Law Commons^™

Decarcerating New York City: Lessons From A Pandemic, Nicole Smith Futrell

Publications and Research

Over the last decade, long before the far-reaching impact of COVID-19, the criminal legal system in New York City was on a meandering path toward decarceration. Set against the national backdrop of declining crime rates and a reckoning with the economic, social, and racial costs of mass criminalization and incarceration, elected officials in New York City and State had finally acknowledged that a shift toward reducing the number of people held in New York City jails was long overdue. Sweeping legislative reforms to bail, discovery, and speedy trial statutes, as well as the planned closure of Rikers Island, the city’s …

Joseph Demarco '22: Reflections On The Fall 2020 Semester, Joseph Demarco

Law School Personal Reflections on COVID-19

No abstract provided.

Dana Drozina Ll.M. '21: Reflections On The Fall 2020 Semester, Dana Drozina

Law School Personal Reflections on COVID-19

No abstract provided.

Sylvanna Gross ’23: Reflections On The Fall 2020 Semester, Sylvanna Gross

Law School Personal Reflections on COVID-19

No abstract provided.

Professor Katherine Mims Crocker: Reflections On The Fall 2020 Semester, Katherine Mims Crocker

Law School Personal Reflections on COVID-19

No abstract provided.

Professor Stacy Kern-Scheerer: Reflections On The Fall 2020 Semester, Stacy Kern-Scheerer

Law School Personal Reflections on COVID-19

No abstract provided.

Max Chu '22: Reflections On The Fall 2020 Semester, Max Chu

Law School Personal Reflections on COVID-19

No abstract provided.

Mechelle King ’21: Reflections On The Fall 2020 Semester, Mechelle King

Law School Personal Reflections on COVID-19

No abstract provided.

Professor Aaron-Andrew Bruhl: Reflections On The Fall 2020 Semester, Aaron-Andrew P. Bruhl

Law School Personal Reflections on COVID-19

No abstract provided.

Professor Jeffrey Bellin: Reflections On The Fall 2020 Semester, Jeffrey Bellin

Law School Personal Reflections on COVID-19

No abstract provided.

Julian Miller '23: Reflections On The Fall 2020 Semester, Julian Miller

Law School Personal Reflections on COVID-19

No abstract provided.

Cleidiane Perez Ll.M. '21: Reflections On The Fall 2020 Semester, Cleidiane Perez

Law School Personal Reflections on COVID-19

No abstract provided.

Samy W. Abdallah '21: Reflections On The Fall 2020 Semester, Samy W. Abdallah

Law School Personal Reflections on COVID-19

No abstract provided.

Professor Jennifer S. Stevenson: Reflections On The Fall 2020 Semester, Jennifer S. Stevenson

Law School Personal Reflections on COVID-19

No abstract provided.

Associate Dean Laura N. Shepherd: Reflections On The Fall 2020 Semester, Laura N. Shepherd

Law School Personal Reflections on COVID-19

No abstract provided.

Fostering States As Laboratories, Myrisha S. Lewis

Popular Media

No abstract provided.

Revisiting Individual Rights And Personal Responsibilities Amid Covid-19, Christie Warren

Popular Media

No abstract provided.

Pandemic Response As Border Politics, Michael R. Kenwick, Beth A. Simmons

All Faculty Scholarship

Pandemics are imbued with the politics of bordering. For centuries, border closures and restrictions on foreign travelers have been the most persistent and pervasive means by which states have responded to global health crises. The ubiquity of these policies is not driven by any clear scientific consensus about their utility in the face of myriad pandemic threats. Instead, we show they are influenced by public opinion and preexisting commitments to invest in the symbols and structures of state efforts to control their borders, a concept we call border orientation. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, border orientation was already generally …

States Should Consider Partial Wealth Tax Reforms, David Gamage, Darien Shanske

Articles by Maurer Faculty

This article is a contribution to Project SAFE (State Action in Fiscal Emergencies). In other essays in this project, we explain steps the federal government should take to help state and local governments cope with their looming budget crises. The federal government is much better positioned to manage these crises than states and localities and, ideally, it would act sufficiently to prevent the need for state and local governments to cut spending or raise taxes. However, we fear that the federal government may fail to act sufficiently, leaving states and localities with the need to make painful spending cuts, raise …

Discrimination Against Employees Without Covid-19 Antibodies, Debbie N. Kaminer

Publications and Research

Policies that favor those with immunity to a contagious disease are a novel concept and have not been used in recent United States history. It is important to think about the legal and policy issues associated with banning employees without immunity to Covid-19 from the workplace and the appropriate balance between an individual’s right to work and the public health of the nation. In doing so, it is useful to compare these policies to immunization laws, mandatory retirement laws and the Americans with Disabilities Act.

