27127 research outputs found
Sort by
Reformed But Not Repaired
Get PDFTraditionally, scholars and policymakers concerned with making improvements to health care systems and structures have focused on insurance reform. The ACA— the United States’ most recent and substantial healthcare reform—was hoped to be an intervention that would help provide equity to all Americans. Indeed, scholars and policymakers viewed increasing access to health care through insurance coverage as a victory. And yet, despite these interventions, the COVID-19 pandemic revealed a number of policy gaps that disproportionately impacted racial minorities. Specifically, racially marginalized Americans still experienced the starkest disparities in COVID-19 complications and mortality. This has left scholars and policymakers to answer why these disparities existed in an environment where there was supposed to be greater equity across demographic groups in their access to healthcare.
This Article contributes to these conversations by exploring this gap. Specifically, this Article argues that insurance reform is ill-suited to dismantle structural inequalities in health. Indeed, this Article suggests that structural racism’s impact is so profound that it may dull the impact of insurance policy. Racialized minorities that have consistently experienced de jure and de facto structural racism, decreased access to desirable social determinants of health, and poor public health infrastructure are not as equipped to weather major health crises as communities that do not have these challenges. The impact of historically discriminatory policies on minority communities set them up for public health failure and persistent health disparities. Utilizing a case study on Flint, Michigan and an original empirical study on lead exposure and COVID-19 mortality, the Article examines the relationship that structural racism has with social determinants of health, with a specific emphasis on infrastructure. To make progress on equity within the health care system, policymakers and scholars must reframe their thinking from insurance reform to more expansive viewpoints on public health policy within the United States
Perttu v. Richards: Brief of Law Professors as \u3cem\u3eAmici Curiae\u3c/em\u3e in Support of Respondent
No full textAmici are professors of law who have studied, taught, and written about prisoner litigation and about rights to jury trials. They submit this brief to share their views, based on that experience, on the proper interpretation of the Prison Litigation Reform Act) in light of the important jury trial rights at stake and the practical realities of prisoner litigation
Radical Commons Issue #3 Summer 2025
No full textRadical Commons is a student-published zine that seeks to create a platform for left-leaning art and writing about law school and the legal field. RadCo is non-academic by design, promoting creative expression, rejecting professionalism, and celebrating the beauty of honest imperfection.
Above all, RadCo gives students the opportunity to publicly voice dissent against the hyper-conservative principles that make up the heart of the U.S. legal system.
Law school demands perfection, tying every action to our character and holding our failures against us. Challenging the status quo can lead to humiliation in the classroom, conflict with peers, and lost opportunities with employers. One of this publication’s biggest challenges is finding a way to counteract fears created by such an environment. Allowing people to submit anonymously plays a big role in lifting outside pressure. That said, the greatest obstacles to submitting often come from our personal insecurities. That’s why I want to send out a big “thank you” to everyone who chose to submit. You took a risk, you trusted that your voice matters, and you made this project possible.
Of course, RadCo’s goal isn’t just to shout into the void. The ultimate mission is to help students cultivate radical thought to the point where they can feel confident enough to take action. Discourse has value, but it means nothing if it is not backed up by efforts to organize – a task that might seem impossible amidst the chaos of law school.
I hope readers will approach this material with an open heart. The central mission may be anti-corporate, but the content is intended for everyone in the student body regardless of their future career path. At this point in our lives, we are all students, and we are at our most powerful when united for a common cause
Streamlining Wildlife Regulation
No full textA recent burst of revisions in the bedrock regulations governing projects that may adversely affect wildlife represents a generational shift in policy. Streamlining federal decision -making drove much of this reform. Streamlining offers a path to address climate change without abandoning a longstanding commitment to wildlife conservation. The conservation community recognizes the need to build new infrastructure to reduce the rate of climate change through air emissions. The most urgent priority is decarbonizing the electrical ~rid through renewable energy generation and a better transmission network. Adaptation to the new abnormal of climate-driven environmental disruption demands federal approvals for a host of other habitat-disturbing programs, from coastal redesign to wildfire management. Regulatory requirements that slow or stop such projects are no longer as desirable for wildlife as in the past.
Wildlife law should speed approvals and better coordinate disparate programs without sacrificing statutory objectives, such as recovery of species on the brink of extinction. Streamlining attempts to redirect regulatory analysis to early stages of decision -making, broader landscape scales, and impacts that are likely to generate greater risk to wildlife. Rulemakings employ two principal tools to achieve this shift. First, they limit coverage by replacing effects-based liability triggers (such as take prohibitions) with activity-based compliance (such as locating and operating projects in a particular manner). Second, they centralize key decisions through programmatic analysis and planning, which allows for more rapid project-specific decisions. These reforms provide a roadmap for revival and extension when the political winds shift back toward addressing climate change
Celebrating the Fiske Fellowship Program: 2001-2025
No full textThis program contains statements of impact from the 2001-2025 recipients of Fiske Fellowships.
