27127 research outputs found
Sort by
More Than Mere Lip Service: A Mansfield Rule For Well-Being
Get PDFLaw firms’ watchword is well-being. “Never in history have organizations around the world devoted so much attention and capital to improving employee mental health and well-being. It is lamentable that these investments are not always providing a good return regarding improved outcomes.” In the legal arena, a 2021 report from the Institute for Well-Being in Law echoed this sentiment, determining that while 99 percent of law firms have some type of well-being program, these measures did little to nothing to address internal, structural issues that perpetuate the lack of attorney well-being
Right to Informed Consent, Right to a Doula: An Evidence-Based Solution to the Black Maternal Mortality Crisis in the United States
Get PDFThis Note seeks to build on existing research about how to improve childbirth in the United States for women, particularly for Black women, given the United States’ extremely high maternal mortality rate. Through examining the history and characteristics of American and Western childbirth, it seeks to explore how the current birth framework contributes to maternal mortality. To fight this ongoing harm, I suggest increasing access to doulas— nonmedical support workers who provide “continuous support” to the birthing person.
Through this Note I seek to build on the research of others by identifying the ways medicalized birth practices fail women, particularly Black women, and possible solutions to this crisis. To that end, I examine the pathologization of childbirth, paternalism in medicine, and how the history of early gynecologists’ experimentation on enslaved Black women reverberates in the context of birth today, as both a cause of ongoing medical racism and paternalism, and as a symptom of misogyny, misogynoir, and racism.
Furthermore, this Note builds on existing work in this field by suggesting a solution that has become more popular in recent years: the use of doulas to improve labor and childbirth. I identify why doulas are such an excellent tool to combat the current issues that plague women’s pregnancy and births in this country, specifically against a backdrop of how medical paternalism, racism, and the law have hamstrung women’s ability to safely birth. Finally, I suggest a workable solution to increase the usage of doulas by women who most need support: adding doulas to the “maternity and newborn care” essential health benefit, one of ten essential health benefits private insurers are required to cover under the ACA
Legitimacy and Online Proceedings: Procedural Justice, Access to Justice, and the Role of Income
Get PDFCourts have long struggled to bridge the access-to-justice gap associated with in-person hearings, which makes the recent adoption of online legal proceedings potentially beneficial. Online proceedings hold promise for better access: they occur remotely, can proceed asynchronously, and often rely solely on written communication. Yet these very qualities may also undermine some of the well-established elements of procedural-justice perceptions, a primary predictor of how people view the legal system’s legitimacy. This paper examines the implications of shifting legal proceedings online for both procedural-justice and access-to-justice perceptions. It also investigates the relationship of both types of perceptions with system legitimacy, as well as the relative weight these predictors carry across litigant income levels. Drawing on online traffic court cases, we find that perceptions of procedural justice and access to justice are each separately associated with a litigant’s appraisal of system legitimacy, but among lower-income parties, access to justice is a stronger predictor, while procedural justice dominates among higher-income parties. These findings highlight the need to incorporate access-to-justice perceptions into existing models of legal legitimacy
Hard Truths: Libel by Implication Doctrine and the Need for a Uniform Standard
Get PDFSince the inception of the tort of libel, claims against the media have created a tension between the First Amendment’s commitment to a free press and the desire to prevent reputational harm to individuals. Further complicating the issue are cases in which plaintiffs allege that literally true statements are defamatory based on implications created through juxtapositions or omissions of facts. This is known as libel by implication, a tort currently governed by states through a patchwork of varying standards and interpretations. Not only does the lack of uniformity leave journalists without due notice of the law in the jurisdictions they are reporting on, but also it encourages forum shopping by plaintiffs and attacks against the media. A solution is critical: libel by implication claims have become increasingly popular with politicians seeking to dispel criticism — precisely the speech the First Amendment was intended to protect. To best protect crucial reporting in an era of animus towards the press, this Note argues that states need to adopt a uniform standard for governing libel by implication that requires a showing that (1) the implications of the article are false and (2) the journalist acted with actual malice in publishing them.
“I imagine it’s no surprise by now that many courts and commentators have complained that defamation law is a ‘quagmire,’ lacks ‘clarity and certainty,’ is ‘overly confusing’ and ‘convoluted,’ leaves courts ‘hopelessly and irretrievably confused,’ and ‘has spawned a morass of case law in which consistency and harmony have long ago disappeared.’”
