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CAFO’s are a Public Health Crisis:The Creation of COVID-19
Get PDFConcentrated Animal Feeding Operations (“CAFO’s”) are largely unregulated by State or Federal Laws in the United States. As a result of this lack of oversight, they are a breeding ground for deadly infectious diseases. The COVID-19 epidemic has demonstrated the threat that diseases pose to the United State like H1N1, SARS, and Ebola.The USDA needs to regulate CAFOs under the mandate given to them by congress in the AHPA to ensure that they are not the epicenter of the next wave of deadly infectious diseases. Scientists have been warning about the disease potential of CAFOs for the last decade, and it is time for policy makers to listen and take action
The ICC Reform Process and the Failure to Address the African State Concerns on the Sequencing of Peace with Criminal Justice under Article 53 of the Rome Statute
Get PDFThe relationship of African States with the permanent International Criminal Court (ICC) is critical to the continued success of the ICC and the development of international criminal law. One of the main criticisms of the ICC, by some African States, has centered on the question of how best to sequence peace with justice, or justice with peace, in situations of ongoing conflict such as in Uganda and Sudan. This paper examines the history of the peace-justice clash on the African continent in the context of the 2019 Assembly of States Parties mandated process of ICC reform, taking into account the ICC Office of the Prosecutor\u27s (OTP) policy paper on the interests of justice. Regrettably, despite the longstanding African State Party concern about the peace-justice interface, the September 2020 ICC independent expert report produced for the Assembly of States Parties missed the opportunity to expressly address this important issue. The author submits that, while the OTP appears to have embraced a more nuanced view of the interests of retributive justice and how they relate to the interests of sustainable peace, it maybe timely for the formal ICC review process to consider how to bring further clarity to resolution of this issue in the context of the ongoing ICC reform discussions. Formally giving the OTP some guidance on how to balance the interests of justice considerations after it begins a formal investigation into a situation should help limit some of the criticisms directed towards the ICC as it engages in the challenging task of dispensing justice for victims of atrocity crimes in Africa and other parts of the world
The Patent Medium: Toward a Network Paradigm of the Patent System
Get PDFThe modern patent system is conceived of as an information platform; it is evident in the common description of the patent system as a quid-pro-quo bargain: Society grants exclusive rights in exchange for information published by a patentee. But is there more to the patent system than merely informing others? Does the patent system also serve as a communication (and not only information) platform, namely, as a medium? Based on an interdisciplinary analysis of the patent system\u27s structure and features through the lenses of communication studies, this Article suggests that it does. It demonstrates how the patent system as a medium enables players to fulfill various communicative ends, much beyond the obvious goal of disseminating legal-technological knowledge. This Article strives to characterize the patent medium, as well as to examine the implications of portraying the patent space as a medium.
Utilizing the power of communication analysis, this Article uncovers an existing, somewhat implicit communication paradigm of the patent system as a medium. Although tacit and unofficial, this paradigm is evident through a critical reading of patent scholarship and case law. This unspoken communication paradigm resembles that of a bulletin board: it is linear, straightforward, and focuses on the informative value of communication. However, this bulletin board paradigm does not fully reflect the actual nature of the communication that transpires within the patent medium. After reexamining the patent space the rules, structure, participants, and practices this Article offers an alternative, more comprehensive paradigm of the patent medium the network paradigm. A network, as opposed to a bulletin board, is a connected, multi-directional, and multi-player platform, which allows communication for various ends (including, but not limited to, informing). Instead of viewing the patent medium statically as a host of informative announcements, the network paradigm suggests a dynamic perspective, considering the patent medium to enable discourse.
