Law Commons^™

Laboratories Of Exclusion: Medicaid, Federalism & Immigrants, Medha D. Makhlouf

Faculty Scholarly Works

Medicaid’s cooperative federalism structure gives states significant discretion to include or exclude various categories of immigrants. This has created extreme geographic variability in immigrants’ access to health coverage. This Article describes federalism’s role in influencing state policies on immigrant eligibility for Medicaid and its implications for national health policy. Although there are disagreements over the extent to which public funds should be used to subsidize immigrant health coverage, this Article reveals that decentralized policymaking on immigrant access to Medicaid has weakened national health policy. It has failed to incentivize the type of state policy experimentation and replication that justifies federalism …

Securities Scholars' Comment Letter On Draft Whistleblower Award And Protection Act, Andrew K. Jennings, Samantha J. Prince, Benjamin P. Edwards, Andrew C. Baker

Faculty Scholarly Works

In May 2020, the North American Securities Administrators Association (NASAA), an organization representing state and provincial securities regulators in Canada, the United States, and Mexico, released a draft Model Whistleblower Award and Protection Act (the Proposed Act) for public comment. The Proposed Act drew from securities-whistleblower statutes in Utah and Indiana, as well as the federal Sarbanes-Oxley and Dodd-Frank Acts.

In brief, the Proposed Act provided for a state-level securities whistleblower-award program and an anti-retaliation private right of action. NASAA received seven comment letters, including one from securities scholars. Our securities scholars’ letter highlighted two areas of concern. First, we …

Life Is A Highway: Addressing Legal Obstacles To Foster Youth Driving, Lucy Johnston-Walsh

Faculty Scholarly Works

The simple and relatively mundane act of driving a car, which many of us take for granted, can have a profound impact on many aspects of adulthood. The ability to drive a car can provide a means to pursue education and employment, to earn income, and to ultimately obtain independence. As a young adult, a car is often the first acquired asset, which leads to developing credit history for other major life purchases. Owning a car may also be a significant contributor to a person’s economic wellbeing and future buying power. Yet the simple act of driving a car is …

How Can Pennsylvania Protect Itself From Its Own Measles Outbreak?, Megan M. Riesmeyer, Kristen Feemster

Faculty Scholarly Works

When a response to inaccurate information strives to be an informative exercise of its own, it is difficult to balance the desire to respond point by point to mischaracterized, misleading, or untrue information, with the need to simply offer a complete picture of facts. This article is a response to Abigail Wenger’s article regarding

vaccinations. To reply to each mischaracterization or inaccuracy in turn means this response loses its own informative intent and becomes simply a rebuttal. However, to ignore mischaracterizations and inaccuracies is to risk the reader’s acceptance of those points as true. Through illustrative examples in the United …

Facilitating Distinctive And Meaningful Change Within U.S. Law Schools (Part 2): Pursuing Successful Plan Implementation Through Better Resource Management, Patrick H. Gaughan, Samantha J. Prince

Faculty Scholarly Works

In Part 1 of this series, one of the current authors used institutional theory, behavioral economics, and psychology to explain why U.S. law schools have had difficulty evolving faster and better.1 The author then used institutional entrepreneurship to propose a seven-step,faculty-led, operational change process designed to overcome institutional isomorphism and to enable each law school to formulate a distinctive, meaningful, strategic plan. In Part 2, the current article addresses the typical implementation challenges to be expected within the context of existing law school governance. The article begins by discussing the Resource Based View of the firm and the role of …

Immigrants And Interdependence: How The Covid-19 Pandemic Exposes The Folly Of The New Public Charge Rule, Medha D. Makhlouf, Jasmine Sandhu

Faculty Scholarly Works

On February 24, 2020, just as the Trump administration began taking significant action to prepare for an outbreak of COVID-19 in the United States, it also began implementing its new public charge rule. Public charge is an immigration law that restricts the admission of certain noncitizens based on the likelihood that they will become dependent on the government for support. The major effect of the new rule is to chill noncitizens from enrolling in public benefits, including Medicaid, out of fear of negative immigration consequences. These chilling effects have persisted during the pandemic. When noncitizens are afraid to (1) seek …

The Ethics Of Dna Testing At The Border, Medha D. Makhlouf

Faculty Scholarly Works

From 2018 to 2020, the U.S. government dramatically expanded DNA surveillance of immigrants. The most recent expansion, finalized in March 2020, effectively requires the collection of DNA from all immigration detainees and storage of their genetic information in the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (“FBI”) Combined DNA Index System (“CODIS”) database for criminal forensic investigation. This new policy is ethically troubling because it fails to address the potential privacy harms it creates; shifts the application of DNA analysis for criminal investigation from retrospective to prospective assessment of criminality; and disparately impacts racial and ethnic minorities. In this time of extreme immigration …

Lawyer Regulation Stakeholder Networks And The Global Diffusion Of Ideas, Laurel S. Terry

Faculty Scholarly Works

This Article is a companion article to Laurel S. Terry, Global Networks and the Legal Profession, 53 Akron L. Rev. 137 (2019), https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3620399. That article explained why global networks are useful for lawyers and the clients they represent, introduced some of the scientific literature about networks, cited prior literature about (mostly domestic) legal profession networks, and then identified ways in which lawyers and their employers, including law firms, participate in global legal profession networks, as well as domestic networks.

This Article focuses on a subset of global legal profession networks, which are the global networks of lawyer regulation stakeholders. Section …

Germany’S Digital Health Reforms In The Covid-19 Era: Lessons And Opportunities For Other Countries, Sara Gerke, Ariel D. Stern, Timo Minssen

Faculty Scholarly Works

Reimbursement is a key challenge for many new digital health solutions, whose importance and value have been highlighted and expanded by the current COVID-19 pandemic. Germany’s new Digital Healthcare Act (Digitale–Versorgung–Gesetz or DVG) entitles all individuals covered by statutory health insurance to reimbursement for certain digital health applications (i.e., insurers will pay for their use). Since Germany, like the United States (US), is a multi-payer health care system, the new Act provides a particularly interesting case study for US policymakers. We first provide an overview of the new German DVG and outline the landscape for reimbursement of digital health solutions …