly new cases and 30 000 new deaths. Latin America has the highest deaths per capita, where deaths in countries such as Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, and Peru have reached 177 to 564 per hundred thousand. The Africa region has had increasing numbers of cases, with Uganda and Zambia experiencing 10 000 and 17 000 new weekly cases, respectively. Increasingly, the pandemic is where the vaccines are not.
Approximately 1.2% of the global vaccine supply has been received by low-income countries and just 14% by lower-middle-income countries, which account for nearly 40% of the world’s population. In contrast, more than half the US adult population is fully vaccinated, including most health workers and individuals from vulnerable populations. Yet sub-Saharan Africa has doses to cover only an estimated 18% of health workers and older individuals. South Asia has not vaccinated all priority groups, and vaccine supplies would fully vaccinate just 9% of the total population.
Vaccine inequity is driven by insufficient supply and unfair allocation. Powerful high-income countries prepurchased sufficient doses for their entire populations, sometimes twice the number needed. In contrast, COVAX, a global initiative to procure and equitably allocate vaccines, failed to secure enough doses even for its modest goal of covering 20% of lower-income country populations this year. Pfizer, for example, agreed to sell COVAX only 40 million doses, and had delivered just over 1 million by mid-May.
On June 13, the G7 countries pledged to share 1 billion vaccine doses, half of which would come from the US. But this represents only a fraction of the approximately 11 billion doses needed to vaccinate the world. Support for LMICs to enable them to produce vaccines for their populations and significantly more donations are necessary to vastly increase supplies and ensure equity. The US and allied governments could take several steps to overcome barriers to vaccinating the world
The Dreaded Parenthetical
Get PDFThis essay concerns the use -- and, particularly, the overuse and misuse -- of explanatory parentheticals in legal briefs. The essay describes four particular concerns about parentheticals that appear in briefs. Parentheticals shouldn\u27t be used to repeat what you’ve just said or to say something that easily can be taken out of the parenthetical and placed in ordinary text. Generally, parentheticals shouldn\u27t be used to drive the substance of a brief. The ordinary prose should do that work. And if there’s a good reason to use a parenthetical, try to place it at the end of a paragraph where it won’t interrupt the reader’s understanding of your ideas. And, finally, within a parenthetical, prefer ordinary English, so the reader knows immediately what you’re talking about. This essay discusses each of these points in more detail
Law, criminalisation and HIV in the world: have countries that criminalise achieved more or less successful pandemic response?
Get PDFHow do choices in criminal law and rights protections affect disease-fighting efforts? This long-standing question facing governments around the world is acute in the context of pandemics like HIV and COVID-19. The Global AIDS Strategy of the last 5 years sought to prevent mortality and HIV transmission in part through ensuring people living with HIV (PLHIV) knew their HIV status and could suppress the HIV virus through antiretroviral treatment. This article presents a cross-national ecological analysis of the relative success of national AIDS responses under this strategy, where laws were characterised by more or less criminalisation and with varying rights protections. In countries where same-sex sexual acts were criminalised, the portion of PLHIV who knew their HIV status was 11% lower and viral suppression levels 8% lower. Sex work criminalisation was associated with 10% lower knowledge of status and 6% lower viral suppression. Drug use criminalisation was associated with 14% lower levels of both. Criminalising all three of these areas was associated with approximately 18%–24% worse outcomes. Meanwhile, national laws on non-discrimination, independent human rights institutions and genderbased violence were associated with significantly higher knowledge of HIV status and higher viral suppression among PLHIV. Since most countries did not achieve 2020 HIV goals, this ecological evidence suggests that law reform may be an important tool in speeding momentum to halt the pandemic
An International Agreement on Pandemic Prevention and Preparedness
Get PDFDuring late 2021, national delegations are, or have, met at the United Nations General Assembly, the G20, and, most importantly, the Special Session of the World Health Assembly in November to determine whether the world needs a new international agreement to address pandemic prevention, preparedness, and response. The current international agreement, the International Health Regulations (2005), failed to work effectively – SARS-CoV-2 was not detected sufficiently early, relevant information was not shared efficiently, and the global response has not been coordinated. Even the most basic investigations were inadequate such as to discover the origins of SARS-CoV-2. Current proposals focus on the possibility of a soft law international instrument adopted through the World Health Organization, or a binding treaty formed under the United Nations or WHO. One bold possibility is to negotiate a pandemic treaty.
