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The Aoc In The Age Of Covid - Pandemic Preparedness Planning In The Federal Courts, Zoe Niesel

Faculty Articles

The 2020 COVID-19 pandemic created a crisis for American society—and the federal courts were not exempt. Court facilities came to a grinding halt, cases were postponed, and judiciary employees adopted work-from-home practices. Having court operations impacted by a pandemic was not a new phenomenon, but the size, scope, and technological lift of the COVID-19 pandemic was certainly unique.

Against this background, this Article examines the history and future of pandemic preparedness planning in the federal court system and seeks to capture some of the lessons learned from initial federal court transitions to pandemic operations in 2020. The Article begins by …

Just Plain Dumb?: How Digital Contact Tracing Apps Could’Ve Worked Better (And Why They Never Got The Chance), Brian E. Ray

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

This essay describes how the privacy debate that emerged over digital contact tracing and Google’s and Apple’s decisions to strictly limit apps permitted to use their platforms resulted in undercutting their potential usefulness as a tool to combat the pandemic while still failing to engender trust in these tools as intended.

A 'Public' Journey Through Covid-19: Donald Trump, Twitter, And The Secrecy Of U.S. Presidents’ Health, Mark Fenster

UF Law Faculty Publications

Donald Trump ignored numerous governance norms in his one term as U.S. President, especially those that prescribe disclosure of official and personal financial information. His brief period of illness from COVID-19, which he broadcast to the world via his Twitter account, revealed the complexity of Trump’s relationship to the concept and norms of transparency that presume information’s necessity for a functional and accountable state. At the same time that Trump offered little in the way of coherent and authoritative information about his health, he also provided an enormous amount of seemingly “inside” and direct accounts of the progress of his …

Covid-19, Courts, And The 'Realities Of Prison Administration.' Part Ii: The Realities Of Litigation, Chad Flanders

All Faculty Scholarship

Lawsuits challenging prisons and jails for not doing enough to stop the spread of COVID-19 among inmates have faced mixed results in the courts: wins at the district court level are almost always followed by losses (in the form of stays of any orders to improve conditions) at the appeals court level or at the Supreme Court. This short article tries to explain why this is happening, and makes three comparisons between how district courts and appeals courts have analyzed these lawsuits. First, district courts and appeals courts tend to emphasize different facts in their decisions. District courts focus more …

Factors Affecting Access To Administrative Health Data For Research In Canada: A Study Protocol, Cynthia Kendell, Adrian Levy, Geoff Porter, Elaine Gibson, Robin Urquhart

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

In Canada, most provinces have established administrative health data repositories to facilitate access to these data for research. Anecdotally, researchers have described delays and substantial inter-provincial variations in the timeliness of data access approvals and receipt of data. Currently, the reasons for these delays and variations in timeliness are not well understood. This paper provides a study protocol for (1) identifying the factors affecting access to administrative health data for research within select Canadian provinces, and (2) comparing factors across provinces to assess whether and how they contribute to inter-provincial variations in access to administrative health data for research.

Exploring The Food And Drug Administration’S Review And Approval Of Entresto (Sacubitril/Valsartan), Ashley Eadie, Keith Brunt, Matthew Herder

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Federal regulatory agencies such as the United States Food and Drug Administration review pharmacological evidence to ensure the safety and efficacy of new and repurposed pharmaceuticals prior to market approval. The discussions, disagreements and procedural decisions contained within such reviews offer unique insight into a pharmaceutical's strengths, weaknesses and opportunities, yet are often overlooked as a significant source of pharmacological information for research and development. To highlight the value of such resources, we present a case study on Entresto, a first-in-class angiotensin receptor-neprilysin inhibitor for the treatment of heart failure with reduced ejection fraction, and explore the regulatory rationale underlying …

Pandemics, Paid Sick Leaves, And Tax Institutions, Alex Zhang

Faculty Articles

The COVID-19 pandemic is currently ravaging the world, and the United States has been largely unsuccessful at containing the coronavirus. One long-standing policy failure stands out as having exacerbated the pandemic in our country: the lack of a national mandate of paid sick leaves, without which workers face financial and workplace-cultural pressures to attend work while sick, thus spreading the virus to their fellow employees and the public at large.

