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A Yellow Fever Epidemic: A New Global Health Emergency?
Get PDFThe worst yellow fever epidemic in Angola since 1986 is rapidly spreading, including the capital, Luanda. In Angola, the epidemic began in December 2015 and the laboratory-confirmed outbreak was reported to the World Health Organization (WHO) on January 21, 2016. Angola has had 2023 suspected cases and 258 deaths as of April 26, 2016. China, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Kenya also have reported cases arising from infected travelers from Angola. Namibia and Zambia also share a long border with Angola, with considerable population movement between the countries. Similar to other recent epidemics, quick and effective action to stop the spread of yellow fever is the responsibility of the world’s health community
Courts and Sovereigns in the Pari Passu Goldmines
Get PDFU.S. federal court rulings against Argentina since 2012 have turned the pari passu clause in sovereign bond contracts into the most promising debt collection tool against immune governments since the days of gunboat diplomacy. The large literature on pari passu (“equal step” in Latin) assumes that the clause had not been used for enforcement before the late 1990s, and that it was first construed by a Belgian court in a case against Peru in the year 2000. The Belgian decision was criticized for wrongly concluding that pari passu promised ratable payment to all holders of Peru’s external debt. A decade later, the U.S. courts adopted the same interpretation against Argentina, despite interventions by the United States, Brazil, France, Mexico and a slew of experts. The case is now caught up in litigation around the world involving bondholders, trustees, payment and clearing systems.
Debates about the meaning of pari passu have so far been drawn on bond language, contract practices and diplomatic statements, not judicial interpretation. This essay reports on a once-famous lawsuit in Swiss courts, brought by Swedish holders of German government bonds against the Bank for International Settlements as bond trustee in 1935. The Swedish creditors claimed that the BIS violated the pari passu clause when it paid them nominal value, while it indexed payments to other bondholders to the value of gold. Three Swiss courts concluded that such payment discrimination was a breach of the pari passu clause; one even suggested that it could give rise to inter-creditor remedies. However, all three courts held against the bondholders on the grounds that the trustee’s duties in this case were limited to following Germany’s instructions. Subsequent commentators criticized the Swiss courts’ views of the trustee’s role, but did not disagree with its reading of the pari passu clause. The case has featured prominently in 20th century sovereign debt literature, but the pari passu angle appears to have been forgotten
Don\u27t Forget the Standard Deduction
Get PDFThe presidential candidates this campaign season are a diverse group with a wide range of tax policy proposals, but they agree unanimously about one thing: the need to limit itemized deductions. Sadly, however, none of their proposals tackles how limits on itemized deductions would affect the other side of the equation—the standard deduction — which is also very much in need of reform
Planning for Density in a Driverless World
Get PDFAutomobile-centered, low-density development was the defining feature of population growth in the United States for decades. This development pattern displaced wildlife, destroyed habitat, and contributed to a national loss of biodiversity. It also meant, eventually, that commutes and air quality worsened, a sense of local character was lost in many places, and the negative consequences of sprawl impacted an increasing percentage of the population. Those impacts led to something of a shift in the national attitude toward sprawl. More people than ever are fluent in concepts of “smart growth,” “new urbanism,” and “green building,” and with these tools and others, municipalities across the country are working to redevelop a central core, rethink failing transit systems, and promote pockets of density. Changing technology may disrupt this trend. Self-driving vehicles are expected to be widespread within the next several decades. Those vehicles will likely reduce congestion, air pollution, and deaths, and free up huge amounts of productive time in the car. These benefits may also eliminate much of the conventional motivation and rationale behind sprawl reduction. As the time-cost of driving falls, driverless cars have the potential to incentivize human development of land that, by virtue of its distance from settled metropolitan areas, had been previously untouched. From the broader ecological perspective, each human surge into undeveloped land results in habitat destruction and fragmentation, and additional loss of biological diversity. New automobile technology may therefore usher in better air quality, increased safety, and a significant threat to ecosystem health. Our urban and suburban environments have been molded for centuries to the needs of various forms of transportation. The same result appears likely to occur in response to autonomous vehicles, if proactive steps are not taken to address their likely impacts. Currently, little planning is being done to prepare for driverless technology. Actors at multiple levels, however, have tools at their disposal to help ensure that new technology does not come at the expense of the nation’s remaining natural habitats. This Article advocates for a shift in paradigm from policies that are merely anti-car to those that are pro-density, and provides suggestions for both cities and suburban areas for how harness the positive aspects of driverless cars while trying to stem the negative. Planning for density regardless of technology will help to ensure that, for the world of the future, there is actually a world
The Original Fourth Amendment
Get PDFThe meaning of the rights enshrined in the Constitution provide a critical baseline for understanding the limits of government action—perhaps nowhere more so than in regard to the Fourth Amendment. At the time of the Founding, the Fourth Amendment prohibited the government from entering into any home, warehouse, or place of business, against the owner’s wishes, to search for or to seize persons, papers, and effects, absent a specific warrant. The only exception was when law enforcement or citizens were in active pursuit of a felon.12 Outside of that narrow circumstance, the government was prohibited from search and seizure absent approaching a magistrate and, under oath, providing evidence of the suspected offence and particularly describing the place to be searched, and persons or things to be seized.
