Law Commons^™

Are Vaccine Lotteries Worth The Money?, Christopher Robertson, K. Aleks Schaefer, Daniel Scheitrum

Faculty Scholarship

This research evaluates the effects of the twelve statewide vaccine lottery schemes that were announced as of June 7, 2021 on state vaccination rates. We construct a dataset that matches information on the timing and location of these lotteries with daily, county-level data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) on the cumulative number of people who have received at least one dose of an emergency-authorized Covid-19 vaccine. We find that 10 of the 12 statewide lotteries studied (i.e., all but Arkansas and California) generated a positive, statistically significant, and economically meaningful impact on vaccine uptake after thirty days. …

Reflections On Legal Education In The Aftermath Of A Pandemic, Timothy Casey

Faculty Scholarship

This essay considers two significant changes to legal education in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. First, on-line programs will expand, based on the largely successful experiment in delivering legal education on-line during the pandemic. But this expansion must be thoughtful and deliberate. The legal education curriculum could include more on-line courses, but only if the learning outcomes and the pedagogy are aligned with on-line education. Experiential courses may not be the best fit for on-line given the specific learning outcomes and the benefits of in-person instruction in those courses. Second, student well-being will receive more attention in legal education. …

Your Health Is In Your Hands? Us Cdc Covid-19 Mask Guidance Reveals The Moral Foundations Of Public Health, Cecília Tomori, Aziza Ahmed, Dabney P. Evans, Benjamin Mason Meier, Aparna Nair

Faculty Scholarship

In the second year of the COVID-19 pandemic, US public health policy remains at a crossroads. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC’s) May 28, 2021 guidance, which lifted masking recommendations for vaccinated people in most situations, exemplifies a troubling shift — away from public health objectives that center equity and toward a model of individual personal responsibility for health. CDC Director Rochelle Walensky emphasized that "your health is in your hands," undermining the idea that fighting COVID is a "public" health responsibility that requires the support of institutions and communities. The social impacts of this scientific guidance, …

Book Review Of Law In The Time Of Covid-19, Jessie Wallace Burchfield

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Getting Real: The Maryland Healthcare Ethics Committee Network’S Covid‑19 Working Group Debriefs Lessons Learned, Norton Elson, Howard Gwon, Diane Hoffmann, Adam M. Kelmenson, Ahmed Khan, Joanne F. Kraus, Casmir C. Onyegwara, Gail Povar, Fatima Sheikh, Anita J. Tarzian

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Covid-19 And The Caregiving Crisis: The Rights Of Our Nation's Social Safety Net And A Doorway To Reform, Leanne Fuith, Susan Trombley

Faculty Scholarship

In March 2020, the United States declared a pandemic due to the global Covid-19 virus. Across the nation and within a matter of days, workplaces, schools, childcare, and eldercare facilities shuttered. People retreated to their homes to shelter-in-place and slow the spread of the virus for what would become a much longer time than most initially anticipated. Now, more than a year into the pandemic, many professional and personal lives have been upended and become inextricably intertwined. Work is now home, and home is now work. Work is completed at all times of day and well into the night. Children …

The Right To Mental Health In Yemen, Waleed Alhariri, Amanda Mcnally, Sarah Knuckey

Faculty Scholarship

Mental health issues are all too common consequences of conflict and atrocity crimes, often causing upwards of one-quarter of the post-conflict, post-atrocity population to suffer from physical and mental sequelae that linger long after weapons have been silenced. After more than six years of ongoing conflict, Yemen’s already weak health care system is on the brink of collapse, and population resilience has been severely stressed by indiscriminate attacks, airstrikes, torture, food insecurity, unemployment, cholera, and now the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper examines Yemen’s responsibilities regarding the right to mental health and details the few actions the government has taken to …

Should The U.S. Government Actively Assert Its Own Patents?, Christopher J. Morten, Barry Datlof, Amy Kapczynski, Donna Meuth, Zain Rizvi

Faculty Scholarship

On March 10, 2021, our journal partnered with the Engelberg Center on Innovation Law and Policy to host a symposium addressing the role and impact of U.S. innovation policy on access to medicine. Our 2021 Symposium Issue — Volume 11, Issue 1 — captures that event.

The following article represents the second of four panels. This panel asked, “Should the U.S. government actively assert its own patents?” The panel was moderated by Christopher Morten, Deputy Director of NYU Law’s Technology Law & Policy Clinic. The panelists included Barry Datlof, Chief of Business Development and Commercialization in the Office of Medical …

Making America A Better Place For All: Sustainable Development Recommendations For The Biden Administration, John C. Dernbach, Scott E. Schang, Robert W. Adler, Karol Boudreaux, John Bouman, Claire Babineaux-Fontenot, Kimberly Brown, Mikhail Chester, Michael B. Gerrard, Stephen Herzenberg, Samuel Markolf, Corey Malone-Smolla, Jane Nelson, Uma Outka, Tony Pipa, Alexandra Phelan, Leroy Paddock, Jonathan D. Rosenbloom, William Snape, Anastasia Telesetsky, Gerald Torres, Elizabeth Ann Kronk Warner, Audra Wilson

