Digital Commons Network^™

Argument For Statewide Vaccine Mandates—An Ethical And Legal Analysis, Liv Hymowitz

Colorado Law Student Scholars

No abstract provided.

Setting The Stage For Grants Pass (& A Moral Constitutional Reckoning), Sara K. Rankin

William & Mary Law Review

The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in City of Grants Pass v. Johnson marked a seismic shift in the legal landscape governing homelessness throughout the country. By permitting the criminalization of involuntary acts, such as sleeping or resting in public when no shelter is available, the Court foreclosed constitutional protections under the Eighth Amendment’s Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause and signaled judicial deference to punitive local policies targeting unhoused people. But Grants Pass was not spontaneous; it was seeded over time. This Article situates Grants Pass within the broader legal and nonlegal contexts that made its outcome possible. Part I explores …

“The Needs Of The Many Outweigh The Needs Of The Few”: A Plan For A New Farm Bill That Promotes The Health And Welfare Of Humans And Nonhuman Animals, And Protects The Planet On Which We Live., John Lieberman

Fordham Environmental Law Review

The Farm Bill was created in 1933, with the passage of the Agricultural Adjustment Act. The Bill was part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal, designed to assist farmers struggling with low prices during the Great Depression and Dust Bowl era. Thus the era of the farm subsidy was born. Crafted in a different time, with technology, knowledge, science and an economy that today would be considered obsolete, the basic mechanisms, and financial support, have nevertheless lived on.

The myriad of problems that have arisen since that time within an agriculture industry that has flourished on the taxpayer dime …

Antibiotics In Animal Agriculture, The Risks To Health, And Differences In The Us And The Eu, Li-Ting Chou

Seattle Journal of Technology, Environmental, & Innovation Law

No abstract provided.

Transforming Blood Management Systems In Developing Countries Through Technological And Artificial Intelligence-Driven Innovations, Sandeep Bhargava, Shaun Aaron Abram, Srividhya Ragavan

Faculty Scholarship

It is critical to ensure the safe and quality supply of blood among various stakeholders; however, this remains a significant challenge in today’s world, especially in developing countries. These countries face severe problems, including blood shortages, fragmented regulatory frameworks, and inconsistent quality control measures. To tackle these challenges, countries like India are trying to implement the use of artificial intelligence (AI) and its derivative platforms to transform blood collection, testing, storage, and distribution by enabling interoperability, real-time compliance monitoring, automated donor screening, optimized inventory management, and advanced component separation. The article argues that developing countries must adopt both regulatory reform …

Priority Without Progress: The Fda's Neglected Tropical Disease Voucher Program After 18 Years, Maple Goh, Kevin Outterson, Aaron Kesselheim

Faculty Scholarship

Introduction: To incentivize drug and vaccine development for neglected tropical diseases (NTDs), US Congress created the Priority Review Voucher (PRV) program in 2007. Sponsors that obtain Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval for an eligible product receive a voucher redeemable to accelerate review of another product.

Methods: We reviewed the program’s public health impact by examining all 14 vouchers awarded for NTD products between 2007 and 2024, including the timing of FDA approval relative to World Health Organization (WHO) Prequalification, Essential Medicines List inclusion, first use in endemic countries, and voucher disposition.

Results: Eight (57%) achieved WHO …

The Archaeology Of Alienation: Representation Of Death For The Mentally Illness In Lawang, Malang, Aninda Diandra Rahmadewi, Irmawati Marwoto Imj

International Review of Humanities Studies

Alienation as a novelty in archaeological research which in this study aims to explain how mentally illness patients are buried at Lawang Mental Hospital as an alienation and how the representation of the graves of patients with mentally illness. Alienation is a form of experience by individuals who are marginalized from society, one of which is people with mentally illness. Alienation in mentally illness does not only occur during their lifetime, but continues until they die. Lawang Mental Hospital, built in 1884, is the only mental hospital that has a special cemetery for mentally illness patients. The method used focuses …

Vaccines For Pandemics: Lessons From Covid-19 For H5n1 And Beyond, Alison Mccarthy, Michael S. Sinha

University of Chicago Legal Forum

The COVID-19 pandemic brought unprecedented challenges to vaccine development and distribution. Never before has a vaccine been developed so quickly and distributed so rapidly. But compared to past pandemics and public health crises—like polio or even the more recent H1N1 pandemic—the United States government’s COVID-19 vaccine strategy depended greatly on the private sector.

