Digital Commons Network^™

We Are The River, David Takacs

Faculty Scholarship

The New Zealand Parliament has recently granted the Whanganui River and the Te Urewera mountain ecosystem rights as legal persons, with a Māori governing board to speak for the nonhuman entities, based upon traditional cultural precepts. Far from an isolated precedent, in what the U.N. Secretary General calls “the fastest growing legal movement of the twenty-first century,” legislatures, courts, or voters in Australia, Colombia, Ecuador, Bangladesh, India, Uganda, and the U.S. have also declared that rivers and other living systems have legal rights. This Article chronicles the movement to grant nonhuman entities legal rights. I analyze the statutes and judicial …

Covid-19 Antibody Testing As A Precondition For Employment: Ethical And Legal Considerations, Sara Gerke, Gali Katznelson, Dorit R. Reiss, Carmel Shachar

Faculty Scholarship

Employers and governments are interested in the use of serological (antibody) testing to allow people to return to work before there is a vaccine for SARS-CoV-2. We articulate the preconditions needed for the implementation of antibody testing, including the role of the U.S. Food & Drug Administration.

Covid-19 And Regulating Vaccines, Dorit R. Reiss

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Employer-Mandated Vaccination For Covid-19, Mark A. Rothstein, Wendy E. Parmet, Dorit R. Reiss

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Government Activism In Bankruptcy, Jared A. Ellias, George Triantis

Faculty Scholarship

It is widely recognized that bankruptcy law can stymie regulatory enforcement and present challenges for governments when regulated businesses file for Chapter 11. It is less-widely understood that bankruptcy law can present governments with opportunities to advance policy goals if they are willing to adopt tactics traditionally associated with activist investors, a strategy we call “government bankruptcy activism.” The bankruptcy filings by Chrysler and General Motors in 2009 are a famous example: the government of the United States used the bankruptcy process to help both auto manufacturers resolve their financial distress while promoting the policy objectives of protecting union workers …

Fedaccounts: Digital Dollars, John Crawford, Lev Menand, Morgan Ricks

Faculty Scholarship

We are entering a new monetary era. Central banks around the world— spurred by the development of privately controlled digital currencies as well as competition from other central banks—have been studying, building, and, in some cases, issuing central bank digital currency (“CBDC”). Although digital fiat currency is one of the hottest topics in macroeconomics and central banking today, the discussion has largely overlooked the most straightforward and appealing strategy for implementing a U.S. dollar-based CBDC: expanding access to bank accounts that the Federal Reserve already offers to a small, favored set of clients. These accounts consist of entries in a …

Virtual Reality: Prospective Catalyst For Restorative Justice, Kate Bloch

Faculty Scholarship

A 2018 U.S. Department of Justice report assessing data from thirty states found that eighty-three percent of those individuals released from state prisons in 2005 were rearrested within nine years.** When a revolving door ushers five of six individuals back into custody and decimates communities, more effective approaches to criminal justice demand attention. In countries around the world, restorative justice has been emerging as a promising candidate. It generally involves an interactive process in which stakeholders identify and grapple with harms caused by the crime. But many environments lack the resources to invoke its benefits. While restorative justice takes various …

The Devil In The Tiers, Robin C. Feldman

Faculty Scholarship

Prescription drug spending in the USA has soared, fueled by rising drug prices. A critical mechanism for restraining drug prices is the formulary tiering system. Although tiering should reflect the cost of a drug—and reward patients who choose less-expensive drugs—something is seriously amiss. Using Medicare claims data from roughly one million patients between 2010 and 2017, this article finds troubling amounts of distorted tiering and wasted cost. Increasingly, generics are shifted to more expensive—and therefore less accessible—tiers. The percentage of generics on the leastexpensive tier drops from 73% to 28%; the percentage of drugs on inappropriate tiers rises from 47% …

Physicians Treating Alzheimer’S Disease Patients Should Be Aware That Televised Direct-To-Consumer Advertising Links More Strongly To Drug Utilization In Older Patients, Robin C. Feldman

Faculty Scholarship

Background: US direct-to-consumer advertising spending for medicine has soared in recent decades. Advertising has been shown to impact drug utilization. Most Alzheimer’s disease patients are above age 65 and may take a range of prescription medications for various disease states. Objective: To investigate how direct-to-consumer advertising is associated with the drug utilization of patients ≥ 65 years old. Methods: Using advertising expenditure data and Medicare Part D drug purchase claims, we performed regression analyses for each of the highest-spending drugs and age group, with cumulative monthly spending as the predictor variable and drug utilization as the response variable. For each …

Negative Innovation: When Patents Are Bad For Patients, Robin C. Feldman, David A. Hyman, W. Nicholson Price Ii, Mark J. Ratain

Faculty Scholarship

Incentives in patent law have driven innovation into spaces that are affirmatively harmful to patients, and patentees are discouraged from taking steps to improve the product so as to prevent adverse health outcomes.

