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Reducing “COVID-19 Misinformation” While Preserving Free Speech
No full textMisinformation about risks, prevention, and treatment of COVID-19 has cost lives. Misinformation comes from many sources, with many motives for spreading and believing it. In caring capably and compassionately for patients, a substantial majority of health professionals and health care organizations have vigorously defended the standards of medical science and public health practice. However, a vocal minority and their sponsors or allies have exploited their medical credentials to the detriment of the public. They have understated known risks of severe illness, challenged the safety and effectiveness of vaccines without evidence, touted unproved and risky treatments, and amplified conspiracy theories about science and scientists. These activities have compounded the ethical stress and moral injury the health care workforce has experienced during repeated pandemic surges
For Profit: A History of Corporations
No full textA history of how corporate innovation has shaped society, from ancient Rome to Silicon Valley Americans have long been skeptical of corporations, and that skepticism has only grown more intense in recent years. Meanwhile, corporations continue to amass wealth and power at a dizzying rate, recklessly pursuing profit while leaving society to sort out the costs. In For Profit, law professor William Magnuson argues that the story of the corporation didn’t have to come to this. Throughout history, he finds, corporations have been purpose-built to benefit the societies that surrounded them. Corporations enabled everything from the construction of ancient Rome’s roads and aqueducts to the artistic flourishing of the Renaissance to the rise of the middle class in the twentieth century. By recapturing this original spirit of civic virtue, Magnuson argues, corporations can help craft a society in which all of us—not just shareholders—benefit from the profits of enterprise
Forumless: Why Victims of the Uyghur Crisis Should Be Able to Vindicate Their Claims in Federal Court
Get PDFU.S. courts can serve as forums for victims of international human rights abuses to litigate claims against foreign defendants. Oftentimes, U.S. courts are the only option for foreign litigants who are unable to seek remedies in their own countries or in international courts. This Comment discusses the difficulties a victim of the Uyghur crisis would face attempting to use U.S. courts to litigate claims against the Chinese government or government officials under existing law. The purpose of this Comment is not to address any potential challenge to a claim but rather to address the claim preclusions common to foreign plaintiffs seeking to litigate international human rights claims in U.S. courts. In light of recent Supreme Court decisions limiting the ability of foreign plaintiffs to do so, this Comment argues that Congress should pass legislation authorizing Uyghur victims to use U.S. courts as forums for claims against perpetrators within the Chinese government
Optimizing Disaster Preparedness Planning for Minority Older Adults: One Size Does Not Fit All
Get PDFBy 2050, one in five Americans will be 65 years and older. The growing proportion of older adults in the U.S. population has implications for many aspects of health including disaster preparedness. This study assessed correlates of disaster preparedness among community-dwelling minority older adults and explored unique differences for African American and Hispanic older adults. An electronic survey was disseminated to older minority adults 55+, between November 2020 and January 2021 (n = 522). An empirical framework was used to contextualize 12 disaster-related activities into survival and planning actions. Multivariate logistic regression models were stratified by race/ethnicity to examine the correlates of survival and planning actions in African American and Hispanic older adults, separately. We found that approximately 6 in 10 older minority adults did not perceive themselves to be disaster prepared. Medicare coverage was positively associated with survival and planning actions. Income level and prior experience with disaster were related to survival actions in the African American population. In conclusion, recognizing the gaps in disaster-preparedness in elderly minority communities can inform culturally sensitive interventions to improve disaster preparedness and recovery
Marshalling Copyright Knowledge to Understand Four Decades of Berne
Get PDFIn the year 1978, the 1976 Copyright Act had just entered into effect. Marshall Leaffer, whom this article will affectionately refer to by his first name, had just completed his duties as an attorney advisor at the U.S. Copyright Office. On his way to academia, he, like the fictional character Captain William “Buck” Rogers, was to experience cosmic forces beyond all comprehension. In a freak mishap, his car veered off a rarely used mountain road and was frozen by temperatures beyond imagination. He did not return to academia until more than forty years later. What will he discover upon his return? Will he find the developments in the intervening decades interesting or surprising? What observations would he make had he not been frozen in 1978
The Effect of Public Health Insurance on Criminal Recidivism
No full textMental health and substance use disorders are highly prevalent among incarcerated individuals. Many prisoners reenter the community without receiving any specialized treatment and return to prison with existing behavioral health problems. We consider a Beckerian law enforcement theory to identify different channels through which access to healthcare may impact ex-offenders’ propensities to recidivate, and empirically estimate the effect of access to public health insurance on criminal recidivism. By exploiting variation in state Medicaid expansion decisions, we find that increased access to healthcare through Medicaid coverage reduces recidivism among offenders convicted of violent and public order crimes. The decomposition of recidivism rates shows that this reduction is driven by marginal recidivists who, but for Medicaid expansions, would be reconvicted for the type of crime for which they were previously convicted. Analyses of potential mechanisms show an increase in criminal justice referrals to addiction treatment, which may reduce impulsive behavior. Back-of-the-envelope calculations also indicate that there are substantial cost reductions from providing Medicaid coverage to former inmates
Appendix to “The Amazing Carrie Menkel-Meadow and What Wins When Passions Collide”
Get PDFAppendix to “The Amazing Carrie Menkel-Meadow and What Wins When Passions Collide
Non-traditional trademarks as barriers to competition, innovation, and creativity: what if their protection could be effectively limited in practice?