Beyond its theoretical contribution, the network paradigm serves as a powerful explanatory tool, offering profound implications for patent law. Specifically, the network paradigm resolves current oddities in the patent system; for instance, the network paradigm provides new understandings regarding phenomena in patent law such as patent pledging, early publication, and the first-to-file rule incidents commonly considered enigmatic or only partially understood. As a tool with theoretical and practical-analytical value, the network paradigm helps both courts and commentators to theorize and rationalize patent law
Maritime Magic: How Cruise Lines Can Avoid State Law Compliance Through Passenger Contracts
Get PDFFlorida Statutes section 381.00316 prohibits businesses in Florida from requiring consumers to provide documentary proof of COVID-19 vaccination to access businesses’ goods and services. Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings (“NCLH”) has recently challenged section 381.00316’s applicability to its cruise operations because NCLH believes that requiring its passengers to provide documentary proof of COVID-19 vaccination is the one constant that allows NCLH’s cruise ships to smoothly access foreign ports, which have differing COVID-19 protocols and rules. In Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings, Ltd. v. Rivkees, the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida ruled in favor of NCLH on this challenge, stating that section 381.00316 violated NCLH’s First Amendment rights and the dormant Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution. This decision is now on appeal in the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit.This Comment argues that NCLH could have brought another claim to deflect section 381.00316’s applicability to NCLH’s cruise operations: a claim of admiralty jurisdiction. A claim of admiralty jurisdiction would have likely led the court to determine that NCLH’s passenger ticket contract, which contains provisions that require passengers to provide documentary proof of COVID-19 vaccination before boarding NCLH’s ships, is a maritime contract that is subject only to federal maritime law and not Florida state law. Thus, section 381.00316 cannot prohibit NCLH’s requirement of passengers’ documentary proof of COVID-19 vaccination. This Comment discusses the value of bringing an admiralty jurisdiction claim in this context, and highlights how businesses that create and enter maritime contracts, particularly other cruise lines conducting cruises out of Florida, can take advantage of an admiralty jurisdiction claim to avoid compliance with state laws that burden their operation
Trade\u27s Mini-Deals
Get PDFThe modern consensus is that U.S. trade law is made through statute and through large congressional-executive agreements, both of which maintain Congress\u27 constitutional primacy over the regulation of foreign commerce. Contrary to this understanding, however, short, targeted agreements negotiated by the U.S. executive with foreign trading partners - recently referred to as mini-deals - have become a fixture of the trade law landscape over the last three decades in staggering number. More than 1,200 such agreements govern the movement of goods and services in and out of the United States from and to 130 countries. Such deals are not only now one of the primary ways trade law is made but also are likely to be the principal tool for trade lawmaking in the Biden Administration. Yet, despite their ubiquity, we know almost nothing about them. This Article explains how this transformation in U.S. trade law has occurred as a growing foreign commercial bureaucracy began to engage readily with foreign partners.
The Article provides an unprecedented look at trade mini-deals, where they come from, how they are made, and what they do. The data show a growing reliance by the executive on mini-deals to achieve foreign commercial goals in the last thirty years and a significant expansion of their scope in the last five years. They are not so mini anymore. The data also reveal that these agreements often slip under the radar of our ordinary accountability and monitoring regimes and have been missed by prior scholarship. Their obscurity has enabled them to grow quietly in importance as a means to achieve trade and regulatory policy aims. They have become a preferred tool for good reason, even if they suffer from procedural flaws.
The picture that emerges from this review disrupts prior understandings of the foreign commercial legal topography, demonstrating that both the trade and transnational regulatory landscapes are much more textured than previously understood. The Article uses this hand-collected quantitative and qualitative data set to sketch a more accurate portrait of how our trade law is made. It argues that such agreements serve constructive legislative and rulemaking purposes, supplementing statutes and regulations and sometimes substituting for them. The analysis presented here underscores the profound and cross-cutting bureaucratic authority across foreign relations and the administrative state. Given the importance of this transnational activity and its implications, the Article also opens a new field for interdisciplinary scholarly research
Let the Exceptions Do the Work: How Florida Should Approach Environmental Regulation After \u3cem\u3eCedar Point Nursery v. Hassid\u3c/em\u3e
Get PDFFor nearly fifty years, courts distinguished between per se physical takings and regulatory takings. Yet, in 2021, the Supreme Court signaled a change of course with the monumental Cedar Point Nursery v. Hassid decision. The ruling challenges the government’s ability to mandate anything that impacts private property. In the face of environmental catastrophe and increasing pressure to assuage our climate crisis, how can governments respond without triggering a takings challenge? Chief Justice Roberts in his majority decision may have left the door cracked open for governments to work around the Cedar Point Nursery ruling. By looking at the legacy of other takings challenges, namely Lucas v. South Carolina Coastal Council, this Comment argues that regulators and legislators may find hope in Cedar Point Nursery’s implied and stated exceptions. Florida is at a heightened risk from environmental calamity and will need to rely on creative lawmaking to prevent paying out just compensation. From proposed inspection regimes to wildlife protection and more, Floridian municipal and county governments rely on the temporary use of private property. This Comment pro- poses the ways in which Florida can still achieve progressive climate action while staying within the Supreme Court’s new takings law framework
English Courts and Transnational Islamic Divorces: What Role for Personal Liberty of Muslim Women?
Get PDFEnglish courts consider the validity of a talaq obtained abroad on the basis of the lex matrimonii, without examining whether the circumstance of the divorce, both factual and legal, offend English public policy. An anthropological inquiry into talaq obtained in most Muslim nations reveals that androcentric culture – as opposed to religious prescription as such – largely distorts the Quranic vision of this institution. This author suggests that English courts and the scholarly/religious community should entertain the notion of the contractual nature of nikah (marriage) in order to assess the consequences of the talaq. If a nikah is entered into without the wife’s unequivocal consent or under duress from family members then, as a contract, it may be declared voidable by the courts; the wife, however, would retain the right to seek redress from such a voidable contract. Moreover, besides comity and reciprocity, there is no other legal impediment as to why English courts cannot employ the Human Rights Act to counter foreign talaq obtained in violation of the wife’s fundamental human rights. This is particularly so where the wife repudiates the application of her personal law in favour of English family law, provided that this is done in a manner that does not expose her to accusations of apostas
