3320 research outputs found
Sort by
America\u27s Health First : A Misnomer
Get PDFOn July 7, Tom Price, MD, secretary of the Department of Health and Human Service s (HHS), announced the appointment of Brenda Fitzgerald, MD, as the 17th director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). To this position, Dr Fitzgerald brings her experience as Commissioner of the Georgia Department of Public Health, a role in which she championed infant health and survival, tobacco control, and obesity prevention. Other significant choices of individuals to head agencies that affect the public’s health include the recent nomination of Jerome Adams, MD, MPH, as surgeon general, and reappointment of Francis Collins, MD, PhD, as National Institutes of Health director.
While such choices appear to bode well for public health, how well these agencies and others will be funded for programs affecting public health both inside and outside the United States matters enormously. What has the Trump administration signaled about its intentions in its proposed budget
Why the Ryan-Brady Tax Proposal Will Be Found to Be Inconsistent with WTO Law
Get PDFThe tax-reform plan released by Speaker of the House Paul Ryan and House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady is intended to improve our corporate tax system by, among other things, taxing companies based on where they sell their goods, not where the business is located or where the goods are made. To do so, the ambitious reforms would set up a system in which corporations pay taxes on their U.S. sales revenues, with deductions permitted for the cost of input materials and labor, along with exclusions for the value of export sales.
Although policymakers rarely need to take the World Trade Organization (WTO) or its rules into account when devising tax policy, the proposal outlined in the Republican Blueprint for a cash flow tax does have significant WTO implications. While many proponents have said that plan is fully consistent with our WTO obligations, or at least that the WTO-consistency of the plan is “ambiguous,” that contention rests on a blurring of the distinction between taxes imposed on imports with rebates or exclusions for exports, combining the two under the overall notion of “border adjusted taxes” or BTAs. As this Issue Brief explains, as currently described, the Ryan-Brady taxes on imports are a clear violation of WTO rules while the rebates or exclusion from taxes for exports presents a murkier picture.
The speed with which WTO disciplines can be imposed also vary between imports and exports. Claims that the cash-flow tax’s application to imports violates the WTO would follow the traditional WTO dispute settlement rules, potentially taking two or more years for a decision on whether a violation has occurred, with significant additional time added on for compliance and possible further litigation over whether any changes the US might make in response to an adverse ruling bring about actual compliance. Disputes claiming that the exemption for exports from the sales revenue base violates the WTO rules on subsidies would, on the other hand, potentially be subject to the WTO’s expedited dispute process for claims involving prohibited export subsidies or relatively fast action by our trading partners to impose countervailing duties on US exports that cause injury to their domestic producers. As a result, any U.S. violations would likely generate several opportunities for relatively expeditious reprisals by other WTO member states
Cultures of Compliance
Get PDFThere has been a cultural turn in discussion and debates about the promise of corporate compliance efforts. These efforts are occurring quickly, without great confidence in their efficacy. Thus the interest in culture. This article explores what a culture of compliance means and why it is so hard to achieve. The dark side that enables non-compliance in organizations is powerful and often hidden from view, working via scripts that rationalize or normalize, denigrations of regulation, and celebrations of beliefs and attitudes that bring with them compliance dangers. The article addresses how both culture and compliance should be judged by those wishing for better corporate behavior
Law as a Fixture between the One Health Interfaces of Emerging Diseases
No full textA One Health approach calls for multisectoral and multi-institutional cooperation and partnership across the interfaces of human, animal and ecosystem health risks. Without strong governance, these interfaces risk detaching, leaving gaps in capacities to prevent, detect and respond to emerging and persisting public health threats. As a crucial component of governance, law can act as the fixture between interfaces. We examine some of the many forms and foci of law and propose that the process of law-making, implementation and evaluation can provide a benefit for strengthening law as a fixture between One Health interfaces. To demonstrate this, we discuss three current examples of international legal instruments for emerging infectious diseases: the International Health Regulations, the Pandemic Influenza Preparedness Framework and the Global Action Plan on Antimicrobial Resistance
The Constitutional Right to Collateral Post-Conviction Review
Get PDFFor years, the prevailing academic and judicial wisdom has held that, between them, Congress and the Supreme Court have rendered post- conviction habeas review all but a dead letter. But in its January 2016 decision in Montgomery v. Louisiana, the Supreme Court may have dramatically upended that understanding in holding—for the first time—that there are at least some cases in which the Constitution itself creates a right to collateral post-conviction review, i.e., cases in which a prisoner seeks to enforce retroactively a “new rule” of substantive constitutional law under the familiar doctrine of Teague v. Lane.
On the surface, Montgomery held only that state courts are required to employ Teague’s retroactivity framework when and if they adjudicate habeas petitions relying on new substantive rules of federal law. But, in reaching that conclusion, the Court clarified that Teague’s holding that new substantive rules of federal law are retroactively applicable on collateral review was grounded in the Constitution, rather than common law or the federal habeas statute— a holding that, as we explain, was both novel and important.