This Article provides the blueprint for a national, subsidized mandate of paid sick leaves and two additional insights about our tax institutions as mechanisms of effectuating broader societal goals. It …

(Un)Masking The Truth - The Cruel And Unusual Punishment Of Prisoners Amidst The Covid-19 Pandemic, Ariel Berkowitz

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

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 …

Vaccination And The Child’S Right To An Open Future, Elias Feldman

Lewis & Clark Law Review

States commonly require the vaccination of children through their parens pa- triae and police powers. But many states also allow parents to opt for non- medical exemptions from these vaccination requirements, contributing to the emergence of a national vaccine hesitancy crisis. By permitting parents not to vaccinate their children, do states that grant these exemptions violate children’s rights? This Article posits that children may indeed have a right to be vac- cinated and thus protected against contracting a disease for which there is a scientifically proven vaccine. This Article examines this question through the lens of Joel Feinberg’s theory of …

J Mich Dent Assoc January 2021

The Journal of the Michigan Dental Association

Every month, The Journal of the Michigan Dental Association brings news, information, and features about Michigan dentistry to our state's oral health community and the MDA's 6,200+ members. No publication reaches more Michigan dentists!

In this issue, the reader will find the following original content:

• A cover story on “The Dentist’s Role in Recognizing Sleep-Disordered Breathing in Children”.
• A feature article, “Dental Sleep Medicine Education: Do You Want a Nap or a Full Night’s Sleep?”.
• The feature article, “In-office Plans: Where Are We Now? What Have We Learned?”
• News you need, Editorial and regular department articles on MDA Foundation activities, …

Adolescent Medical Decisionmaking Rights: Reconciling Medicine And Law, Doriane Lambelet Coleman, Philip M. Rosoff

Faculty Scholarship

Dennis Lindberg came into his aunt’s care when he was in the 4th grade because his parents struggled with drug addiction and could not provide for him. At thirteen, he was baptized in his aunt’s faith as a Jehovah’s Witness. Just days after he turned fourteen, on November 6, he was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia.

The prognosis was that Dennis had a 75% chance of cure with standard oncology treatment. Consistent with the requirements of his new faith, however, Dennis told his doctors, “I do not want to be treated if the requirement is that I would have to …

A Pathway To Health Care Citizenship For Daca Beneficiaries, Medha D. Makhlouf, Patrick J. Glen

Faculty Scholarly Works

Since 2012, beneficiaries of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) have enjoyed a certain normalization, however tenuous, of their status in the United States: they can legally work, their removal proceedings are deferred, and they cease to accrue unlawful presence. Regarding subsidized health coverage, however, DACA beneficiaries remain on the outside looking in. Although other deferred action beneficiaries are eligible for benefits through Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program, and the Affordable Care Act, the Obama Administration specifically excluded DACA beneficiaries. This decision undermines DACA’s goal of legitimizing beneficiaries’ presence in the United States. From a health policy perspective, it …

Achieving Better Care In Pennsylvania By Allowing Pharmacists To Practice Pharmacy, Travis Murray

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

Traditionally, state legislatures implemented Prescription Drug Monitoring Programs (“PDMPs”) to assist prescribers, pharmacists, and law enforcement in identifying patients likely to misuse, abuse, or divert controlled substances. PDMP databases contain a catalog of a patient’s recent controlled substances that pharmacies have filled, including the date, location, the quantity of medication filled, and the prescribing health care provider. Prescribers in Pennsylvania have a duty to query the PDMP before prescribing controlled substances in most clinical settings. Pharmacists have a similar duty in Pennsylvania to dispense safe and effective medication therapy to patients and to screen patients for potential signs of misuse, …

A Pound Of Flesh: How Medical Copayments In Prison Cost Inmates Their Health And Set Them Up For Reoffense, Rachel Wiggins