What The Pandemic Can Teach Climate Attorneys, Sara C. Bronin

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused more rapid changes to the law than most of us have seen in our lifetimes. These changes have remade, and in many cases severed, our social and economic connections to each other, in ways unprecedented except during war.

As many have argued, climate change is also a dire emergency, requiring an equally sweeping legal response. Rising seas, raging wildfires, and dramatic hurricanes have already destroyed lives and communities. We may be a few years away from irreversible devastation.

Yet we have not seen even a fraction of the legal reforms needed to reverse our march …

Cares Act 2020: Unemployment Insurance And Farmer/Ranchers, Robert Tigner

Extension Farm and Ranch Management News

First paragraph:

Generally, unemployment insurance across the country is managed by state government. Each has different rules, with oversight by the US Department of Labor. The Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES) Act made changes to the unemployment coverage for workers and appropriated funds for the changes. The act tasked the Labor Department with writing rules for the changes and it has issued an Unemployment Insurance Letter — UL No. 16-20 — that begins the rulemaking process. This guidance will then be used by Nebraska to implement the CARES Act. This article reviews what is known now with …

The Bar Exam And The Covid-19 Pandemic: The Need For Immediate Action, Claudia Angelos, Sara J. Berman, Mary Lu Bilek, Carol L. Chomsky, Andrea A. Curcio, Marsha Griggs, Joan W. Howarth, Eileen Kaufman, Deborah Jones Merritt, Patricia E. Salkin, Judith Welch Wegner

Publications and Research

The novel coronavirus COVID-19 has profoundly disrupted life in the United States. Among other challenges, jurisdictions are unlikely to be able to administer the July 2020 bar exam in the usual manner. It is essential, however, to continue licensing new lawyers. Those lawyers are necessary to meet current needs in the legal system. Equally important, the demand for legal services will skyrocket during and after this pandemic. We cannot close doors to the profession at a time when client demand will reach an all-time high.

In this brief policy paper, we outline six licensing options for jurisdictions to consider for …

Child Maltreatment Reporting Statistics During The Covid-19 Pandemic: A Cursory Analysis, Alison L. Hansen

Center for Health Law Policy and Bioethics

This goal of this research is to provide a cursory analysis of publicly available child maltreatment data collected during the COVID-19 pandemic. The number of total allegations of child maltreatment between the months of March and June—a span of time representative of the COVID-19 pandemic thus far—were analyzed in five different states in the years 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020. An analysis of total numbers of allegations and the percentage change in allegations per year revealed a disproportionate decline in child maltreatment reports during the COVID-19 pandemic. This data corroborates nationwide reports of decreases in child maltreatment allegations in the …

How Many Votes Is Too Few?, Rebecca Green

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Lessons From China's Response To Covid-19: Shortcomings, Successes, And Prospects For Reform In China's Regulatory State, Jacques Delisle, Shen Kui

All Faculty Scholarship

China’s response to COVID-19 offers a case study of law, the regulatory state and governance in China. The costly delay in the initial response reflected distinctive features of the Chinese system, including perverse incentives local-level officials face to try to cover up problems, fragmentated institutions and rules, and politically weak public health bureaucracies. After the initial shortcomings, China’s largely successful efforts to contain the pandemic also reflected defining features of the Chinese system, including a highly capable, centralized and authoritarian party-state that could mobilize vast resources, coordinate across fractious institutions, create ad hoc government and party leadership bodies, and deploy …

Covid, Crisis And Courts, Colleen F. Shanahan, Alyx Mark, Jessica K. Steinberg, Anna E. Carpenter

Faculty Scholarship

Our country is in crisis. The inequality and oppression that lies deep in the roots and is woven in the branches of our lives has been laid bare by a virus. Relentless state violence against black people has pushed protestors to the streets. We hope that the legislative and executive branches will respond with policy change for those who struggle the most among us: rental assistance, affordable housing, quality public education, comprehensive health and mental health care. We fear that the crisis will fade and we will return to more of the same. Whatever lies on the other side of …

Who’S Afraid Of Section 1498? A Case For Government Patent Use In Pandemics And Other National Crises, Christopher J. Morten, Charles Duan

Faculty Scholarship

COVID-19 has created pressing and widespread needs for vaccines, medical treatments, PPE, and other medical technologies, needs that may conflict – indeed, have already begun to conflict – with the exclusive rights conferred by United States patents. The U.S. government has a legal mechanism to overcome this conflict: government use of patented technologies at the cost of government-paid compensation under 28 U.S.C. § 1498. But while many have recognized the theoretical possibility of government patent use under that statute, there is today a conventional wisdom that § 1498 is too exceptional, unpredictable, and dramatic for practical use, to the point …