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Full-Text Articles in Law
Rethinking Constitutionally Impermissible Punishment, Nadia Banteka, Erika Nyborg-Burch
Rethinking Constitutionally Impermissible Punishment, Nadia Banteka, Erika Nyborg-Burch
Notre Dame Law Review Reflection
In this Essay, we discuss how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected our understanding of constitutionally permissible punishment. We argue, first, that the protracted failure to act by those who have had authority to do so during this public health emergency created a high risk that incarcerated people would suffer severe illness—and even death—in violation of due process protections and the Eighth Amendment prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. Second, we suggest that a changed understanding of public safety in the context of detention and release during public health emergencies has the potential to shift the framework even after the emergency …
Covid-19 Sewage Testing As A Police Surveillance Infrastructure, Elizabeth E. Joh
Covid-19 Sewage Testing As A Police Surveillance Infrastructure, Elizabeth E. Joh
Notre Dame Journal on Emerging Technologies
This essay argues that sewage testing will outlive the pandemic and become a part of a general policing surveillance infrastructure. We risk adopting this surveillance method without taking care to assess the legal and policy questions raised by its use. Wastewater can provide early clues not just for COVID-19 outbreaks, but also for the presence (and assumed use) of opioids, methamphetamines, and other illegal drugs. Sewage testing at the University of California, San Diego, recently led to an alert that an infected person was “someone who used a restroom [at a specified residence hall] from 6 a.m. and 9:30 a.m. …
Efficient Ethical Principles For Making Fatal Choices, W. Kip Viscusi
Efficient Ethical Principles For Making Fatal Choices, W. Kip Viscusi
Notre Dame Law Review
Resource allocations of all kinds inevitably encounter financial constraints, making it infeasible to make financially unbounded commitments. Such resource constraints arise in almost all health and safety risk contexts, which has led to a regulatory oversight process to ascertain whether the expected benefits of major regulations outweigh the costs. The economic approach to monetizing health and safety risks is well established and is based on the value of a statistical life (“VSL”). Government agencies use these values reflecting attitudes toward small changes in risk to monetize the largest benefit component of regulations—that dealing with mortality risks. This procedure consequently bases …