3246 research outputs found
Sort by
“Modernizing Regulatory Review”: A Short-Lived Abandonment of More Than Four Decades of Regulatory Review and Benefit-Cost Analysis
No full textPresident Biden’s Modernizing Regulatory Review (MRR) initiative fundamentally altered regulatory procedures, practices, and centralized oversight that had been in place since 1981 when they were formalized by President Reagan in Executive Order 12,291. MRR proceeded in three phases. First, a Memorandum issued on President Biden’s first day in office telegraphing the broad outlines of the plan. Second, more than two years later, an Executive Order codifying the MRR memorandum was issued, combined with implementation guidance issued by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). And third, OMB guidance on the conduct of regulatory BCA was radically revised, clearly with an eye toward favoring the Administration’s policy objectives. The MRR Memorandum included both admirable and worrisome provisions—admirable, insofar as the Memo signaled a revitalized interest that regulatory BCA should include estimates of the distributional effects of regulations on recognized subpopulations of concern, such as the poor; worrisome, because MRR signaled a plan to overtly politicize regulatory BCA methods in a manner calculated to benefit the Administration’s agenda; and transformed OIRA’s role from providing White House entities independent review of agencies’ regulatory BCAs to serving as facilitators and expediters of the Administration’s agenda. In short, the MRR Initiative transformed regulatory BCA and OIRA review into policy-based evidence-making enterprises. Then Donald Trump was elected to a second, discontinuous term. Immediately, Biden executive orders building the Modernizing Regulatory Review (MRR) Initiative were revoked and agency heads were directed to remove all vestiges of it from their respective jurisdictions. The politicized 2023 revision of OMB Circular A-4 was rescinded; the 2003 version was restored; and the Biden administration’s key policy goals were terminated and generally replaced with opposite policy goals. Whether the Trump administration restored regulatory review and regulatory benefit-cost analysis, or replaced their politicization by the Biden administration with a new politicization of its own, cannot reliably be assessed at this early date. This subject will be the subject of a future analysis
Should All Exercise Routines Be Precluded from Copyright Protection? The Current Scope of Copyrightable Choreography
No full textChoreography as copyrightable subject matter is an underdeveloped topic in copyright law. Few cases discuss the line drawn between routines that can be protected by copyright and those that cannot. In cases where a choreographic routine tells a story, such as a theatrical performance, copyright protection is warranted. This is because the routine\u27s expressive elements can easily be separated from the routine\u27s underlying athletic movements. However, for routines that do not have readily identifiable expressive elements, courts seem to use too narrow a standard for copyright classification. Specifically, in Tracy Anderson, the district court used a narrow approach in classifying Anderson\u27s TA Method as uncopyrightable. Certain exercise routines and movements indisputably cannot be protected under copyright law. However, the district court in Tracy Anderson failed to properly apply the idea/expression dichotomy to see whether there are protectable components in the TA Method. The district court also failed to compare Anderson\u27s TA Method with prior choreographic works or sequences that are questionably copyrightable.RetryClaude can make mistakes. Please double-check responses
Being Pregnant in Someone Else\u27s Body
No full textIn the wake of the Dobbs decision overturning the right to abortion, now is a critical time to re-assess how legal feminism theorizes the pregnant body. Before Dobbs, feminist legal scholarship had blazed a path of anti-maternalism, a stance rooted in liberal, formalist notions of equality that denigrates the “feminine” and too often minimizes the importance of reproductive issues both as tools of sex-based subordination in the present and as foundations for liberation in the future. Anti-maternalism is attractive to legal scholars because it minimizes sex and gender differences and may appear to be gender-inclusive. It has produced arguments that minimize the importance of gestation and childbirth, primarily in establishing parent-child relationships but increasingly in other areas.
