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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.

Inequality, Covid-19, And International Human Rights: Whose Lives Matter?, Barbara J. Stark

Hofstra Law Faculty Scholarship

Part 1 of the article shows that the poor, everywhere, are more likely to get sick and more likely to die when they do. In many countries, they are also more likely to starve.

Part II explains why this is a matter of human rights. The ongoing deprivation of basic rights to healthcare and an adequate standard of living are major factors. As this Part demonstrates, however, the extreme vulnerability of the poor is grounded in earlier violations of human rights, including state-sanctioned segregation in the American south in the 1950s and what one author has called “the darker side …

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 …

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 …

International Aviation Law And Pandemic, Timothy Ravich

Journal of Air Law and Commerce

Commercial airplanes are vectors of infectious disease, advancing, if not sparking, global epidemics and potentially pandemics by exporting pathogens from endemic areas of the world to non-endemic places. For example, according to the global scientific community, the Zika virus was introduced to the Americas by air travel. Researchers also believe that infected mosquitos on international flights contributed to the worldwide spread of malaria, Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, and the West Nile virus. Most recently, governmental authorities worldwide, in addition to issuing national or local shelter-in-place orders, closed their borders and grounded nearly all international air travel on account of the …

Richmond Law Magazine: Winter 2021, University Of Richmond

Richmond Law Magazine

The Pandemic Pivot

8 Things to Know When Suing and Defending in a Post-COVID World

The Pandemic, Students, and The Law

Environmental Protection And Human Rights In The Pandemic, Sarah C. Slinger, Maria Antonia Tigre, Natalia Urzola

Faculty Publications

The Covid-19 outbreak in 2020 took the world by surprise. The virus spread quickly around the globe and death tolls were constantly on the rise at early stages of the pandemic. Although vaccine rollouts have helped halt the number of deaths, inequality in accessing vaccines and effective treatments is still a major issue. From the onset, Covid-19 negatively impacted global well-being and myriad human rights. The present report examines how environmental protection and related human rights have been affected by the Covid-19 pandemic. Based on link between environmental and human health, this report focuses on ecological human rights. The report …

Encouraging Interagency Collaboration: Learning From Covid-19, Rachel Sachs

Scholarship@WashULaw

In the health innovation context, federal regulatory authority is sharply fragmented among different agencies. The National Institutes of Health, Food and Drug Administration, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and other agencies all share responsibilities in the development and dissemination of new healthcare technologies. Scholars have previously written about the importance of interagency collaboration both in the healthcare area and more generally, and about strategies for encouraging collaborative efforts to promote various policy goals. Under these accounts, a failure to collaborate between federal agencies may be unfortunate, but it does not typically result in or exacerbate a crisis. In the …

Pandemic Nationalism, Covid-19, And International Law, Leila Nadya Sadat

Scholarship@WashULaw

This Essay explores possible reforms to the World Health Organization (WHO) considering its response to the COVID-19 pandemic. It also suggests using existing mechanisms to enforce the WHO Constitution and the International Health Regulations (IHR). The Essay focuses on three aspects of global health governance: (1) how nationalism of powerful States renders pandemic control difficult given the “weakest-link public goods” character of global health emergencies; (2) how legal and practice reforms might nonetheless strengthen and fortify the WHO’s response; and (3) how existing provisions of the WHO Constitution and the IHR might be enforced through the dispute resolution clauses in …

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

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 Its Impact(S) On Innovation, Clark Asay, Stephanie Plamondon Bair

Faculty Scholarship

In previous work, we explored how certain characteristics of adversity are often more conducive to innovation than others. In this Article, prepared as part of the Lee E. Teitelbaum Utah Law Review Symposium—The Law & Ethics of Medical Research, we review some of that work and apply it specifically to the COVID-19 context. We conclude by assessing certain policy implications in light of how the COVID-19 pandemic has both spurred and hindered innovation.

Health Information Beyond Pandemic Emergencies: Privacy For Social Justice, Leslie Francis

American University Law Review

The COVID-19 pandemic has forcefully revealed the critical importance of timely information to identify emerging infections, discern patterns of disease, and stop disease spread. Information about individuals both as patients, and as ordinary people in the world is necessary for each of these tasks. Yet the implications for information use and efforts to achieve social justice are significant.

This Article first surveys information needs as revealed by the pandemic. It then articulates different normative approaches to privacy and confidentiality to develop two implications for privacy and justice: that information gleaned in clinical care and information possessed by public health should …

National Legal Paradigms For Public Health Emergency Responses, James G. Hodge Jr.

