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The Rise of Plain Language Laws
Get PDFWhen lawmakers enacted 776 plain language laws across the United States, no one noticed. Apart from a handful, these laws went untracked and unstudied. Without study, large questions remain about these laws’ effects and utility, and about how they inform the adoption or rejection of plain language. This Article creates a conceptual framework for plain language laws to set the stage for future empirical research and normative discussions on the value of plain language. It unveils the first nationwide empirical survey of plain language laws to reveal their locations, coverages, and standards. In doing so, the Article creates a systematic method to find these laws. Then it coins a taxonomy of categories and terminology to describe their coverage and standards, thus creating a timely launchpad for future scholarship on domestic and international plain language laws. Along the way, the Article exposes the previously unknown scope of these laws—from election ballots and insurance contracts, to veterans housing and consumer contracts, to regulatory drafting and governor reports. That scope underscores the pervasive influence of plain language across public and private sectors, and over lawyers and non-lawyers alike. Moreover, the survey reveals significant intrastate and interstate variations and trends in coverages and standards. With this knowledge, for the first-time, empirical research can more precisely measure the benefits and costs of plain language laws while controlling for variables. Plus, the Article sets the stage for a forthcoming series of normative assessments on the role and design of plain language laws. Ultimately, the Article reignites a lively discourse on plain language amongst lawmakers, practitioners, and academics
Comparative Laws In Public Health Unmasked
Get PDFThe COVID-19 pandemic lay bare the vulnerabilities of some countries’ public health responses and praise for others. Comparative law review in public health responses may glean lessons for the United States. For example, the United States had not had a pandemic of this magnitude in over a century and was reluctant to institute early masking policies. Meanwhile, the world raced for a COVID-19 vaccine. This begs the question of who will take the vaccine. Will—or can—governments force their citizens to be inoculated? Global comparisons in personal liberty, freedom, bodily autonomy, and how to parent intersect at the right to (or not to) mask and vaccinate debate. This Comment compares laws with various countries against a cultural and political backdrop, such as masking differences in the East and West, vaccines and the resurgence of eradicated diseases in the United States, how an authoritative, military dictatorship in Argentina implemented vaccine laws on its citizens, and how the past atrocities the people of the Democratic Republic of the Congo faced is influencing their vaccination rates and subsequent measles and Ebola virus outbreaks today. These global problems require global solutions
Investing in Human Futures: How Big Tech and Social Media Giants Abuse Privacy and Manipulate Consumerism
Get PDFSocial media companies such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram originated with one seemingly innocent goal: “to bring the world closer together.”1 Now, these Big Tech giants own and operate some of the most powerful platforms in the world simply because of their unethical yet effective strategies to maintain their users’ attention. Social media companies have monetized the amount of time their users spend on their platforms by honing in on the individual preferences of each user and selling that access to advertisers. This heightened access to potential consumers and their preferences has become the most valuable marketing tool for digital advertisers. However, this increased access has led to increased public distrust in Big Tech companies and their practices. This public sentiment has resulted in stringent proposed state and federal legislation, as well as self–regulation. Legislatures and corporations alike acknowledge that change is necessary, but neither side has agreed on where to draw the line. This comment examines the privacy implications of the targeted advertising business model and practices, the legal and legislative challenges Big Tech companies have faced, and a potential solution to the exploitation of user data
Death Sentences In The Great Qing, 1744-1840: Critical Note On Civilization In Comparison With England And Wales
Get PDFOver the last centuries, the view on the death penalty in Qing China has been distorted, presenting a picture of abusive brutality and excessive cruelty, and thus was used as the critical pretext to establish immune extraterritorial jurisdictions. Nevertheless, the existing comments are more literary embellishments without empirical evidence, and few comparative and historical perspectives have been utilized to clarify the truth. In this study, we mined annual death sentence numerical data for the period 1744 to 1840 from official archives and literatures, deciphering the capital crimes in detail and ascertaining the longitudinal trend with population statistics. To reassess the profile of capital law and justice, we carefully reviewed the previous literatures and conducted a comparative analysis of key aspects in Qing China and in England and Wales. Using multiple analytical strategies, the study revealed the following in Qing China: (a) about 20% of death sentence cases resulted in execution and 80% in suspended or nominal sentences; (b) on average, 3183.78 cases were death sentences in a country with a population of about 400 million; (c) the death sentence rate steadily decreased from 1.20 to 0.73 per 100,000 population; and (d) the majority of capital crimes concerned homicides and killings in fights, while only about 10% involved robbery. During the same period, England and Wales were bloody codeless countries with death sentence and execution rates that were at least three to nine times higher than in Qing China, and capital crimes mainly involved property crimes. This study’s conclusion, therefore, is that Qing China was very lenient in terms of codification and capital justice in comparison with England and Wales. Flowing with “anti anti-orientalism”, we argue that the erroneous picture should be discarded and appeal for historical China’s contribution to the heritage of global law and justice to be recognized
From The Vatican With Cash: Prosecuting Money Laundering In London Real Estate
Get PDFIt is no news that donations from the Catholic faithful reemerge from the dark underground of Church finances as lace vestments, embroidered mitres, velvet slippers, and posh mansions. A year after Pope Francis announced the overhaul of the Vatican’s antimoney laundering (AML) laws, a makeshift courtroom in the Vatican Museum witnessed the largest criminal trial in the Vatican’s modern history. At the center was Cardinal Angelo Becciu—the former No. 3 in the Vatican—for allegedly defrauding the Vatican’s investment in London real estate. After the tumbrels, now comes the reckoning: How could the Vatican mend a broken system and effectively tackle money laundering in real estate?