Dallas Morning News, Inc. v. Tatum, 554 S.W.3d 614, 643 (Tex. 2018) (internal citations omitted)
Revisiting the “Tradition of Local Control” in Public Education
Get PDFIn Milliken v. Bradley, the Supreme Court declared “local control” the single most important tradition of public education. Milliken and other related cases developed this notion of a tradition, which has frustrated attempts to achieve equitable school funding and desegregation through federal courts. However, despite its significant impact on American education, most scholars have treated the “tradition of local control” as doctrinally insignificant. These scholars depict the tradition either as a policy preference with no formal legal meaning or as one principle among many that courts may use to determine equitable remedies. This Note argues that the Supreme Court conceived of the tradition not merely as good policy or remedial law but as a principle that was supported by multiple freestanding constitutional provisions. It shows how the policy and remedial law explanations for the tradition do not fully explain the Court’s reasoning. It then demonstrates that the Court located the tradition in the federal Constitution’s guarantees of substantive due process, the right to vote, federalism, and the separation of powers
Due Process and Equal Protection in Michigan Anishinaabe Courts
No full textIn 1968, largely because the United States Constitution does not apply to tribal government activity, Congress enacted the Indian Civil Rights Act–a federal law that requires tribal governments to guarantee due process and equal protection to persons under tribal jurisdiction. In 1978, the Supreme Court held that persons seeking to enforce those federal rights may do so in tribal forums only; federal and state courts are unavailable. Moreover, the Court held that tribes may choose to interpret the meanings of “due process” and “equal protection” in line with tribal laws, including customary laws. Since the advent of the self-determination era of federal Indian law in the 1970s, Michigan Anishinaabe tribal governments have adopted constitutions that also guarantee individual rights, usually using the same or substantively similar language as federal law does. Despite the opportunity to interpret the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses in accordance with tribal customs, tribal courts have usually applied (or modified) federal precedents to such claims. Given the practical nonexistence of court precedents and legal scholarship on Anishinaabe legal customs and traditions until recently, the reliance on the precedents of the colonizers was inevitable
All Stick and No Carrot? Reforming Public Offerings
No full textThe SEC heavily regulates the traditional initial public offering (IPO). Those regulatory burdens fuel interest in alternative paths for private companies to go public, “regulatory arbitrage.” The SEC’s response to the emergence of alternatives, most recently SPACs and direct listings, has been to re-assert the regulatory protections in a traditional IPO, including heightened liability under Section 11 of the Securities Act. The SEC’s treatment of the traditional IPO regulatory process as a one-size fits-all regime ignores the weaknesses of this process, in particular the informational inefficiency of the book-building process. In this essay we argue that the agency’s focus in regulating issuers going public should be on promoting market pricing driven by sophisticated investors with access to credible disclosure. We propose an alternative approach that provides issuers with a clear choice in going public: (1) provide disclosures for a seasoning period prior to listing their securities for public trading, with corresponding reductions in regulatory requirements for going public (the “carrot”); or (2) impose heightened liability on company’s going public without a seasoning period, not only for registration statements, but also for the company’s periodic disclosures released during a post-offering seasoning period (the “stick”). We argue that such a regime would push issuers to maximize the joint welfare of both issuers and investors
Taming Wildcat Stablecoins
No full textCryptocurrencies, including stablecoins, are all the rage. Investors are exploring ways to profit off of them. Governments are considering ways to regulate them. While the technology underlying cryptocurrencies is new, the economics is centuries old. Oftentimes, lawmakers are so focused on understanding a new technological innovation that they fail to ask what exactly is being created.
In this case, the new technology has recreated circulating private money in the form of stablecoins, which are similar to the banknotes that circulated in many countries during the nineteenth century. The implication is that stablecoin issuers are unregulated banks. Based on lessons learned from economic theory and financial history, we argue that circulating private money is not an effective medium of exchange because it is not always accepted at par and its issuers are vulnerable to destabilizing bank runs.
We also explore the treatment of stablecoins under the existing legal framework and examine the upsides and downsides of interpretive, regulatory, and legislative options that attempt to mitigate the financial-stability risks associated with stablecoins. These options include requiring the issuance of stablecoins through banks, backing stablecoins one-for-one with safe assets, and establishing sovereign digital money to compete against private digital money
Une Histoire Pragmatique du Politique
No full textComme le montre ce numero, nous ne sommes guere en manque de tentatives recentes de repenser l\u27histoire du politique. En effet, deux generations d\u27historiens ont deja produit un grand nombre de nouvelles approches et de perspectives a partir desquelles il est maintenant possible d\u27etudier l\u27histoire politique a nouveaux frais. Dans le contexte historiographique americain, nous avons ete temoins d\u27une serie de nouvelles approches allant de ce que l\u27on a appele la « nouvelle histoire sociale politique » des annees 1970 a l\u27effort des sciences sociales pour « repenser l\u27Etat » (Bringing the State Back In) dans les annees 1980 et 1990, en passant par l\u27invention de nouveaux sous- domaines tels que le « Political Development » ou « Policy History » ou le « Law and Political Economy », jusqu\u27a diverses versions depuis le debut du XXI siecle pour penser des « new, new » histoires politiques. Dans le contexte francais, l\u27apprehension du politique s\u27est trouvee au creur d\u27une serie de tentatives visant a repenser l\u27histoire de l\u27Etat et les politiques publiques. Parmi ces approches, celle qui a sans doute le plus developpe une perspective philosophique ou conceptuelle est issue des travaux de chercheurs tels que Francois Furet, Claude Lefort, Marcel Gauchet, Mona Ozouf et Pierre Rosanvallon. Pour sa part, Pierre Rosanvallon a fourni un ensemble de reflexions methodologiques sur cette approche dans une serie d\u27articles et d\u27entretiens et, enfin, dans sa lecon inaugurale au College de France. Au creur de cette approche se trouve une distinction essentielle entre « le » et « la » politique, cette derniere etant reservee a la competition electorale, a la politique des partis et aux majorites parlementaires, par exemple, tandis que le premier cherche a mettre au jour un mode d\u27existence collective et une ambition pour la realisation commune d\u27un groupe ou d\u27une communaute politique qui s\u27auto- institue. Ensemble, ces travaux ont donne une profondeur et une epaisseur nouvelles au concept du politique dans l\u27histoire.
This article sets out to present some key elements for developing a pragmatic history of the political. It proceeds by opening up a dialogue between questions specific to the practice of political history on both sides of the Atlantic, mainly in the United States and France. In particular, we seek to highlight the contribution of legal history as practiced in the United States and specifically legal realism for elaborating this pragmatic approach