American University Law Review

The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed significant weaknesses of the U.S. federalist system in controlling major infectious disease threats. At the root of American failures to adequately respond is a battle over public health primacy in emergency preparedness and response. Which level of government—federal or state—should actually “call the shots” to quell national emergencies? Constitutional principles of cooperative federalism suggest both levels of government are responsible. Yet real-time applications of these principles, coupled with dubious national leadership, contributed to horrific public health outcomes across America. No one seeks a repeat performance of U.S. COVID-19 response efforts to forthcoming major health threats. …

Digital Disease Surveillance, Alan Z. Rozenshtein

American University Law Review

The fight against future pandemics will likely involve digital disease surveillance: the use of digital technology to enhance traditional public-health techniques like contact tracing, isolation, and quarantine. But legal scholarship on digital disease surveillance is still in its infancy. This Article fills that gap.

Part I explains the role that digital disease surveillance could have played in responding to coronavirus, and the role it likely will play in future infectious disease outbreaks. Part II explains how the “special needs” exception to the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement permits almost any rationally designed disease surveillance program. Part III suggests safeguards beyond what …

Disease And Data In Society: How The Pandemic Expanded Data Collection And Surveillance Systems, Alan Butler, Enid Zhou

American University Law Review

The COVID-19 pandemic1 is a global tragedy of historic proportions, and its impacts on our families, communities, and social structures will be felt for many years to come. From the significant to the mundane, COVID-19 has changed many aspects of daily life. One of the less obvious but more long-lasting changes may well be the expansion of data collection and surveillance systems adopted both in response to, and as a result of, the pandemic.

Post-Pandemic Privacy Law, Tiffany C. Li

American University Law Review

COVID-19, the global pandemic that began in 2019, altered how we live our lives in just about every way imaginable. Some of those changes were obvious— for example, those who were fortunate enough to be able to work from home began working online—while other changes were more subtle. The latter category included unprecedented levels of data collection by governments and organizations purporting to collect information that would help stop the pandemic’s spread. Given the deadly nature of COVID-19, few would question any public health efforts, no matter their impact on privacy. However, the lack of attention to privacy issues during …

Tracing The Invisible: Information Fiduciaries And The Pandemic, Anne L. Washington, Lauren Rhue

American University Law Review

Predictive data technology designed to contain the COVID-19 pandemic was not as successful as promised. Data-centric solutions to providing testing and tracing did little to limit the virus’s spread in part because they served only the most visible parts of society. This Article argues for more robust solutions to protect individuals’ privacy—whether those individuals are currently visible or invisible to pandemic technology—if pandemic technology is to provide the universal coverage necessary for a public health emergency, such as the COVID- 19 pandemic. First, we contend that current pandemic data technology operates under rigid technical and social assumptions that thwart participation …

The Invisible Ban: Negligent Disparate Impact, Kenneth R. Davis

American University Law Review

Title VII provides two primary anti-discrimination theories: disparate treatment and disparate impact. Disparate-treatment law prohibits intentional employment discrimination against a member of a protected class. Disparate impact law imposes strict liability on employers for using facially neutral employment practices that have a disproportionately adverse effect on a protected class.

This Article proposes following the structure of tort law as a template for the law of employment discrimination. A comparison of Title VII to tort law reveals that an analogy to negligent torts is absent from Title VII. The very language of Title VII provides the means to rectify this deficiency …

Heeding The Call Of Covid-19, David Wiebers, Valery Feigin

Animal Sentience

We are grateful to all of our commentators. They have provided a wide range of valuable perspectives and insights from many fields, revealing a broad interest in the subject matter. Nearly all the commentaries have helped to affirm, refine, expand, amplify, deepen, interpret, elaborate, or apply the messages in the target article. Some have offered critiques and suggestions that help us address certain issues in greater detail, including several points concerning industrialized farming and the wildlife trade. Overall, there is great awareness and strong consensus among commentators that any solution for preventing future pandemics and other related health crises must …

Economic Liberty Takings, Jeffrey Manns

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

State governors rediscovered the sweeping contours of their police powers in imposing recurring waves of COVID-19 pandemic shutdowns. However necessary shutdowns have been to slow down the spread of COVID-19, state governors’ actions have exposed how takings law has become all but toothless in compensating business owners from state-imposed shutdowns. The result has been state governors picking economic winners and losers. Stores and sectors that state governors designated as “essential” have remained continuously open and received windfalls of pandemic profits. In contrast, businesses that state governors deemed “non-essential” have been stripped of their ability to function for months at a …

Health Law: Vaccine Mandates: A Primer, Dorit Reiss

The Judges' Book

No abstract provided.