Scholars’ insistence that the Fourth Amendment does not entail a general protection against government entry into the home does more than just fail to appreciate the context. It contradicts the meaning of the text itself, which carefully lays out the conditions that must be met by the government before it may intrude on one’s person, papers, and effects. Reclaiming this meaning is essential for understanding the scope of the original Fourth Amendment
Collaborative Academic Library Digital Collections Post- Cambridge University Press, HathiTrust and Google Decisions on Fair Use
Get PDFAcademic libraries face numerous stressors as they seek to meet the needs of their users through technological advances while adhering to copyright laws. This paper seeks to explore one specific proposal to balance these interests, the impact of recent decisions on its viability, and the copyright challenges that remain after these decisions
Women\u27s Health and Abortion Rights: Whole Woman\u27s Health v Hellerstedt
Get PDFNearly a quarter century ago, the Supreme Court asked pro-choice and right-to-life advocates “to end their national division by accepting a common mandate rooted in the Constitution.” Nothing of the sort materialized. If anything, the social and political battles intensified, with states enacting 1074 abortion restrictions. The Court has not considered various appeals in the face of an avalanche of legislation, but on June 27, 2016, it struck down 2 onerous restrictions on physicians and clinics offering abortion services.
In Whole Woman’s Health v Hellerstedt, the Court found Texas’s requirements that physicians conducting abortions obtain admitting privileges at local hospitals and that licensed abortion facilities meet the standards of ambulatory surgical centers to be unconstitutional. Stephen Breyer, writing for a 5-3 majority, held that the restrictions failed to offer medical benefits sufficient to justify the burdens on women’s access to abortion.
This article explores the implications of Whole Woman’s Health v Hellerstedt for other abortion restrictions that purportedly safeguard women’s health; for access to abortion in Texas and other parts of the country; and for the health, rights, and dignity of women seeking abortion, particularly those who are disproportionately affected by restrictions and other burdens on access. The article includes a table describing state abortion restrictions across the country, together with pending court cases
\u27Big Food\u27 Is Making America Sick
Get PDF“Big Food”—agribusiness, manufacturers, restaurants, and marketers—is making America sick. The industry produces and aggressively markets foods laden with sugar, salt, saturated fat, and calories. It obfuscates nutritional information to confuse consumers, targeting young people and minorities in particular. It purchases influence at every level of government and fights commonsense regulations by funding “shadow” advocacy groups and sympathetic scientists. Big Food is relentless in litigating against any law that is likely to be effective in curbing unhealthy eating
The Next WHO Director-General’s Highest Priority: a Global Treaty on the Human Right to Health
Get PDFAmidst the many challenges facing the next WHO Director-General, the new WHO head should find WHO’s foremost priority in its most important constitutional pillar: the right to health. The centerpiece of this endeavor should be leadership on the Framework Convention on Global Health (FCGH), the proposed global treaty based in the right to health and aimed at national and global health equity. The treaty would reform global governance for health to enhance accountability, transparency, and civil society participation and protect the right to health in trade, investment, climate change, and other international regimes, while catalyzing governments to institutionalize the right to health at community through to national levels. It would usher in a new era of global health with justice – vast improvements in health outcomes, equitably distributed.
With the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control having served as a proof of concept, the FCGH would be an innovative treaty finding solutions to overcome global health failings in accountability, equality, financing, and inter-sectoral coherence. It would include a global health accountability framework, encompassing, civil society engagement, independent monitoring, and plans for redress, while catalyzing national health accountability strategies, accountability mechanisms, disaggregated data, and community participation. National health equity strategies, pro-poor pathways to universal health coverage, and robust non-discrimination provisions could elevate the voices, priorities, and ultimately power of marginalized populations. The FCGH would include a national and global health financing framework, while reaching beyond the health sector with right to health assessments, public health participation in developing international agreements, and responsibility for all sectors for improving health outcomes. The FCGH would reinvigorate WHO’s global health leadership, breathing new life into its founding principles. It could become the platform for reforming WHO as a rights-based 21st century institution, with badly-needed reforms, such as community participation, new priorities favouring social determinants of health, and a culture of transparency and accountability. The next Director-General should launch a historic effort to align national and global governance for with human rights through the FCGH, bringing the world closer to global health with justice