We next consider which courts—state or federal—have the obligation to provide the constitutionally required collateral review recognized in Montgomery. Either way, the implications of Montgomery are far- reaching. To conclude that the state courts must provide collateral review would run counter to the conventional wisdom that states are under no obligation to permit collateral attacks on convictions that have become final. On the other hand, the conclusion that federal courts must have jurisdiction to grant such collateral review is in significant tension with the Madisonian Compromise. In our view, the Supreme Court’s Supremacy Clause jurisprudence establishes that the constitutionally required collateral remedy recognized in Montgomery must be available, in the first instance, in state courts, even if the state has not chosen to provide collateral post-conviction relief for comparable state law claims. The state courts also have the constitutional power and duty to afford such relief to federal prisoners, but Congress has the power to withdraw such cases from the state courts by giving the federal courts exclusive jurisdiction over such claims (and should be presumed to have done so). Thus, we conclude that the state courts are constitutionally obligated to afford collateral post-conviction review to state prisoners in the circumstances covered by Montgomery, and the federal courts should be presumed to have the statutory obligation to afford such review to federal prisoners.
Finally, we examine some of the important questions raised by the conclusion that state and federal prisoners have a constitutional right to collateral relief. Although the questions are complex, and not all of the answers are clear, the uncertainties surrounding some of the contours of the remedy recognized in Montgomery should not obscure the fact that this seemingly innocuous holding about the Supreme Court’s appellate jurisdiction actually upends a half-century’s worth of doctrinal and theoretical analyses of collateral post-conviction review, a result that should have a significant impact on both commentators’ and courts’ understanding of the relationship between collateral post-conviction remedies and the Constitution
Advancing the Right to Health—The Vital Role of Law
No full textSoda taxes to promote healthy behavior; labelling to discourage alcohol abuse; litigation to demand access to health services. Drawing on the World Health Organization’s report, Advancing the Right to Health: the vital role of law, this editorial highlights the many ways in which law can support states in realizing the right to health. Law builds public health infrastructure, and can create conditions to promote the public’s health and safety, including establishing health centered tax policy, altering the informational environment to ensure empowered consumers, developing spaces that enable communities to live a healthy life, and safeguarding rights through direct legislation. Where necessary, legal systems can indirectly ensure the right to health through targeted litigation and complaints. Law can also prove a barrier to health where it entrenches discrimination or stigmatization. Dismantling legal barriers to health can be just as important as enacting evidence-based interventions. While law is a powerful tool, it is most effective in advancing population health as part of an integrated, all-of-government strategy. Furthermore, law requires effective governance, the rule of law, sufficient regulatory capacity, and continuous monitoring and evaluation. Through pursuing greater co-operation and knowledge sharing, law can prove a formidable tool in ensuring the right to health and in achieving the sustainable development goals. We argue for a renewed focus on law to support the mission of public health, strengthen accountability, and leverage results
Virtue as the End of Law: An Aretaic Theory of Legislation
Get PDFThis paper sketches an aretaic theory of legislation. Such a theory posits the flourishing of humans and their communities as the end or telos of law. The paper argues for a Neo-Aristotelian conception of human flourishing as a life of social and rational activities that express the human excellences or virtues. Because a flourishing life requires the acquisition, maintenance, and expression of the virtues, their promotion is the characteristic goal of legislation. The law can promote the virtues in a variety of ways, including: (1) by fostering peace and prosperity, (2) by encouraging stable and nurturing families, and (3) by creating opportunities for the meaningful work and play. Taking virtue as the end of law does not entail that legislation must require virtuous action and prohibit behavior that expresses human defects or vices. Instead, the law might pursue indirect strategies that encourage (but do not require) virtue and discourage (but do not prohibit) vice
Integration as a Means of Restoring Democracy and Opportunity
Get PDFThis paper was originally presented at A Shared Future: Fostering Communities of Inclusion in an Era of Inequality, a national symposium hosted by the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies in April 2017. The symposium examined how patterns of residential segregation by income and race in the United States are changing and the consequences of residential segregation for individuals and society, and sought to identify the most promising strategies for fostering more inclusive communities in the years to come.
This paper was presented as part of Panel 1 at the symposium, entitled “Defining Objectives and the Rationale for Action.
Toward a Science of Torture?
Get PDFDoes torture “work?” Proponents, including President Trump and the architects of CIA “Enhanced Interrogation” say it does, by breaking terrorists\u27 resistance to revealing information that saves lives. Torture\u27s foes typically dismiss this claim as false to the point of fraud--fortuitous coincidence with torture\u27s unlawfulness. Neither view, I argue herein, rests firmly on evidence. Rival anecdotes, not data, have, so far, driven this debate. And a scientific answer is beyond our reach, since: (1) rigorous comparison between interrogation methods that do and don\u27t involve torture isn\u27t possible, and (2) studies of this sort would be transparently unethical. This hasn\u27t stopped the CIA from pursuing a research-based answer. Recently released documents, reviewed here for the first time, reveal that the Agency looked to science for a resolution and raise the explosive possibility that the CIA conducted a clandestine program of human-subjects research on the risks and efficacy of torture. What can be said, based on the available science, is that there\u27s no evidence that torture is more effective than lawful interrogation and some reason to suspect that interviewing strategies grounded in state-of-the-art understandings of persuasion and cognition work best of all. What can also be said is that: (1) America\u27s post-9/11 torture program wrecked lives, and (2) torture has wide appeal, as symbolic riposte to the powerlessness many feel in the face of vertiginous economic and cultural change