This article analyzes the failures in international agreements and international institutions leading up to the declaration of a global pandemic by WHO on March 11, 2020, and the declaration, nearly a year later, about the need for a new international agreement. It analyzes the possible legal routes that such a new agreement may navigate, and, regardless of form, articulates the most important components of a new international agreement or treaty
The Corruption of Copyright and Returning It to Its Original Purposes
Get PDFSince its inception, Copyright has had two purposes: the private interest of the author in being paid for her work and the public interest served by the dissemination of these works. Within the last two decades, though, some industries have systematically undermined both of those interests, redirecting the benefits of copyright towards themselves instead of the intended beneficiaries. This paper looks at the book, music, and entertainment industries, examines how copyright has been used to suppress the uses it was intended to foster, and explores ongoing and proposed avenues for course correction
Massive Resistance--the Remix: Anti-Black Policymaking and the Poisoning of U.S. Public Education
Get PDFWhat is occurring today in state legislatures and school boards around the country—under the guise of conservative attacks on Critical Race Theory—is merely a remix of the same song of white supremacy in public education. This nation has witnessed the impact of legislative campaigns designed to undermine educational opportunity for Black students before. This article applies a Critical Race Theory approach to analyze the role of law and policy in replicating racial inequality in education. This article asserts that policymakers seeking to preserve white supremacy in education have invoked three primary legislative tactics over the years: (1) denying; (2) defunding; and (3) destroying. Policymakers have passed measures to deny Black children access to quality education, including by closing schools serving them. They have defunded schools serving Black children by diverting or threatening to cut off funds for public schools, including those seeking to integrate or implement inclusive curricula. Finally, legislative measures have been implemented to destroy educational opportunities for Black children, including by decimating the Black teaching workforce and undermining the public education system. This article focuses on two touchpoints in time—the era of Massive Resistance following the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education and 2021’s conservative campaign to prohibit classroom discussions about past and current racial inequality in American. Using these moments, it examines how these three legislative tactics have been—and are currently being—invoked by policymakers to undermine educational opportunities for Black students and maintain white supremacy. This article asserts that such efforts can be met with law and policy designed to expand access to quality educational opportunities for Black children, including through increased federal investment in public education. The future of the nation’s public education system could depend upon staving off these devastating legislative assaults. It will take concerted legislative advocacy and effort to meet the moment and change the same old song to a new tune
The battle for COVID-19 vaccines highlights the need for a new global governance mechanism
Get PDFTo the Editor—Although the rapid development of several vaccines against COVID-19 is an unparalleled scientific accomplishment, one made possible through the collaboration of researchers, industry and funding bodies, the absence of a system that secures equitable access to vaccines has uncovered deep fissures in the global governance systems for health, as noted in a recent Nature Medicine Editorial.
For example, advance purchase agreements for vaccines against COVID-19 have favored affluent countries, allowing them to secure 150–500% of their predicted needs, while many citizens of low-and middle-income countries (LMICs) will remain unvaccinated until 2024.
Additionally, the power of patent-holders and pharmaceutical companies to place conditions on the use of vaccines prices out access for LMICs, and bilateral purchasing deals are rarely disclosed.
By affording priority on the basis of economic or political power, today’s discourse clearly deviates from previous ethical and public-health principles of maximizing lives or life-years saved, and the sentiment that “people’s entitlement to lifesaving resources should not depend on nationality”.
The COVID-19 pandemic has tested wealthy nations’ commitments to Agenda 2030 and to ‘leaving no one behind’ at the same time that it has revealed democratic deficits, institutional rigidity, weak accountability systems, and inadequate policy space that protects health-governance systems from economic goals.
Thus, the as-yet-limited support for the vaccine-sharing and allocation principles of the COVAX initiative may be a sign not only of a moral catastrophe, to quote the director-general of the World Health Organization (WHO), but also of inadequate global accountability mechanisms that exposes the consequences of commercial determinants of health