COVID-19 vaccines were credited with saving millions of lives worldwide, but private companies reaped these rewards, retained their patent rights, and profited from the vast and pressing need for their vaccines. Now, five years later, not every company views its vaccine work as a success. Financial hits …

Realizing The World Health Organization’S Constitutional Mission: Equitably And Everywhere, Sam Halabi, Lawrence Gostin

University of Chicago Legal Forum

COVID-19 revealed deeply embedded inequalities in countries’ capacity to respond to public health disasters. From 2020 to 2024, the content and scope of international health law expanded to address these deep inequities, including a new pandemic agreement and significant changes to the International Health Regulations (IHR). Recent moves by the Trump Administration leveled significant losses on this new global health law infrastructure. At the heart of this infrastructure is the World Health Organization (WHO)—the UN’s specialized agency, which for 77 years has led the world toward realizing the human right to the highest attainable standard of mental and physical health. …

Crisis And The Constitution: The Role Of Civil Liberties In Times Of National Security Threat, Michele Goodwin, Allison M. Whelan

University of Chicago Legal Forum

In this Article, we contribute to the unfolding debate around civil liberties and civil rights in times of political, cultural, and health crises. As this Article was drafted, the National Guard was deployed in Los Angeles, California and Washington, D.C. by the President of the United States. In Oregon, a federal judge issued a final order barring the Trump administration from deploying troops to Portland. These events renew questions related to federalism, states’ rights, individual civil rights, and civil liberties. As chaos unfolds, what is the rule of law and role of civil liberties in times of real or purported …

The Disaster Management Complex: Law’S Adaptations In Times Of Climate Disaster, Michael Burger, Jeffrey Schlegelmilch, Lucia Bragg

University of Chicago Legal Forum

The Anthropocene is marked by constant climate-related disasters and defined by the urgent need to foster and implement adaptations to future climate impacts that reduce disaster risk. The intensity, frequency, and severity of extreme weather events continue to rise even as nations and corporations alike miss their emissions targets, all promising a hotter, wetter, and more extreme future. A number of federal agencies, including the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), have, at times, sought to adapt their own famously fragmented responses to these changing circumstances. However, federal disaster response is conducted against a backdrop of authorizing legislation that is designed …

Rotting In Prison: Exploring The Food-Driven Health Epidemic In Our Correctional System, Alexis S. Gabel

Journal of Health Care Law and Policy

No abstract provided.

Fda's New Approval Plan For Covid-19 Vaccines: An Inquiry Of "Benefit" Rather Than The Statutory Scope Of "Safety, Purity, And Potency"?, Henry Yat-Shing Kwan

Journal of Law and Health

This article analyzes the FDA's proposed policy plan issued in May 2025 regarding the approval of Covid-19 boosters for different groups of persons. It offers two constructive recommendations that will help prevent constitutionality challenge on impermissible intrusion of the freedom of health.

The first is to avoid using the confusing term "benefit" but instead focus on the statutory parameters of "safety, purity, and potency." The affected group can make a strong case that their free choice of vaccination should not be deprived, as long as the vaccine qualifies for the statutory thresholds of being safe, pure, and potent. They are …

Patent Pending: How The Current Patent Utility Requirement Hinders Biotechnological Innovation, Madison Drlik

Journal of Law and Health

The legal system is always playing catch up to adapt to new legal landscapes, doctrines, and technology; however, patent law needs help to compete with biotechnological research in the race towards innovation. Biotechnological research in the realm of human health and medicine often involves the use of therapeutic drugs. The field of healthcare biotechnology takes biological systems and processes and generates novel, creative solutions to a number of human health conditions. However, the translation process for a new drug, therapy, or process is long and expensive which requires investors to help the researchers and scientists move their creations from inception …