University of Colorado Law Review

The attitude of acquiescence in legislatures and courts has permitted the American prison system to develop a practice of exploiting the health of its incarcerated population as an additional and excessive form of punishment. This article focuses on a practice widely used in prisons-the imposition of medical copayments- which contributes to the current culture of endangering the physical and mental health of incarcerated persons, all in the name of cost cutting and prisoner control. The problem of medical copayments could be solved by both the courts, which could recognize that the practice serves no legitimate penological interest, and the states …

Sex, Crime, And Serostatus, Courtney K. Cross

Washington and Lee Law Review

The HIV crisis in the United States is far from over. The confluence of widespread opioid usage, high rates of HIV infection, and rapidly shrinking rural medical infrastructure has created a public health powder keg across the American South. Yet few states have responded to this grim reality by expanding social and medical services. Instead, criminalizing the behavior of people with HIV remains an overused and counterproductive tool for addressing this crisis—especially in the South, where HIV-specific criminal laws are enforced with the most frequency.

People living with HIV are subject to arrest, prosecution, and lengthy prison sentences if they …

Over The Top: Judges, Lawyers, And Covid-19 Rhetoric, Jonathan L. Entin

Health Matrix: The Journal of Law-Medicine

No abstract provided.

Covid-19 And The Hipaa Privacy Rule: Asked And Answered, Stacey A. Tovino

Faculty Articles

The severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), the virus that causes coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), raises important and vexing privacy and security issues. Public health officials, law and policy makers, and members of the general public disagree, for example, regarding the amount and type of individually identifiable health data that should be collected, used, and disclosed for public health surveillance, public health investigation, and public health intervention. Stakeholders also diverge in their opinions regarding the sufficiency of federal and state data privacy and security laws. Some stakeholders believe that current statutes and regulations are sufficient to protect individually identifiable …

The Next Surges Are Here: What Can American Governments Lawfully Do In Response To The Ongoing Covid-19 Pandemic?, Jeff Thaler

Mitchell Hamline Law Journal of Public Policy and Practice

No abstract provided.

Pandemics And International Law: The Need To Strengthen International Legal Frameworks After The Covid-19 Global Health Pandemic [Sierra Leone], Charles C. Jalloh

Articles

No abstract provided.

Co-Opting Coronavirus, Assailing Asylum, Ashley B. Armstrong

Faculty Publications

The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) issued an Order on March 26, 2020, under Title 42, Section 265 of the Public Health Service Act, in the name of combatting the spread of coronavirus. The Order has been called the “Asylum Ban” because it effectively has sealed the southern border to protection-seekers, resulting in the pushback of nearly 400,000 asylees and unaccompanied children. This Article argues that the Trump administration has contravened the rule of law by using the coronavirus pandemic as a convenient pretext to end asylum in the U.S., and by violating the rights of protection-seekers. In doing so, …

Jacobson 2.0: Police Power In The Time Of Covid-19, James R. Steiner-Dillon

Akron Law Faculty Publications

The COVID-19 pandemic has become a legal, as well as a public health, crisis. In response to the pandemic, state and municipal governments have imposed unprecedented constraints on Americans’ daily activities. These restrictions provoked a wave of constitutional challenges that have revealed the antiquated doctrinal foundations of states’ police power in the area of public health. It has been over a century since the Supreme Court, in Jacobson v. Massachusetts, articulated a broadly deferential approach to constitutional review of state orders issued in response to a public health emergency. The constitutional order has changed since Jacobson was decided; many provisions …

Macromedical Regulation, Barak D. Richman, Steven L. Schwarcz

Faculty Scholarship

The COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically shown that a localized disease can be transmitted to the broader population, nationally and worldwide. This Article analyzes how to design regulation to help control that transmission. To that end, we first observe that existing healthcare regulation focuses almost exclusively on regulating individual components of the medical and healthcare industry, while lacking a capacity to address how those components work together as a system -a system that pandemics can destabilize. Indeed, one factor that contributed to COVID-19's spread was the inability of U.S. healthcare regulation to operate on a societal level, to protect certain components …