Systemic Racism, The Government’S Pandemic Response, And Racial Inequities In Covid-19, Ruqaiijah Yearby, Seema Mohapatra

All Faculty Scholarship

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the federal and state governments have ignored racial and ethnic minorities’ unequal access to employment and health care that results in racial inequities in COVID-19 infections and deaths. In addition, they have enacted laws that further exacerbate these inequities. Consequently, many racial and ethnic minorities are employed in low-wage essential jobs that lack paid sick leave and health insurance. This lack of benefits causes them to go to work even when they are sick and prevents them from receiving appropriate medical treatment. As a result, racial and ethnic minorities have disproportionately been infected and died from …

Protecting The Rights And Wellbeing Of People With Disabilities During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Elizabeth Pendo

All Faculty Scholarship

The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed and exacerbated significant inequities experienced by people with disabilities. It has also emphasized the value of legal protections against discrimination based on disability. The Americans with Disabilities Act was enacted 30 years ago to eliminate discrimination against people with disabilities and ensure equal opportunity across major areas of American life (ADA, 2008). Together with an earlier law, the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 Rehabilitation Act, 2012), this landmark civil rights law impacts a broad range of issues raised by the COVID-19 pandemic and protects a large and growing number of Americans. This Chapter focuses on application …

Disparities In Health Care: The Pandemic’S Lessons For Health Lawyers, Danielle Pelfrey Duryea, Nicole Huberfeld, Ruqaiijah Yearby

All Faculty Scholarship

Population-level disparities in health and health care came to the forefront of U.S. public consciousness in 2020. As the racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic stratification of COVID-19 infection and death rates emerged with chilling clarity, the Black Lives Matter protests of the summer focused millions of Americans on the complex, structural nature of inequity and its long-lasting effects.

Access to quality health care is a “social determinant of health,” meaning that it is one of the “non-medical factors that influence health outcomes . . . the conditions in which people are born, grow, work, live, and age, and the wider set …

Lessons Learned: Strengthening Medicaid To Address Health And Economic Emergencies, Nicole Huberfeld, Sidney Watson

All Faculty Scholarship

COVID-19 has disproportionately harmed low-income people, especially Black and Latino populations, seniors, and people with disabilities. Medicaid plays an essential role in providing coverage and access to care for these populations. As COVID-19 disrupted employment, earnings, and insurance coverage, Medicaid enrollment increased, in part because Congress offered states increased Medicaid funding in return for maintaining eligibility and enrollment for the duration of the public health emergency (PHE). At the same time, many states expanded eligibility and streamlined enrollment to assure that people could secure and keep coverage. Such policies resulted in more than 5.3 million more Americans having Medicaid coverage …

Covid-19 Employee Health Checks, Remote Work, And Disability Law, Elizabeth Pendo

All Faculty Scholarship

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) prohibits discrimination against people with disabilities, about 61 million individuals in the U.S. The law’s protections in the workplace are especially important during COVID-19, which has worsened pre-existing disparities experienced by people with disabilities. The ADA also applies to new strategies to reduce the risk of COVID-19 infection in the workplace. This Chapter will focus on two strategies that impact individuals with and without disabilities – employee health screening, testing and vaccination policies, and new or expanded remote work programs.

Intellectual Property As A Determinant Of Health, Ana Santos Rutschman

All Faculty Scholarship

Public health literature has long recognized the existence of determinants of health, a set of socio-economic 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 …

Vaccine Clinical Trials And Data Infrastructure, Ana Santos Rutschman

All Faculty Scholarship

We find ourselves at a momentous turn in the history of vaccines. The COVID-19 pandemic triggered a quasi-global vaccine race that not only compressed vaccine research and development (R&D) timelines, but also paved the way for the administration of a new type of vaccine technology – mRNA vaccines, which work in substantially different ways from the vaccines in use before the pandemic.

While the process of bringing emerging COVID-19 vaccines to market has taken place in an unusually short timeframe, it was largely predicated on the same scientific and regulatory processes that govern the development, approval and deployment of new …

Social Media Self-Regulation And The Rise Of Vaccine Misinformation, Ana Santos Rutschman

All Faculty Scholarship

This essay examines the main characteristics and shortcomings of mainstream social media responses to vaccine misinformation and disinformation. Parts I and II contextualize the recent expansion of vaccine information and disinformation in the online environment. Part III provides a survey and taxonomy of ongoing responses to vaccine misinformation adopted by mainstream social media. It further notes the limitations of current self-regulatory modes and illustrates these limitations by presenting a short case study on Facebook—the largest social media vehicle for vaccine-specific misinformation, currently estimated to harbor approximately half of the social media accounts linked to vaccine misinformation. Part IV examines potential …

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 …