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Mandatory SARS-CoV-2 Vaccinations in K-12 Schools, Colleges/Universities, and Businesses
Get PDFThe Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently issued guidance that fully vaccinated individuals can safely remove masks and end social distancing in most indoor settings. Educational facilities and businesses are faced with whether and how to differentiate between vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals, including requiring proof of vaccination. Mandatory vaccination has historically served as a tool to reach and sustain high immunization coverage and to prevent transmission in K-12 schools, colleges/universities, and health care facilities. Vaccine mandates could extend to workers and customers in businesses to ensure safer environments. This Viewpoint examines the epidemiologic, public health, and legal considerations for mandatory SARS-CoV-2 vaccinations in each setting
Closing the Health Justice Gap: Access to Justice in Furtherance of Health Equity
Get PDFA massive civil “justice gap” plagues the United States. Every day, low-income Americans—and disproportionately people of color—go without the legal information and representation they need to enforce their rights. This can cost them their homes, jobs, food security, or children. But unmet civil legal needs in housing, employment, and public benefits, for example, are not simply injustices—they are well-documented drivers of poor health, or social determinants of health. Those marginalized by virtue of both race and socioeconomic status are particularly harmed by inaccessibility to justice and also by chronic health conditions and lower life expectancy. When a tenant walks into court alone for an eviction hearing and faces an experienced landlord’s attorney, the tenant is unlikely to prevail, and her eviction can lead to myriad poor health outcomes.
The health justice movement leverages law and policy to advance health equity. In recent years, it has gained tremendous traction, especially due to the COVID-19 pandemic’s spotlight on health disparities. In tandem, the access to justice movement is progressing with the advancement of major federal, state, and local legislation and initiatives. However, the movements have been running on parallel tracks, and their connections have been under-examined. This Article puts the two movements and bodies of scholarship squarely in dialogue with one another.
True access to justice cannot be attained without leveraging law and policy in pursuit of health equity. There can be no justice for those who lack an equal opportunity to achieve health and well-being. This Article offers a new model for access to justice interventions defined by adherence to three core principles of health justice. To further health equity, access to justice strategies must (1) facilitate enforcement of extant laws; (2) elevate the power of affected individuals and communities; and (3) advance structural law and policy reform. Informed by the health justice framework, this model will allow the access to justice movement to realize its ultimate aspiration of social equality and provide for a healthier nation
Restoring the Balance of Copyright: Antitrust, Misuse, and Other Possible Paths to Challenge Inequitable Licensing Practices
Get PDFLibraries’ purposes of ensuring access to and preservation of information have been compromised as licensing increasingly replaces ownership. This article outlines various novel legal strategies that libraries could use to restore copyright’s intended balance, including antitrust, preemption, misuse, and unconscionability
Executive Action to Expand Health Services in the Biden Administration
Get PDFPresident Biden’s health platform is ambitious, encompassing a public insurance option, a reduced age of eligibility for Medicare, and expanded tax credits to subsidize premiums. Yet, with divided government, he may be unable to achieve bold health reforms. However, his administration can substantially improve health care access through executive action. In this Viewpoint, we propose a series of measures that could increase access to insurance coverage and health care that are achievable under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and Medicaid
\u3cem\u3eTesta, Crain\u3c/em\u3e, and the Constitutional Right to Collateral Relief
Get PDFIn Montgomery v. Louisiana, the U.S. Supreme Court held that state prisoners have a constitutional right to relief from continued imprisonment if the prisoner’s conviction or sentence contravenes a new substantive rule of constitutional law. Specifically, the Court held that prisoners with such claims are constitutionally entitled to collateral relief in state court—at least if the state courts are open to other claims for collateral relief on the ground that their continued imprisonment is unlawful. In our article, The Constitutional Right to Collateral Post-Conviction Relief, we argued that, under two lines of Supreme Court decisions interpreting the Supremacy Clause, states are in fact required to open their courts to claims based on new substantive rules of constitutional law even if the states’ courts do not have jurisdiction to entertain collateral claims as a matter of state law. In their recent article, State Jurisdictional Independence and Federal Supremacy, Professors Ann Woolhandler and Michael G. Collins dispute our reliance on these two lines of Supremacy Clause cases. Specifically, they argue that the Constitution, as originally understood and as interpreted throughout the nineteenth century, gives states discretion to control the jurisdiction of their own courts. This response discusses Professors Woolhandler and Collins’s treatment of these two lines of Supremacy Clause cases, and explains why our previous reading of Montgomery holds
