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The COVID–19 Pandemic Highlighted the Need for Mandated ESG Disclosures: Now What?
Get PDFThis is not simply your run–of–the–mill COVID–19 article. Instead, this article highlights a salient issue that has been right in front of our eyes this whole time and COVID–19 simply took our blinders off. ESG—short for environmental, social, and governance—is gaining significant momentum both at the firm level and in investment strategy, yet the SEC is trailing behind in ensuring the market is adequately informed of firms’ ESG information. It is important to note that the COVID–19 pandemic initially threw the market into an unanticipated downward spiral; however, many ESG funds still managed to outperform the market in the midst of this financial downturn. Why is that and where do we go from here
Textualism Today: Scalia’s Legacy and His Lasting Philosophy
Get PDFAppointed to the Supreme Court in 1986 by President Reagan, Justice Antonin Scalia redefined the philosophy of textualism. Although methods like the plain meaning rule had been around for over a century, the textualist philosophy of today was not mainstream. While Scalia’s textualism is thought to be a conservative philosophy, Scalia consistently maintained that it was judicial restraint rather than conservatism at the heart of his method. The key tenant of Scalia’s new textualism was an outright rejection of legislative history, which he often brought up in opinions only to mock and dismiss as irrelevant. Starting with the hypothesis that Scalia’s textualism is alive and well, being used more frequently since his passing than the four years prior, this Article seeks to measure the lasting impact of his philosophy in the federal appellate courts. In particular, this paper measures how often courts of appeals cited to legislative history in the years before Scalia’s passing and how often they have in the years since. The Article also seeks to measure the correlation between textualism and the political right-wing by sorting citations to legislative history by appointing President over the past three years. The tested hypothesis is that Bush and Clinton appointees are likely to be more moderate, citing legislative history more frequently than Trump and Reagan appointees, but far less frequently than Obama appointees. Using a dataset that includes all published federal appellate court opinions between June 1, 2011, and November 30, 2020, for the first hypothesis the data revealed that Scalia’s new textualism is being used more frequently in the period after his death than in the period before. Of the thirteen federal circuits, eleven made fewer citations in the period after Scalia’s passing. For the second hypothesis, counting all published federal appellate opinions between December 1, 2017, and November 30, 2020, the data show that judges appointed by Republican presidents are far less likely to cite legislative history than Democrat appointees. As expected, judges appointed by President Trump were the least likely to cite to legislative history, but appointees of President Clinton and not President Obama were the most likely to cite to legislative history. Even if textualism may not reliably produce conservative outcomes, it does seem as though the conventional wisdom associating textualism with the Republican party is well-founded
The Hidden Foster Care System: A Parallel System in Legal Limbo During A Deadly Pandemic
Get PDFIn 2020, Josh Gupta-Kagan’s article on the American Hidden Foster System challenged the welfare system to face its coercive practices that effectuate in a child being removed from the home without formal state intervention and court oversight.1 Families find themselves struggling to stay together as child protection workers utilize threats and safety plans to force the removal of a child from the home and into the custody of a family member.2 The children’s, the parents’, and the kinship caregivers’ lives are forever impacted by the welfare state, yet they receive insufficient benefits or protections afforded to families, caregivers, and children placed in licensed foster care under the jurisdiction of the court.3 This paper will explore what Gupta-Kagan coined the “American Hidden Foster system”4 during the COVID era, as well as some solutions to the injustices these families face while in the system. Lastly, this paper hopes to offer an approach to balance the inevitable tension that surfaces when child welfare agencies push for “under the table” removals while impoverished families desperately try to stay together
The Increased Use and Permanency of Technology: How Those Changes Impact Attorneys’ Professional Responsibility and Ethical Obligations to Clients and Recommendations for Improvement
Get PDFImmunization And Indemnification: Rethinking The Us Approach To Liability Protections For Vaccine Manufacturers During The Covid-19 Pandemic
Get PDFThis note analyzes the legal mechanisms in the United States that provide compensation for vaccine injuries sustained as a result of inoculation against pandemic viruses when a public health emergency has been declared. While the United States has an every-day compensation scheme that deters litigation by providing just compensation yet upholds the right of injured parties to seek damages in court, it has a special compensation scheme applicable to vaccines developed to address public health emergencies that bars litigation by effectively providing vaccine manufactures with complete indemnification and severely restricts the ability of injured parties to receive compensation. Meanwhile, in contracting with pharmaceutical companies to provide advance purchase orders for forthcoming vaccines, other countries, the European Union, and the intergovernmental organization COVAX have managed to negotiate agreements that provide vaccine manufactures with some measure of liability protections while still maintaining the ability for consumers to take their claims to court in the event of a vaccine injury. Through comparisons between the United States’ pandemic countermeasures compensation scheme and its own every-day vaccine injury compensation program, as well as schemes devised by other countries and organizations, this note argues against the wisdom of a scheme that favors protecting pharmaceutical companies over the protecting the populace and suggests that the United States enact a more equitable way to balance the competing interests of incentivizing pharmaceutical companies to produce life-saving vaccines and protecting the right of consumers to compensation