No full textThe protection of non-traditional trademarks (\u27NTTMs\u27) should be, theoretically speaking, prohibited in some ways or, at least limited, especially the three-dimensional (3D) and colour marks and when these signs were previously or are concurrently protected as industrial designs. The protection of NTTMs have turned out to cause severe negatives externalities on both legal and economic system. This protection chills global competition because competitors are no longer able to copy NTTM-protected products after the expiration of design rights and it also chills product innovation because it leads to a lock-in effect for the beneficiaries of such protection. My main criticism regarding the protection of NTTMs is twofold. First, granting exclusive rights to these signs can lead to foreclosing market competition with respect to product design and aesthetic features such as colors, patterns, and shapes. Second, protecting product design and aesthetic features as marks –thus potentially forever – can lead to a system promoting repetitiveness and standardization in product development, rather than creativity and innovation. Moreover, my criticism is based on the observation that the current system, under which design and other product features are protected (also) as NTTMs, profoundly distorts the function and scope of protection of both trademark and design law. In order to limit the potentially negative impact of NTTMs on competition, innovation, and creativity, current trademark laws include a list of grounds the presence of which prevents the possibility of protecting a sign as a mark. The list of these grounds includes signs that are generic, descriptive, and functional. A second, alternative solution may be to strictly and seriously enforce the existing absolute grounds barring the registrability as marks of elements that add substantial value to the products. the protection of NTTMs is inherently contrary to the traditional and respective functions of trademarks and designs, especially because this protection can create a potentially perpetual trademark monopoly on shapes, colors, and the like, to the detriment not only of market competition, but also of product innovation. Simply put, I argue that the protection of NTTMs raises serious competition-related concerns. Therefore, I support the need to limit if not prohibit the protection of these signs, which are often nothing else than product features or marketing techniques to sell the products
The effect of evidentiary rules on conviction rates
No full textEvidentiary rules for criminal trials disallow various forms of probative evidence. Conventional wisdom assumes these rules benefit all defendants, whether guilty or innocent, and thus reduce wrongful convictions at the price of more wrongful acquittals. We show the conventional view only holds under stylized conditions. We further identify properties of evidence generation mechanisms under which the conventional view is backward: an evidentiary rule will harm the innocent and protect the guilty. However, if adjudicators place too much weight on the evidence, its exclusion can reduce both wrongful convictions and wrongful acquittals
Sharpening the Focus of Free Speech Law: The Crucial Role of Government Intent
Get PDFContemporary free speech law is typically misfocused. This misfocus serves neither the purposes underlying the institution of free speech nor any broader social rights and interests in conflict with freedom of speech. As a general matter, the adjudication of free speech claims should properly focus, centrally, on the intent of the regulating government. More specifically, courts should focus crucially on whether the government has, in enacting or enforcing its speech regulation, intended to suppress or disadvantage a presumed or actual idea or its expression. This sharpened focus would allow the courts to responsibly address a surprisingly broad range of free speech cases with a substantially diminished need for attention to a number of artificial, if not unnecessary, judicial doctrines that have gradually been incorporated into the free speech case law.
This Article first briefly establishes the nature, and the typical costs, of official inhibition of speech in general. The Article then more extensively examines a range of the contemporary case law, with attention, successively, to the recent student speech case of Mahanoy Area School District v. B.L.; to cases involving various sorts of borderline and non-traditional forms of speech; and then to questions of content based and content-neutral regulations of commercial and non-commercial speech, as raised by the case of Reed v. Town of Gilbert, Arizona and the later case law. The Article then addresses the problem of properly inferring, or otherwise ascertaining, any meaningful government intent to suppress or disadvantage a particular idea. A brief conclusion then follows.
Throughout, it will be useful to remember that in all sorts of free speech cases, the relevant government’s intentions are likely to have been multiple; partly conflicting; or perhaps mutually linked, if not inseparable. Commonly, a government that is restricting speech may have an intent to suppress or disadvantage an idea where that intent is somehow linked to a more benign intent to discourage some perceived public harm that is thought by the government to result from the speech in question. On our approach, if there is any causally significant government intent to suppress or disadvantage an idea, the speech restriction generally must fail. The result should follow even if the same restriction could have been adopted with no such invidious intent, and for worthy public purposes.
Thankfully, not all substantial restrictions on speech involve any intent to suppress an idea. Thus some restrictions on, for example, political speech, along with many instances of restrictions on libelous speech; fraudulent speech; politically favored speech that is irrelevant to the forum; noisy or distracting speech; perjury; or speech that would impair national security can be enacted without any causally significant hostility to any idea that the speaker wishes to express. But again, regardless of the nature of the speech in question, if the restricting government harbors any causally relevant intention to suppress or disadvantage the idea in question, the speech restriction should generally be struck down. The social costs of such a judicial response to such a speech regulatory intent need not be substantial. Such a focus would, on the other hand, helpfully allow for reduced judicial attention to, if not a complete bypass of, a number of currently ubiquitous and largely distracting free speech tests and categories