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The Problems With Decision-Making
Get PDFOur society faces major challenges in numerous areas, including climate change and healthcare. Addressing these problems with technological advances are of great importance. Increasingly, however, consumers are resisting or rejecting such technological interventions based on inappropriate assignment of risk. In other words, the consumer assessment of risk is not in line with evidence-based assessment of risk. This article focuses on two controversial areas, vaccines and genetically engineered food, as examples in which consumers assign a high risk despite an evidence-based assessment of low risk. This article describes how empirically tested decision-making theories explain why consumers inappropriately assign risk. While these prevailing theories and strategies are meritorious, this article suggests that changes in modern day society need to be considered as variables in how consumers assign risk. This is a tough problem to solve and current risk communication strategies appear insufficient. This leads to the central issue addressed in this article, which is that risk communication/policy implementation needs to address emergent variables in modern society, including (1) rise of hyper individualism, (2) role of the internet, and (3) economic interests. After discussing how these variables likely apply to consumer risk assessment, this article proposes an important new direction, both normatively and empirically, to highlight the problem and analyze consumer decision-making
Language Access and Due Process in Asylum Interviews
Get PDFThe Department of Homeland Security does not provide interpreters to asylum applicants during their asylum interviews, instead requiring them to supply their own. This Article challenges this deprivation of language access as a procedural due process violation because it denies limited English proficient asylum seekers meaningful access to the statutorily created affirmative asylum process. The Department of Homeland Security\u27s failure to provide interpreters can silence limited English proficient asylum seekers by depriving them of the opportunity to meaningfully present their claims. Asylum seekers, especially those who are low income or speak rare languages, face significant challenges in finding suitable interpreters. Many are forced to use nonprofessional interpreters who are not qualified to interpret in complex legal settings. Inaccurate interpretation can have severe ramifications, like unwarranted denials of asylum applications, which could result in asylum applicants being removed to countries where they face persecution. The failure to provide interpreters at asylum interviews is one example of the weaponization of language access, designed to erect barriers to protection in the United States and subordinate certain categories of migrants. Only by challenging and changing these procedures will limited English proficient asylum seekers have equal access to the asylum system
Schrodinger\u27s Corporation: The Paradox of Religious Sincerity in Heterogeneous Corporations
Get PDFConsider a corporation where one group of shareholders holds sincere religious beliefs and another group of shareholders does not share those beliefs but, for a price, will allow the religious shareholders to request a religious exemption to a neutrally applicable law on behalf of the corporation. The corporation is potentially both religiously sincere and insincere at the same time. A claim by the corporation for a religious accommodation requires the court to solve the paradox created by this duality and to declare the corporation, as a whole, either sincere or insincere in its beliefs. Although the Supreme Court and scholars have noted some of the particular issues raised when determining the religious sincerity of shareholders\u27 claims, to date, no one has engaged systematically with the question of whose religious sincerity should be attributed to the corporation when shareholders hold heterogeneous, or diverse, religious beliefs.
This Article provides a framework for determining the sincerity of corporations with religiously heterogeneous shareholders. It proposes an attribution inquiry that engages in a meaningful dialog between state corporate law and theories of religious sincerity. What little attention attribution has received tends to suggest that state law regarding corporate control provides an easy corollary. It does not. Corporate law is designed to enable contracting in pursuit of economic efficiency. Allowing control to stand in for attribution would lead to the monetization of religious sincerity, harming third parties and diminishing the value of religious liberty both in the courts and in the public eye. This Article considers alternative ways in which principles of state corporate law can shape the attribution inquiry to better delimit exemptions while still protecting the value of religious liberty. Ultimately, it concludes that meaningful restrictions should be placed on the ability of shareholders with heterogeneous religious beliefs to contract among themselves for corporate religious sincerity
Patents, Information, and Innovation
Get PDFInventors and commercialization partners often rely on patents to facilitate the exchange of sensitive information. Most scholarship in this area has focused on the areas of software and biotechnology. To provide a richer description of the role of patents in the innovative process, this project evaluates the existing literature and sets forth examples drawn from a series of interviews with professionals from the largely-overlooked medical device industry. The limited analysis of the medical device industry has focused on the largest few dozen firms—as publicly-traded entities, a great deal of data about them is readily available. Small medical device companies are typically privately held, so information about them is more difficult to obtain. The description and analysis set forth in this Article begins to fill that gap. I found that emerging medical device companies often depend on patent protection to help foster communication with investors and negotiate the alliances necessary to develop their inventions. Understanding the role of patents in the medical device industry can serve as a barometer of how well the patent system in general is functioning in accordance with its historic purpose of promoting progress
Spain for the Spaniards : An Examination of the Plunder & Polemic Restitution of the Salamanca Papers
Get PDFThroughout the Spanish Civil War, General Francisco Franco assembled numerous task forces to seize thousands of documents, photographs, prints, and artworks from private citizens and institutions that were politically adverse to his totalitarian regime. The majority of these so-called “Salamanca Papers” were taken from Catalonia, an autonomous community with a particularly contentious history with the Spanish government. Under existing principles of Spanish and international law, it is difficult to determine whether the Spanish State or Catalonia are the bona fide owners of this historical archive. The case over the ownership of the Salamanca Papers is one rarely discussed outside of Spain. However, the disputes over their ownership remains a zealously contested issue between multiple political factions within the country. The purpose of this article is to examine the ongoing dispute over the ownership of the Salamanca Papers from both a national and international perspective. Through a historical and legal examination of this controversy, this article will ultimately reveal the weaknesses in Spain’s legal regime of restitution of cultural property. To that end, this article concludes that countries, like Spain, have both a moral and legal obligation to sustain a meaningful and effective restitution program, specifically after civil armed conflict
Clean and Sustainable Technology Innovation
No full textHas patent law provided adequate incentives for environmental innovation? This Article provides a narrative review that describes (1) clean and sustainable technological inventions and (2) various environmental innovation approaches involving patents in some form and incentivizing technological development and diffusion. Clean, sustainable, or green inventions that lower pollution, use resources in a more sustainable manner, recycle more of their wastes and products, or provide significant energy efficiency have garnered an incredible amount of attention. Scholars and other commentators have analysed the role of patents in facilitating technological development to mitigate climate change, including eco-patent commons, a fast track program, a patent rewards system, and a collaborative and cooperative platform. An analysis of the literature shows that patent law offers certain, though perhaps underutilized, opportunities to promote technological innovation that has environmental benefits
Blue Lives & The Permanence of Racism
Get PDFIn true dystopian form, the killing of unarmed Black people by the police has sparked a national narrative about the suffering of police officers. “Blue Lives Matter” has become the rallying call for those offended by the suggestion that we should hold police officers accountable for killing unarmed Black people. According to a December 2016 poll, 61% of Americans believed that there was a “war on police,” and 68% of Whites had a favorable view of the police as compared to 40% of Blacks. Lawmakers around the country have been proposing Blue Lives Matter laws that make it a hate crime to kill or assault police officers. This strange twist of events is perverse given the social context. Why should the police be viewed as victims in need of additional protection at precisely the same moment that many have questioned their victimization of Black communities? This Essay considers this question and argues that “Blue Lives Matter” is evidence of the permanence of racism as a juridical and discursive matter in this country