Faculty Scholarship

In 2015, the United Nations Member States, including the United States, unanimously approved 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to be achieved by 2030. The SDGs are nonbinding; each nation is to implement them based on its own priorities and circumstances. This Article argues that the SDGs are a critical normative framework the United States should use to improve human quality of life, freedom, and opportunity by integrating economic and social development with environmental protection. It collects the recommendations of 22 experts on steps that the Biden-Harris Administration should take now to advance each of the SDGs. It is part of …

Clinicians Reflect On Covid-19: Lessons Learned And Looking Beyond, The Association Of American Law Schools (Aals) Policy Committee, Deborah Archer, Caitlin Barry, Lisa Bliss, Gautam Hans, Vida Johnson, Carolyn Haas, Lynnise E. Pantin, Kele Stewart, Erica Wilson, The Clinical Legal Education Association (Clea) Committee For Faculty Equity And Inclusion, Priya Baskaran, Jennifer Fernandez, Crystal Grant, Anjum Gupta, Julia Hernandez, Alexis Karteron, Shobha Mahadev

Faculty Scholarship

As a result of the unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic, clinical faculty had to abruptly adapt their clinical teaching and case supervision practices to adjust to the myriad restrictions brought on by the pandemic. This brought specialized challenges for clinicians who uniquely serve as both legal practitioners and law teachers in the law school setting. With little support and guidance, clinicians tackled never before seen difficulties in the uncharted waters of running a clinical law practice during a pandemic.

In this report, we review the responses of 220 clinicians to survey questions relating to how law clinics and clinicians were treated by …

Is Economic Nationalism In Corporate Governance Always A Threat?, Martin Gelter

Faculty Scholarship

During the past decades, corporate law and corporate governance debates have generally been skeptical of elements of economic ‘Nationalism’ or ‘protectionism.’ Arguably, globalization and convergence in corporate governance have resulted in a reduction of protectionist policies. However, recently COVID-19 has resulted in nationalist and protectionist conduct in economic policy across jurisdictions. Contrary to the predominant view, this paper argues that corporate governance policies intended to serve a particular country’s interest may at times be justified. First, globalization and convergence in corporate governance are likely to have beneficial effects only when outside investors pursue financial rather than political goals. Protectionist policies …

Paying Americans To Take The Vaccine - Would It Help Or Backfire?, Christopher Robertson, Daniel Scheitrum, K. Aleks Schaefer, Trey Malone, Brandon Mcfadden, Paul Ferraro, Kent Messer

Faculty Scholarship

This research investigates the extent to which financial incentives (conditional cash transfers) would induce Americans to opt for vaccination against COVID-19. We performed a randomized survey experiment with a representative sample of 1,000 American adults in December 2020. Respondents were asked whether they would opt for vaccination under one of three incentive conditions ($1,000, $1,500, or $2,000 financial incentive) or a no-incentive condition. We find that—without coupled financial incentives—only 58% of survey respondents would elect for vaccination. A coupled financial incentive yields an 8-percentage-point increase in vaccine uptake relative to this baseline. The size of the cash transfer does not …

Covid-19 And Comparative Corporate Governance, Martin Gelter, Julia M. Puaschunder

Faculty Scholarship

With the pandemic caused by the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 raging around the world, many countries’ economies are at a crucial juncture. The COVID-19 external shock to the economy has the potential to affect corporate governance profoundly. This Article explores its possible impact on comparative corporate governance. For an economy to operate successfully, a society must first find a politically sustainable social equilibrium. In many countries, historical crises—such as the Great Depression and World War II—have resulted in a reconfiguration of corporate governance institutions that set the course for generations. While it is not yet clear whether COVID-19 will have a …

The Covid-19 Pandemic And The Technology Trust Gap, Johanna Gunawan, David Choffnes, Woodrow Hartzog, Christo Wilson

Faculty Scholarship

Industry and government tried to use information technologies to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic, but using the internet as a tool for disease surveillance, public health messaging, and testing logistics turned out to be a disappointment. Why weren’t these efforts more effective? This Essay argues that industry and government efforts to leverage technology were doomed to fail because tech platforms have failed over the past few decades to make their tools trustworthy, and lawmakers have done little to hold these companies accountable. People cannot trust the interfaces they interact with, the devices they use, and the systems that power tech …

The Healthcare System And Pandemics: Where Is The Market Failure?, Sophia S. Helland, Edward R. Morrison

Faculty Scholarship

Barak D. Richman and Steven L. Schwarcz argue that healthcare providers played a central – and failing – role in stemming the fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic. Analogizing to the financial crisis of 2008, they view our healthcare system as a collection of providers, each maximizing returns to its own stakeholders in a laissez-faire regulatory environment that ignored the essential interconnectedness of providers. Because neither hospitals nor regulators were attuned to this interconnectedness, our healthcare system was unprepared for the pandemic, resulting in a reduced standard of care. Just as Dodd-Frank and related legislation view financial institutions as part of …

Crisis And Cultural Evolution: Steering The Next Normal From Self-Interest To Concern And Fairness, Robert A. Bohrer

Faculty Scholarship

This essay examines the current time of crisis and offers a vision of the way in which our society and our law can evolve in response. Crises of this scale are evolution-forcing events and I argue that the current moment can move us towards a fundamentally different vision of law and justice. It is the first essay or article to show that the autonomous pursuit of self-interest was a common assumption or value in the major intellectual forces of the twentieth century: classical free market economics, behavioral economics, and sociobiology, as well as in the competing visions of a just …