Changing Climate, Changing Rights: How The Unitedstates Can Learn From The Emergence Of The Right To A Healthy Environment In Colombia And India, Jasmine Furin

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

The right to a healthy environment embodies the idea that environmental protection and the enjoyment of human rights are connected. As this concept has developed, authorities around the world have described the contours of this right in various ways. The right to a healthy environment generally includes a safe climate, clean air, healthy ecosystems, biodiversity, access to safe water, healthy and sustainable food, non-toxic environments, access to information, public participation in decision-making, and access to justice. Thus, the right to a healthy environment is unique because it provides individuals with a more complete set of protections against environmental harms compared …

Assessing Patent Pledges: A Case Study In The Vaccine And Biopharma Space, Ana Santos Rutschman

Akron Law Review

No abstract provided.

Climate Lies And Unjust Profits, Vanessa Casado-Pérez, Yotam Kaplan, Yael Lifshitz, Niv Meyerson

Emory Law Journal

The climate crisis has reached a dangerous tipping point. Our dependence on fossil fuels continues largely unchecked, reinforced by corporations that use their influence to block reform and protect their profits. At the same time, the federal government has dismantled critical environmental safeguards, including by rescinding the greenhouse gas endangerment finding and rolling back vehicle emission standards. Together, these actions threaten to strip away some of the last protections standing between us and escalating climate catastrophe.

In this grim landscape, communities across the nation are turning to the courts with renewed urgency, seeking justice and reform through climate litigation. Yet, …

Greening With Justice: Evaluating Denver’S Urban Green Space Policies Through An Environmental Justice Lens, Vicente Tapia

Colorado Environmental Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Equity In Place, Segregation, And The Phillips Neighborhood, Myron W. Orfield

Articles

This Article describes an existential legal and factual conflict about residential segregation. It is centered in a neighborhood a few blocks north of where George Floyd—and more recently Renee Good—were murdered. Five years before Floyd’s murder, the conflict reached a breaking point, resulting in three lawsuits. One involved federal civil rights and two involved state civil rights claims that housing policy was causing deeper residential and educational segregation. Much of this debate was summarized in a series of articles in the journal Housing Policy Debate before the lawsuits were filed.

On one side were proponents of greater residential and educational …

The Deregulation Of Cancer, Daniel G. Aaron

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

Fifty years ago, the U.S. embarked on a radical new path. Under pressure from the environmental movement, Congress passed an array of statutes aimed at regulating carcinogens out of our world. This regulatory experiment sprawled from air and water to food and consumer products.

Legal scholars have paid scant attention to this wave of cancer regulation despite its size and importance and the public’s apparent interest in avoiding carcinogens. But there is a growing literature finding flaws with individual regimes within the framework, such as the Clean Air Act, the Toxic Substances Control Act, and the Tobacco Control Act. In …

Justice For One, Injustice For All: The Consequences Of The Legal Services Corporation’S Class Action Restriction, Elizabeth J. Lattner

Case Western Reserve Law Review

No abstract provided.

Suing The Ghost In The Medical Machine, Jason R. Cheek

SMU Science and Technology Law Review

Devices that autonomously diagnose medical conditions, with no human interaction, have arrived. These self-operating systems incorporate artificial intelligence (AI), and include machines that diagnose preventable blindness, as well as some that write radiology reports. These devices feature AI-integrated software to make diagnosis decisions traditionally made by humans who have received extensive medical training. Soon, AI-driven devices will autonomously make treatment decisions.

What happens when these autonomous medical systems harm a patient? At the moment, most would expect product liability law to provide a path to recovery. But AI oftentimes uses multiple complex inputs and approaches, including statistical probabilities, to reach …

Filling The Network Gap In Research Ethics: Analyzing Ethical Issues At Scale In Big Team Science, Susan Wolf, Gillian H. Roehrig, Timothy L. Pruett, Korkut Uygun, Claire Colby Mcvan, Evelyn Brister, Shawneequa L. Callier, Alexander M. Capron, James F. Childress, Rosario Isasi, Andrew D. Maynard, Kenneth A. Oye, Paul B. Thompson, Terrance R. Tiersch

Articles

Scientific research increasingly involves large, multidisciplinary teams networked across multiple institutions to develop new technologies. Despite the rise of complex research networks and big team science, there has been too little analysis to date of the ethical challenges facing these networks. The extensive literature on the ethical issues confronting individual researchers and small teams (the microlevel) and on the larger societal challenges flowing from research and new technology (the macrolevel) leaves a troubling gap in between, at the mesolevel of the research network involved in big team science. Yet the ability of complex networks to conduct research ethically—which is essential …

How Robotics Can Reduce Occupational Injuries In Hospitals: Is Hipaa A Barrier?, Uwa Maher

Student Works

No abstract provided.

