3394 research outputs found
Sort by
Cholera and Climate Change: Pursuing Public Health Adaptation Strategies in the Face of Scientific Debate
Get PDFClimate change will affect the prevalence, distribution, and lethality of many diseases, from mosquito-borne diseases like malaria and dengue fever to directly infectious diseases like influenza to water-borne diseases like cholera and cryptosporidia. This Article focuses on one of the current scientific debates surrounding cholera and the implications of that debate for public health-related climate change adaptation strategies.
Since the 1970s, Rita Colwell and her co-researchers have been arguing a local reservoir hypothesis for cholera, emphasizing that river, estuarine, and coastal waters often contain more dormant forms of cholera attached to copepods, a form of zooplankton. Under this hypothesis, climatically driven increases in sea surface temperatures, sea surface levels, and phytoplankton production—such as during El Niño years or because of climate change—can then spur cholera outbreaks in vulnerable coastal communities. As such, the local reservoir hypothesis has immediate implications for climate change public health adaptation strategies.
In November 2017, however, two teams of scientists published genomic research in Science concluding that epidemic and pandemic cholera outbreaks in the Americas and Africa originate from Asia, suggesting that the local reservoir hypothesis needs modification. The two research articles also suggested a very different strategy for dealing with cholera in the Anthropocene—namely, genetic detection and intensely focused control efforts in Asia.
This Article examines in more detail this emerging scientific debate about cholera reservoirs and the ultimate source(s) of cholera outbreaks and epidemics. It then explores the implications of that debate for climate change public health adaptation strategies, suggesting simultaneously that the cholera debate is one concrete example of how identifying the stakes at issue in different climate change adaptation strategies can help communities and nations to choose appropriate adaptation strategies despite scientific uncertainty
Inciting Terrorism on the Internet: The Limits of Tolerating Intolerance
Get PDFThe Internet is a limitless platform for information and data sharing. It is, in addition, however, a low-cost, high-speed dissemination mechanism that facilitates the spreading of hate speech, including violent and virtual threats. Indictment and prosecution for social media posts that transgress from opinion to incitable hate speech are appropriate in limited circumstances. Several real-world examples discussed here help to explore when limitations on Internet-based hate speech are appropriate.In October 2015, twenty thousand Israelis joined a civil lawsuit filed against Facebook in the Supreme Court for the State of New York. Led by the civil rights organization Shurat HaDin, the suit alleges Facebook allows Palestinian extremists to openly recruit and train terrorists to plan violent attacks calling for the murder of Israeli Jews through their Facebook pages.The suit raises important questions, including: When should the government initiate similar suits to impose criminal sanctions for targeted hate speech posted to Facebook? What constitute effective restrictions on social media that also balance society’s need for robust dialogue and free communication, subject to limitations reflecting a need for order and respect among people?There is a lack of resolution in the ongoing free speech discussion, particularly as it relates to social media. This is quickly becoming a critical focal point given the range, power and impact of the Internet. Social media is how and where contentious public issues are played out. Sometimes, the tone is ugly; numerous examples abound of posts that are racist, hurtful, and deeply insulting. Civil discourse is rare; anonymity enables hatred and calls for violence and harm to others, whether individuals or groups.The essence of democracy is guaranteeing—and protecting—civil and political rights. Foremost among these rights is freedom of speech. Liberal, democratic governments recognize the right to free speech. The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution guarantees the right to free speech. International conventions such as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) similarly recognize it.Free speech is essential for vibrant, robust and rigorous debate, disagreement and contention. It reflects a healthy society, facilitating differences of opinion while respecting tolerance of diversity and creativity. Speech can make us uncomfortable, challenge us, and push us out of our comfort zones
Toward a National Conservation Network Act: Transforming Landscape Conservation on the Public Lands into Law