This Article initiates an overdue conversation about the corruption crisis in St. Peter’s. Studying the world’s smallest sovereign state yields insights applicable to the obstacles confronting the AML community at large, such as the identification of beneficial ownership, the costs for training AML personnel, and the proliferation of multijurisdictional compliance requirements. Positing a strategy for repair and renewal, this Article argues that British prosecution could share the burden for monitoring, punishing, and deterring the fiscal sins Vatican officials commit through real properties. Such a transnational assertion of prosecutorial power benefits the Vatican in three ways. First, British prosecutors have access to a more expansive AML toolkit that targets both buyer- and seller-side money laundering. By contrast, the Vatican’s infant AML framework is ill-equipped to handle that specialized task. Second, British prosecution, unburdened by the constraints of operating under an absolute monarchy, could obtain additional discovery, which in turn helps overcome the shroud of secrecy the Vatican purposefully maintains over its courtships of money. Third, the Vatican’s AML apparatus suffers from chronic understaffing, brain drain, and high turnover. A helping hand from across the Channel provides a much-needed reprieve. This Article concludes by calling attention to the implications on immunity and foreign relations
Foreclosing Asylum: “Neo-Refoulement” and the Ripple Effects of U.S. Interdiction at Sea
Get PDFThis Note argues that U.S. interdiction of asylum seekers at sea and the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP) program undermine the object and purpose of international refugee law. The U.S. Government uses both practices to evade its international obligation of non-refoulement, or non-return. Such practices unjustly restrict access to asylum in the U.S. These policies can be characterized as tools of “neo-refoulement.” Neo-refoulement is a strategy used to foreclose the possibility of asylum. It allows States parties to the 1951 Refugee Convention to evade their international obligation to refrain from returning people to places where they may be at risk of harm. Section I provides a brief history of the origins and spirit of refugee law. Section II discusses the Baker cases, which laid the groundwork for enforcing U.S. interdiction and return practices. Section III discusses Sale v. Haitian Centers Council, Inc., a Supreme Court case that sanctioned those practices. Section IV discusses how the MPP continues the U.S. Government’s pattern of neo-refoulement. Section V briefly discusses the MPP’s procedural history at the time of writing
The Improvised Implementation of Executive Agreements
Get PDFImplementation is at the core of lawmaking in our divided government. A rich literature covers the waterfront with respect to agencies\u27 implementation of legislative mandates, and another equally robust line of scholarship considers Congress\u27s implementation of treaties. Missing from those discussions, however, is another area of implementation central to U. S. foreign relations: the implementation of transnational regulatory agreements.
This Article examines how federal agencies have harnessed far-reaching discretion from Congress on whether and how to implement thousands of international agreements. Agencies regularly implement agreements by relying on a self-developed menu of options, much like they do in the domestic regulatory context-only without the checks and balances that those processes provide. This analysis of the operation of agreements presents a set of extemporized means through which the executive maintains control of these agreements and their regulation of the rights of private actors without legislative intervention or administrative law constraints. These revelations stand in contrast with conventional understandings of implementation as well as to prior accounts of how international law [is] part of our law