Some information was shared in 2022 and may not reflect current roles and/or responsibilities of Fiske Fellows
Disability Rights on Probation and Parole
No full textThis Article addresses disability discrimination in community supervision programs, a large—but frequently overlooked—component of the criminal legal system and important contributor to America’s mass incarceration crisis. The long-standing concerns of legal scholars and advocates about disability discrimination in prisons and policing, particularly against people with mental health disabilities, apply with equal measure to probation and parole. This Article examines the experiences of people with intellectual/developmental, cognitive, and mental health disabilities to understand how disability discrimination manifests in probation and parole programs and identifies numerous policies and practices that likely run afoul of two major federal disability rights laws: the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Rehabilitation Act. In explaining why such disability discrimination goes seemingly unchecked, this Article identifies major jurisdictional barriers to enforcement in the federal courts: the Preiser-Heck bar on certain civil rights litigation, abstention doctrines that insulate state criminal court decisions from review, and Eleventh Amendment limits on damages actions against state entities. Given those barriers, this Article suggests that supervision programs ensure robust compliance with disability discrimination laws by utilizing a universal design approach, providing appropriate accommodations to supervisees, and eliminating discriminatory standards. It further argues that defense lawyers and other criminal justice actors should receive training about disability discrimination laws, so they are better able to recognize and remediate disability discrimination. Finally, it suggests the expansion of diversion programs for people with disabilities, particularly those who may struggle to comply with traditional probation programs
Trump v. Slaughter: Brief of Independent Agency Board Members and Scholars as Amici Curiae in Support of Respondent
No full textAmici are removed board members from independent federal agencies and scholars whose work includes the study of independent agencies and the separation of powers between the President and Congress. Amici advance the view that there are federal agencies whose responsibility for protecting the safety and stability of the national infrastructure or ensuring the structural integrity of government necessitates their independence. Significant negative consequences would likely follow if these agencies were to lose their independence and their work were to become politicized
Empirical Essays on Mobility-Restricting Covenants
No full textThis thesis, which consists of four essays, uses empirical methods to study questions on the use of mobility-restricting covenants in business and employment contracts.
The first chapter investigates the spillover effects of the so-called “No-Poach Initiative,” an enforcement action launched by the Antitrust Division of the State of Washington Attorney General’s Office in January 2018 that led 237 franchisors to agree to stop using no-poaching clauses—i.e., provisions in franchise contracts that prohibit franchisees from hiring each other’s employees—nationwide. I document that approximately one third of the franchisors not targeted by the No-Poach Initiative removed the no-poaching clause from their franchise contract, and that the tendency to drop this clause is unrelated to whether they operated in the State of Washington. By examining some of the mechanisms underlying these spillover effects, I also provide suggestive evidence that the risk of follow-up enforcement actions in other states and the common ownership of franchisors by the same parent company may be significant factors at play.
The second chapter, co-authored with Francine Lafontaine and J.J. Prescott, studies the use of mobilityrestricting covenants, including noncompete agreements but also confidentiality and non-recruitment clauses, in franchise contracts, which are an important and accessible category of business contracts. We find that many of these contracts impose restrictive covenants on franchisees but also on other individuals, notably franchisees’ business partners and family members, and in some cases, their managers and employees. Patterns in the use of these covenants across these individuals is telling, suggesting that in business contracts, the informationprotection role of such clauses is particularly salient.
The third chapter, co-authored with Tito Boeri and Andrea Garnero, explores the use of noncompete agreements in Italy, where the labor market is rigid and highly regulated, and job mobility is low. Based on a novel survey of workers, we find that noncompete agreements are common even in this rigid labor market, they often do not comply with the minimum legal requirements, and yet workers are not aware of their enforceability. This study suggests that institutions and labor market regulations are not enough to protect workers from the misuse of noncompetes, especially when targeted groups are not properly informed, and incentives to comply with existing laws are minimal.
The fourth chapter, co-authored with Tito Boeri, Tommaso Crescioli and Andrea Garnero, examines how the regulation of noncompete agreements for employees covered by collective agreements affects firm-level markdowns in the French manufacturing sector. Using a staggered difference-in-differences approach, we find that the regulation of noncompetes established by collective agreements leads to a 1.3%–2.2% reduction in markdowns on average
Three Implications of Moore.
No full textIn his majority opinion in Moore, Justice Brett Kavanaugh listed several provisions of the code that could be subject to a constitutional challenge if realization were a constitutional requirement, as suggested by Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Samuel A. Alito Jr., Clarence Thomas, and Neil M. Gorsuch. Kavanaugh wrote: In short, the Moores cannot meaningfully distinguish the [mandatory repatriation tax] from similar taxes such as taxes on partnerships, on S corporations, and on subpart F income. The upshot is that the Moores’ argument, taken to its logical conclusion, could render vast swaths of the Internal Revenue Code unconstitutional. See, e.g., 26 U.S.C. section 305(c) (deemed stock distributions); sections 446, 448 (accrual accounting); section 701 (partnership taxation); sections 951-965 (subpart F); section 951A (passthrough tax on global intangible low-taxed income); section 1256(a) (certain futures contracts); section 1272(a) (original-issue discount instruments); sections 1361-1379 (S corporations); sections 2501-2524 (gift taxes)