Intellectual Property As A Determinant Of Health, Ana S. Rutschman

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

Public health literature has long recognized the existence of determinants of health, a set of socioeconomic conditions that affect health risks and health outcomes across the world. The World Health Organization defines these determinants as “forces and systems” consisting of “factors combin[ing] together to affect the health of individuals and communities.” Frameworks relying on determinants of health have been widely adopted by countries in the global South and North alike, as well as international institutional players, several of which are direct or indirect players in transnational intellectual property (IP) policymaking. Issues raised by the implementation of IP policies, however, are …

Re-Emphasizing African Bioethics In Light Of Potential Crispr-Based Treatment For Hiv And Sickle Cell Disease, Taylor Daniel

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

Recent genetic studies indicate that CRISPR-Cas9, a biological gene-editing mechanism derived from bacteria, may be capable of curing HIV and Sickle Cell Disease. Clinical research for HIV and SCD is prevalent in African nations because of the high incidence of those diseases in all forms. Because past research studies in Africa demonstrate how Western companies can abuse lax ethics regulations in developing African nations, ethics systems must prevent this new, potentially far-reaching CRISPR technology from being prematurely and unethically used on African research participants. In updating current international bioethics frameworks, drafters should pay particular attention to its application in African …

Property And Intellectual Property In Vaccine Markets, Ana Santos Rutschman

All Faculty Scholarship

As biopharmaceutical forms of technology, vaccines constitute one of the most important tools for the promotion and maintenance of public health. Tolstoy famously wrote that [h]appy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.¹ Vaccine markets offer perhaps one of the most extreme embodiments of Tolstoy's principle² in the field of biopharmaceutical innovation.

Pandemic Emotions: The Good, The Bad, And The Unconscious —Implications For Public Health, Financial Economics, Law, And Leadership, Peter H. Huang

Publications

Pandemics lead to emotions that can be good, bad, and unconscious. This Article offers an interdisciplinary analysis of how emotions during pandemics affect people’s responses to pandemics, public health, financial economics, law, and leadership. Pandemics are heart-breaking health crises. Crises produce emotions that impact decision-making. This Article analyzes how fear and anger over COVID-19 fueled anti-Asian and anti-Asian American hatred and racism. COVID-19 caused massive tragic economic, emotional, mental, physical, and psychological suffering. These difficulties are interconnected and lead to vicious cycles. Fear distorts people’s decision readiness, deliberation, information acquisition, risk perception, and thinking. Distortions affect people’s financial, health, and …

Environmental Law, Disrupted By Covid-19, Rebecca Bratspies, Vanessa Casado Peréz, Robin Kundis Craig, Lissa Griffin, Sarah Krakoff, Keith Hirokawa, Katrina Kuh, Jessica Owley, Melissa Powers, Shannon Roesler, Jonathan Rosenbloom, J. B. Ruhl, Erin Ryan, David Takacs

Publications

For over a year, the COVID-19 pandemic and concerns about systemic racial injustice have highlighted the conflicts and opportunities currently faced by environmental law. Scientists uniformly predict that environmental degradation, notably climate change, will cause a rise in diseases, disproportionate suffering among communities already facing discrimination, and significant economic losses. In this Article, members of the Environmental Law Collaborative examine the legal system’s responses to these crises, with the goal of framing opportunities to reimagine environmental law. The Article is excerpted from their book Environmental Law, Disrupted, to be published by ELI Press later this year.

Global Regulation Of Germline Genome Editing: Ethical Considerations And Application Of International Human Rights Law, Scott J. Schweikart

Loyola of Los Angeles International and Comparative Law Review

No abstract provided.

One Child Town: The Health Care Exceptionalism Case Against Agglomeration Economies, Elizabeth Weeks

Scholarly Works

This Article offers an extended rebuttal to the suggestion to move residents away from dying communities to places with greater economic promise. Rural America, arguably, is one of those dying places. A host of strategies aim to shore up those communities and make them more economically viable. But one might ask, “Why bother?” In similar vein, David Schleicher’s provocative 2017 Yale Law Journal article, Stuck! The Law and Economics of Residential Stagnation urged dismantling a host of state and local government laws operating as barriers to migration by Americans from failing economies to robust agglomeration economies. But Schleicher said little …