Get PDFThe United States has made a remarkable commitment to nature conservation on the federal public lands. The country’s existing array of national parks, wilderness areas, national monuments, wildlife refuges, and other protective designations encompasses roughly 150 million acres, or nearly 40 percent of the “lower 48” federal estate. A robust land trust movement has protected another 56 million acres of privately owned lands. Advances in scientific knowledge reveal that these protected enclaves, standing alone, are insufficient to protect native ecosystems and at-risk wildlife from climate change impacts and unrelenting development pressures. Abetted by existing law, conservation policy is now focusing on the larger landscape to preserve biological diversity and to promote ecological resilience as principal management goals. This growing emphasis on landscape-scale conservation is evident in various protected area complexes that have arisen organically across the federal estate in places as diverse as the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, California’s Mojave Desert, and Colorado’s San Luis Valley. To fully capitalize on these ad hoc developments, this article makes the case for a new National Conservation Network Act to legitimize and expand upon these protected areas. It first reviews the origins and evolution of the nation’s protected land systems and related nature conservation strategies, and then identifies the scientific and legal developments underlying landscape-scale conservation strategies. Next, it highlights several emergent protected area complexes evident on the public lands, explaining their diverse origins and important conservation contributions. It concludes by proposing new legislation that would place a statutory umbrella over these protected complexes, mandate effective interagency coordination within them, enlist private lands as voluntary “affiliates” in these conservation efforts, and establish new wildlife corridor and restoration area designations. The proposed law would validate the current movement toward landscape conservation, and thus amplify the federal commitment to nature conservation to meet the challenges looming ahead
The Battlefield of Tomorrow, Today: Can a Cyberattack Ever Rise to an “Act of War?”
Get PDFIn a sense, war has not changed. The end results will always remain the same: death and destruction; even if that destruction is not fully tangible. The results may be instantaneous, or they may be delayed. It is only the means implemented to achieve these destructive ends that evolve. Cyberwarfare is a product of that evolution. Most importantly, we must always remain abreast of evolution and the changes in warfare in order to effectively and efficiently respond to new attacks, and to prevent them as well.
This Note sheds light on recent evolution in warfare. It enlightens the reader of the history and science behind cyberattacks through recent incidents involving cyber; argues that cyberattacks can constitute an act of war in international law by triggering the right to self-defense; proposes a tiered analysis in order to effectively, proportionally, and legally respond to attacks in cyberspace; and recommends that the international and national community take the necessary measures to implement this suggestion in order to prepare for the inevitable: a devastating cyberattack
Accelerated Civil Rights Settlements in the Shadow of Section 1983
Get PDFThe families of Eric Garner, Laquan McDonald, Freddie Gray, and Walter Scott have obtained multimillion dollar settlements from the cities in which their family members lost their lives. This Article identifies and labels these settlements as a legal response unique to high-profile policeinvolved deaths: accelerated civil rights settlement. It defines accelerated civil rights settlement as a resolution strategy that uses the threat of 42 U.S.C. Section 1983 litigation rather than litigation itself to compensate police-involved shooting victims’ family members. This Article explains how accelerated civil rights settlement involves no complaint or case—nothing is filed. Also, the goal of accelerated civil rights settlement is to obtain settlement by focusing on one incident as opposed to a city’s practices or customs. It may not effect widespread social change. But the strategy’s aim is pure: it seeks only compensation. To that end, it is successful, and has allowed some victims’ families to avoid the toll prolonged litigation exacts. Accelerated civil rights settlement stands in sharp contrast to the protracted and painful Section 1983 litigation undertaken by Michael Brown’s parents. Trial in that case was set for 2018, three years after filing. Discovery was brutal, requiring production of Brown’s medical records from age ten onward. Accelerated civil rights settlement is an innovative alternative that shields well-known victims’ families from the ordeal of federal litigation.
Accelerated civil rights settlement relies on Section 1983, but in a new way that differs from its previous uses. Still, this Article concludes that just as accelerated civil rights settlement represents brilliant strategy, its reliance on Section 1983 is no less meaningful than previous applications. The paper recounts Section 1983’s history as a malleable statutory tool. It ties Section 1983’s current role to its past incarnations, including its Reconstruction Era origin as a federal law aimed squarely at the Klan. It considers the law’s purpose in 1960s Chicago when it was employed to challenge racist police practices. It looks to how it was relied upon in impact litigation concerning the 1999 shooting of Amadou Diallo
Trademarks, Certification Marks and Technical Standards
Get PDFThe names of many technical standards such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and DVD have become household terms known throughout the developed world. This chapter describes different approaches that have been taken with respect to the naming and legal protection of technical standards, ranging from those that are wholly unregulated to those that are administered under strict certification and compliance regimes. It concludes by questioning the need for aggressive protection of marks that exist largely to inform consumers about technical product features rather than the source of standards themselves
California Climate Change Lawsuits: Can the Courts Help with Sea-Level Rise, and Who Knew What When?