Toxic Exposure, Judy Ann Clausen

UF Law Faculty Publications

Service members are often exposed to toxins in service. When they file claims for disability compensation, they struggle to link their diseases to toxic exposure while serving. Congress stepped in to ease their burden by creating presumptions, relieving the veterans of the burden of proving a nexus between the exposure and their disease. In 2022, Congress enacted the PACT Act which expanded presumptive service connection for veterans whose service involved exposure to toxic substances. But, for veterans whose conditions do not fall within these presumptions, problems with the Department of Veterans Affairs (“VA”) benefits adjudication system make it difficult to …

Overbreadth In Medical Practice Acts: A Threat To Preventive Speech, Barbara Zabawa

Faculty Works

Many Americans consult unlicensed wellness coaches for scientifically-valid advice on diet, exercise, and lifestyle interventions. Yet state medical practice acts and ambiguous government line drawing between wellness and medical care chill the speech of these coaches as it relates to disease prevention, even though conventional medicine systematically fails to deliver the speech-heavy preventive care consumers need and want. This Article argues that medical practice acts, particularly the sixteen state statutes that include "prevention" in their definition of medical practice, are constitutionally overbroad restrictions on protected speech. Despite judicial and scholarly assumptions to the contrary, not all those working in wellness …

Maine Law Magazine - Issue No. 100, University Of Maine School Of Law

Maine Law Magazine

Features

• Maine Law’s Privacy Program Continues to Innovate
  How Maine Law’s privacy and innovation programs are preparing students for emerging legal challenges.

• New Business & Law Clinic
  Strengthening Maine’s economy one startup at a time.

• Global Experiential Learning
  From the Arctic Circle to U.N. climate negotiations, students engage with environmental law where it happens.

• Rural Access to Justice
  The Rural Practice Clinic’s impact on Maine’s growing justice gap.

• Law & Conservation Efforts
  How Maine Law alumni steward change and safeguard the future through environmental advocacy.

• Supporting Maine’s Vulnerable
  The Refugee & Human Rights Clinic expands access to justice across Maine. …

The “Multi-Normative” Biological Weapons Convention: A Study Of The 2022 Article V Meeting In Geneva, Robert Lawless

Emory International Law Review

In September 2022, States parties to the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) held a Formal Consultative Meeting in Geneva pursuant to Article V of the Convention, following Russia’s allegations that the United States and Ukraine had developed biological weapons in violation of BWC prohibitions. Although largely overlooked in public discourse, the Geneva meeting provides a revealing example of the BWC in practice. This article examines the Geneva meeting to assess the Convention’s normative role in contemporary international relations. It argues that States parties reaffirmed their commitment to the BWC’s core prohibition against the hostile use of biological agents against humans. Moreover, …

Discrimination In The Trademark Id Manual, Rachael Dickson

Fordham Intellectual Property, Media and Entertainment Law Journal

Using evidence drawn from the USPTO’s treatment of 221 identifications submitted for inclusion in the Trademark ID Manual (including 43 this Author submitted on their own and as part of a team), this Article, the first ever written on the ID Manual, argues that the USPTO’s administration of the Manual systematically disadvantages trademark applicants offering lawful but socially disfavored goods or services, such as those relating to cannabis, sexual health, or “vice.”

By deliberately refusing to include identifications of goods and services relating to entire categories of commerce in the ID Manual, the USPTO imposes higher costs, greater uncertainty, and …

Some Caution About Novel State Constitutional Rights, Nick Brod

Campbell Law Review

No abstract provided.