BigLaw: Money and Meaning in the Modern Law Firm
Get PDFThe Great Recession intensified large law firms’ emphasis on financial performance, leading to claims that lawyers in these firms were now guided by business rather than professional values. Based on interviews with more than 250 partners in large firms, Mitt Regan and Lisa H. Rohrer suggest that the reality is much more complex. It is true that large firm hiring, promotion, compensation, and termination policies are more influenced by business considerations than ever before and that firms actively recruit profitable partners from other firms to replace those they regard as unproductive. At the same time, law firm partners continue to seek the non-financial rewards of being members of a distinct profession and are sensitive to whether their firms are committed to providing them. This book explores how lawyers are attempting to balance intensifying business demands and professional identity, and how firms play a crucial role in mediating efforts to navigate such tensions
Twenty Years After the Anthrax Terrorist Attacks of 2001: Lessons Learned and Unlearned for the COVID-19 Response
Get PDFThe 20th anniversary of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, resulted in deep national reflection. Less remembered are the events that began to unfold 7 days later as anonymous letters laced with deadly anthrax (Bacillus anthracis) spores began arriving at postal facilities, media companies, and congressional offices. The first death from inhaled anthrax exposure occurred on October 5, with an additional 4 deaths and 17 infections over the ensuing months.The anthrax attacks exposed a health system ill-equipped to respond to acute emergencies. This article explores the lessons learned, and unlearned, from the anthrax attacks, through to Ebola, Zika, Influenza (H1N1) and now COVID-19
National focal points and implementation of the International Health Regulations
Get PDFAs the COVID-19 pandemic continues, the World Health Organization (WHO), the International Health Regulations (IHR) and countries’ adherence to IHR guidance are coming under scrutiny and review. The IHR constitute a legal and governance framework that guides countries in responding to serious disease events while avoiding unnecessary interference with international trade and traffic. The IHR require States Parties to designate or establish national IHR focal points to facilitate information sharing about disease events with WHO, which makes these focal points critical in the effective implementation of the IHR within and between countries. On behalf of the State Party concerned, national focal points are responsible for timely notification to WHO of relevant health events, responding to WHO Secretariat requests for event-related information, and ensuring that messages and advice from WHO are disseminated to the relevant sectors within the country.
A review of the 2013–2016 Ebola virus disease outbreak in West Africa found deficiencies in the functioning of national focal points.4 Published studies have also identified technical and political challenges to the notification of events by focal points to WHO. At the request of WHO, we evaluated the ability of focal points to carry out their IHR functions through 25 in-depth interviews and 105 online quantitative surveys. Here we present summary findings and recommendations emerging from our study; survey methods and results have been previously published
Sovereignty 2.0
Get PDFDigital sovereignty—the exercise of control over the internet—is the ambition of the world’s leaders, from Australia to Zimbabwe, a bulwark against both foreign state and foreign corporation. Governments have resoundingly answered first-generation internet law questions of who if anyone should regulate the internet—they all will. We now confront second generation questions—not whether, but how to regulate the internet. We argue that digital sovereignty is simultaneously a necessary incident of democratic governance and democracy’s dreaded antagonist. As international law scholar Louis Henkin taught us, sovereignty can insulate a government’s worst ills from foreign intrusion. Assertions of digital sovereignty, in particular, are often double-edged—useful both to protect citizens and to control them. Digital sovereignty can magnify the government’s powers by making legible behaviors that were previously invisible to the state. Thus, the same rule can be used to safeguard or repress--a feature that legislators across the Global North and South should anticipate by careful checks and balances
No Future but a Shared Future
Get PDFThe COVID-19 pandemic revealed the fractured and inadequate state of national and global health law and institutions, revealing deeply embedded inequalities. In response to a World Health Assembly resolution proposing a special session to consider the benefits of developing a WHO convention or other international instrument on pandemic preparedness and response, the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law and the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health (FNIH) convened 30 of the world’s leading authorities on global health law, financing, biomedical science, implementation, and emergency response along with leaders from prominent international organizations deeply engaged in responding to the pandemic. This meeting was followed by regional consultations convened in Africa, Latin America-Caribbean, and Southeast Asia. The O’Neill Institute/FNIH also held a consultation with civil society representatives. This article is a concise, edited excerpt of the report of those meetings, outlining the options for such an international instrument