Get PDFBetween 1900 and 2005, sea level along the extensive California coast rose seven inches (17.8 centimeters), and sea level rise there is still accelerating. Indeed, as the U.S. Global Change Research Program reported in 2014, the California coast faces a multitude of economic and ecological challenges as a result of climate change.Small wonder, then, that the State of California and several California communities—especially those in the San Francisco Bay area—have brought a series of lawsuits against some of the biggest sources of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, seeking both to slow the pace of climate change and to secure financial judgments that compensate for ongoing damages and help to finance adaptation measures. This short article summarizes what has been happening in the California municipalities three consolidated sea level rise-based climate change lawsuits. It concludes that, at the moment, judges in California disagree over whether these lawsuits are based on state tort law or federal common law, whether the lawsuits should be in state or federal court, and whether the lawsuits can proceed. To add to the fun, the SEC may become involved, raising questions about the plaintiffs\u27 and defendants\u27 relative climate change moral culpability
From Foundational Law to Limiting Principles in Federal Indian Law
Get PDFIn this Article, I am arguing that one of the reasons animating the Court’s move away from Justice Marshall’s exceptionalism is its fear that under traditional foundational principles of federal Indian law, Indian tribes may gain what the court subjectively perceives to be “unfair” advantages over non-Indians. Therefore, the Court has been looking for limiting principles tending to achieve level playing fields between tribal and non-tribal actors. This Article also argues, however, that while looking for a level playing field may sound like a worthwhile goal, there are many pitfalls involved in this process that may end up hurting tribal sovereign interests
Overstating America\u27s Wrongful Conviction Rate? Reassessing the Conventional Wisdom About the Prevalence of Wrongful Convictions
Get PDFA growing body of academic literature discusses the problem of wrongful convictions — i.e., convictions of factually innocent defendants for crimes they did not commit. But how often do such miscarriages of justice actually occur? Justice Scalia cited a figure of 0.027% as a possible error rate. But the conventional view in the literature is that, for violent crimes, the error rate is much higher — at least 1%, and perhaps as high as 4% or even more.
This Article disputes that conventional wisdom. Based on a careful review of the available empirical literature, it is possible to assemble the component parts of a wrongful conviction rate calculation by looking at error rates at trial, the ratio of wrongful convictions obtained through trials versus plea bargains, and the percentage of cases resolved through pleas. Combining empirically based estimates for each of these three factors, a reasonable (and possibly overstated) calculation of the wrongful conviction rate appears, tentatively, to be somewhere in the range of 0.016%–0.062% — a range that comfortably embraces Justice Scalia’s oftencriticized figure.
If this Article’s tentative error-rate range is correct, it means that previous scholarship has significantly overstated the risk of wrongful conviction. Moreover, it is possible to compare the lifetime risk of being wrongfully convicted to the risk of being a victim of a violent crime. The relative risk ratio appears to be about 30,000 to 1. This decidedly skewed ratio suggests that reform measures for protecting the innocent may need to be cautiously assessed to ensure that they do not interfere with the important goal of prosecuting the guilty
The Anticommons at Twenty: Concerns for Research Continue
Get PDFTwenty years after Heller and Eisenberg predicted the emergence of an anticommons in biomedical research, this article assesses the currency of the anticommons theory. While a patent-fueled research anticommons does not appear to have emerged in the ways that Heller and Eisenberg envisioned, there are new ways in which the fragmentation of rights -- whether through trade secrecy, narrow licensing or data propertization -- continues to threaten research and commercial development. The anticommons theory thus remains as relevant today as it was when it was first proposed