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Mastering the Chargemaster: Minimizing Price-Gouging and Exposing the Structural Flaws in the Healthcare "Market"
Get PDFIn his seminal article, Bitter Pill: Why Medical Bills Are Killing Us,1 Steven Brill recounts stories of Americans of modest to comfortable means, whose lives were turned upside-down, not just by tragic illness; but, by the cost of the cure.
Cloud Computing and the NSA: The Carbon Footprint of the Secret Servers
Get PDFEdward Snowden took the world by storm when he exposed the data collection practices of the National Security Agency, known to many as the NSA. Much ink has been spilled on the constitutionality of such practices and the scope of its surveillance yet the cloud computing that facilitates such surveillance often goes unmentioned, if not unnoticed.
Front Matter
No full textThe Pittsburgh Journal of Environmental and Public Health Law (PJEPHL) is published annually by the University Library System, University of Pittsburgh under the editorial control of students of the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, 3900 Forbes Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA 15260. PJEPHL can be contacted by email at [email protected]. PJEPHL is freely available to readers worldwide at http://pjephl.law.pitt.edu. PJEPHL is printed by Western Newspaper Publishing Co., Inc., Indianapolis, Indiana. Copyright for each work contained in this issue is retained by the author and under a Creative Commons Attribution- Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Statutory Requirements for Artificial Insemination: A Sperm Donor\u27s Fight to Let Go of His Rights
Get PDFIn 2009, an auto-mechanic from Topeka, Kansas by the name of William Marotta answered a Craigslist ad posted by Angela Bauer and Jennifer Schreiner, a lesbian couple seeking a private sperm donor for artificial insemination.
Does Unconventional Gas Require Unconventional Ownership? An Analysis of the Functionality of Ownership Frameworks for Unconventional Gas Development
Get PDFThe implementation of a responsive and coherent property framework, capable of effectively supporting the progression of a rapidly expanding unconventional gas industry is proving to be a complex and intricate process for many countries. The theory of mineral ownership that underpins any regulatory framework represents its point of departure. It is increasingly clear that the problems associated with the expansion of unconventional gas development have challenged both private and state based models. This article examines how the core principles that form the foundation for land and mineral ownership in both the United States and Australia have responded to the rapid expansion of the unconventional gas industry. The conventional inertia associated with institutionalized property frameworks has meant that the frameworks are largely resistant to external change. Hence, whilst the transformation that has occurred in the energy industries following the advent of unconventional gas development has been remarkable, ownership frameworks have struggled to cope. Many principles that evolved in a period when unconventional gas was inconceivable are now proving ill-equipped and non-responsive to the new energy environment. This Article argues that the stasis that afflicts ownership frameworks has precluded many of the conventional principles from adapting to meet the needs of this new energy revolution. This has generated an increasing imperative, in both the United States and Australia, to develop and implement legislative initiatives that revise or alter the way in which the schema of orthodox ownership principles applies to unconventional gas. Focused legislative development will promote adaptable, consistent, and structured principles, which in turn will allow ownership frameworks to respond to the operational demands of a new energy era.
Regulators Throughout American History Have Been Reluctant To Regulate Cigars And The FDA Still Is Today, But Why?
Get PDFIn this article I explore the history of cigar regulation, going back to colonial times, yet focusing on the current regulatory climate. I review the different regulations imposed on tobacco products throughout American history, concluding that government regulators were never particularly serious about regulating tobacco products until the release of the 1964 Surgeon General’s Report on Smoking and Health. However, I point out that this Report was so obsessed with the health hazards of cigarettes that it actually had the unintended consequence of promoting In the long run the increased consumption of cigars. Today, health organizations show intense frustration with the FDA’s current refusal to regulate cigars, even though the 2009 Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act gave the FDA regulatory jurisdiction over cigars. But applying a totality of circumstances test, looking at the politics, economics, and even the lack of enough credible health studies on cigars, I conclude, somewhat surprisingly, that there are very good reasons why the FDA should probably not at this time jump into the regulatory arena and impose the same sort of tough regulations on cigars as imposed on cigarettes
Kivalina at the Supreme Court: A Lost Opportunity for Federal Common Law
Get PDFThis article discusses the status of federal common law in the wake of the Supreme Court\u27s May, 2013 denial of petitioners\u27 writ of certiorari in Native Village of Kivalina v. Exxonmobil. A close reading of Supreme Court and recent appellate decisions on federal common law as applied to transboundary pollution reveals three views on the availability and function of federal common law where a federal statute addresses a category of environmental harms: presumptive displacement of federal common law when a federal statute creates a regulatory approach, presumptive coexistence of federal statutory and common law where a federal statute does not provide relief for injuries alleged under common law, and case-by-case balancing of the interfering effect of federal common law against the injuries left unaddressed by federal statutory law. The Court’s current approach resides somewhere between presumptive displacement and case-by-case balancing, and although the Court offers various rationales for this approach in its latest federal common law opinion, the most convincing of these is that cases involving transboundary pollution, particularly those alleging global warming-induced injury, are cumbersome for federal courts to handle as common law matters. Allocation of judicial resources is within the Supreme Court\u27s discretion to consider in rejecting a case, but it is a far more pragmatic than principled rationale, and thus less than satisfying as a court’s primary reason for denying relief. A more principled approach, advocated by Justices Stevens and Blackmun in dissents to two key federal common law cases, is that the displacement analysis should begin with the premise that the judicial system aims, first and foremost, to compensate the injured, and that a federal common law claim should be displaced only where the legislative-regulatory regime covering the subject of a common law claim directly addresses the injury alleged under common law