This article analyzes a particularly dramatic example of pre-Dobbs anti-maternalism: a proposal to re-conceptualize pregnancy as the physiologically neutral state of waiting for a stork. Under this proposal, people who are not biologically pregnant would be considered legally pregnant nonetheless and would acquire legal rights because of a pregnancy in someone else’s body. The article first shows that the claimed gender inclusivity of this proposal is illusory. It then identifies rhetorical strategies that parallel those of the anti-abortion right: (1) characterizing pregnancy as passive; (2) casting the fetus as the star and focal point for a pregnancy; and (3) “helicoptering the womb,” which consists of swamping the field with so many purportedly necessary non-gestational tasks on the road to parenthood that the actual pregnancy can start to look like a rounding error in an otherwise equal effort by both parents. At the heart of these rhetorical strategies—whether used by the anti-abortion right or by anti-maternalist liberals—is an impulse to coerce pregnant people in order to give other people rights over their bodies or the fruits of their reproductive labor (babies). The article argues that feminists should instead return to an approach advocated by feminist scholars as diverse as Martha Fineman and Catharine MacKinnon: one in which pregnancy is a base case for understanding human relationships rather than an awkward anomaly to be papered over with abstractions
Medicare Drug Price Negotiations: A Blueprint for Ethical Pricing Across the Healthcare System
Full text linkIn a healthcare system with scarce resources, profit that exceeds the value of what is being paid for cries out for justifications. The Medicare Drug Price Negotiation Program, created by the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, is a new program that allows Medicare to begin negotiating with drug companies to determine the maximum fair price for a small set of drugs. This Article argues that the methods for conducting these negotiations represent a significant step forward in a dramatic and important reordering of how we view the healthcare financing system, allowing us to consider rational, coherent concepts of value without having to necessarily privilege the concerns of wealthy investors as we have done in the past. This Article proposes that the criteria used in this process ought to be applied across the healthcare financing system, as this creates a rubric for a fair, just, and rational constraint of the power of those who currently set prices in all parts of the healthcare system. In the past, price concerns about drugs have been met with the simple assertion that a high return on investment is necessary to incentivize drug companies to do the research necessary for the development of new drugs and other treatments, even though there is much evidence to the contrary. However, those who seek to profit from the U.S. healthcare system can cause substantial harm by exacerbating economic-based rationing and increasing problems caused by scarce resources. Given these foreseeable harms caused by pricing decisions, some duty ought to properly rest on those with this power to explain why the price they choose is reasonable and defensible. Some form of governmental action is likely necessary to ensure that pricing is informed by these explanations and is within reasonable boundaries, so that foreseeable harms to patients and the system overall are minimized. This Article uses social justice theory and feminist legal theory to understand the harms caused by the current system. Most economic rationing decisions are made by women faced with having too little money to meet the healthcare needs of themselves and their families. Other vulnerable populations are also more likely to be faced with the complex problems that arise from economic rationing. This Article calls for folding that understanding into a broader conversation about rationing of care. We ought to acknowledge that we do ration, that it is done with money, and that this rationing has severe and otherwise preventable effects on people. In the face of this problem, the Medicare Drug Price Negotiation Program gives us a framework for better resource allocation and an improvement in people’s lives
Professor Megan A. Fairlie\u27s Scholarship on the Relationship between the United States and the International Criminal Court
Full text link
Never Again: Zionism and the Jewess
Full text linkThe State of Israel was established, in part, to ensure that Jews would never again be killed with impunity. More specifically, the State of Israel was established to ensure that never again would Jewish women and girls be systematically raped, assaulted, violated, and mutilated in a pogrom-like attack against the Jewish people. It is well known that the sweep of history connects Jews with the land of Israel from ancient times to today and serves as an important foundation for political Zionism. Less understood is that the atrocities against Jewish women and girls, committed over thousands of years and across continents, tore a primal wound in the Jewish psyche and galvanized the Zionist vision of a return to Jewish statehood and self-determination. Never again is an unwritten Zionist promise, a covenant, established between the State of Israel and the Jewish people. Hamas’s October 7th attack tested this sacred Zionist promise. This article is an exploration of why political Zionism made that promise and how October 7th tested it
Right Not to Work: Unions and Title VII
Full text linkThis article explores how Title VII\u27s mandate for religious accommodation conflicts with union seniority rights, as revealed in Groff v. DeJoy. It argues that labor unions often oppose Sabbath accommodations not out of hostility to religion, but to protect bargained-for entitlements. The piece highlights a growing legal tension: whether co-worker burdens count as “undue hardship” under Title VII—a question with major implications for religious liberty in unionized workplaces
Adding Complexity to the International Climate Finance Framework: The Loss and Damage Fund
No full textThis paper addresses the following questions: What does this new institution finance? How can the outputs or outcomes of its financing be assessed? How do they relate to the other institutions engaged in climate finance? Responding to these questions helps understanding why setting up this fund was controversial among climate negotiators and remains a source of potential problems legally and from the point of view of climate economics. This text is organized as follows: Section 1 briefly describes the different types of global institutions dedicated to climate finance. Section 2 discusses the genesis of the Loss and Damage Fund. Section 3 investigates the different challenges posed by the concept of loss and damage and the fund\u27s establishment. Section 4 suggests some ameliorations to the Fund, focusing on assessing its outputs and outcomes. A conclusion ends this paper identifying potential for further research