Differential Etiology: Inferring Specific Causation In The Law From Group Data In Science, Joseph Sanders, David L. Faigman, Peter B. Imrey, Philip Dawid

Faculty Scholarship

In every toxic-tort case, the plaintiff must prove that the defendant exposed the plaintiff to something that caused an injury. The causal proof is in two parts: proof of general causation and proof of specific causation. General causation addresses the question of whether the exposure can cause injury in anyone. In the area of toxic torts, the evidence available to answer this question comes in the form of groupbasedstudies in the fields of toxicology, epidemiology, and genetics—studies that search for the effects of causes. Proof of general causation, however, is not enough. Because court cases focus on the individual, the …

States’ Merger Review Authority Is Associated With States Challenging Hospital Mergers, But Prices Continue To Increase, Brent D. Fulton, Jaime S. King, Daniel R. Arnold, Alexandra D. Montague, Samuel M. Chang, Thomas L. Greaney, Richard M. Scheffler

Faculty Scholarship

States can challenge proposed hospital mergers by using antitrust laws to prevent anticompetitive harms. This observational study examined additional state laws—principally charitable trust, nonprofit corporation, health and safety, and certificate-of-need laws—that can serve as complements and substitutes for antitrust laws by empowering states to be notified of, review, and challenge proposed hospital mergers through administrative processes. During the period 2010–19, 862 hospital mergers were proposed, but only forty-two (4.9 percent) were challenged by states, including thirty-five by states without federal involvement, of which twenty-five (71.4 percent) originated in the eight states with the most robust merger review authority. The twenty-five …

Covid-19 Vaccine Uptake Through The Lived Experiences Of Health Care Personnel: Policy And Legal Considerations, Rachel Gur-Arie, Zackary Berger, Dorit Rubinstein Reiss

Faculty Scholarship

Purpose: To investigate whether coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) vaccination campaigns targeted at health care personnel (HCP) in the United States have addressed the lived experiences of HCP on the frontlines of the COVID-19 pandemic and to analyze policy and legal considerations for improving COVID-19 vaccine uptake among HCP. Methods: We conducted a literature and policy review to explore the lived experiences of different occupational groups of HCP on the frontlines of the COVID-19 pandemic—physicians, nurses, trainees, and nonclinical essential workers—in relation to ongoing COVID-19 vaccination campaigns. Finally, we discuss policy and legal considerations to improve the state of HCP COVID-19 …

More Than A Mask: Stay-At-Home Orders And Religious Freedom, Dorit Rubinstein Reiss, Madeline Thomas

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

A Longitudinal Workplace-Based Interprofessional Curriculum For Graduate Learners In A Geriatrics Patient-Centered Medical Home, Pei Chen, Mackenzie Clark, Michele Sherma, Yvonne Troya, Irena Cenzer, Josette Rivera

Faculty Scholarship

Current health professions training programs offer limited longitudinal opportunities in geriatrics and interprofessional collaborative practice (IPCP); these longitudinal opportunities are necessary for a workforce capable of caring for an aging population with complex care needs. We designed a year-long, workplace-based curriculum incorporating interprofessional (IP) preceptorships and formal conferences in which graduate learners from geriatric medicine, pharmacy, social work, and law formed a learners’ team, learned about IPCP, and cared for older adults in an academic geriatrics patient-centered medical home. Our curricular objectives were to 1) improve IP collaborative competencies, 2) improve perceived teamness (defined as having core IP qualities of …

Making Immigration Law Respond To The Needs Of Building U.S. Leadership In Artificial Intelligence, Richad A. Boswell, Aditya Mohan

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Designing Disruption In Pharmaceuticals, Robin C. Feldman

Faculty Scholarship

Antitrust is atomistic: deliberately focused on trees, not forests. It pays attention to the consequences of individual acts alleged to be anticompetitive. That focus is misplaced. Companies and markets don't focus on one particular act to the exclusion of all else. Business strategy em­ phasizes holistic, integrated planning. And market outcomes aren't determined by a single act, but by the result of multiple acts by multiple parties in the overall context of the structure and character­ istics of the market. The atomistic nature of modern antitrust law causes it to miss two important classes of potential competitive harms. First, the …

Combination Therapy Patents: A New Front In Evergreening, Garth W. Strohbehn, Alec J. Kacew, Daniel A. Goldstein, Robin C. Feldman, Mark J. Ratain

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Technology And Litigation: The 21st Century American Experience, Richard L. Marcus

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Us State-Level Legal Interventions Related To Covid-19 Vaccine Mandates, Breanna Fernandes, Mark Christopher Navin, Dorit Rubinstein Reiss, Saad B. Omer, Katie Attwell

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Political (Mis)Representation Of Immigrants On The Census, Ming Hsu Chen

Faculty Scholarship

Who is a member of the political community? What barriers to inclusion do immi- grants face as outsiders to this political community? This article describes several barriers facing immigrants that impede their political belonging. It critiques these barriers not on the basis of immigrants’ rights but based on their rights as current and future members of the political community. This is the second of two Essays. The first Essay focused on voting restrictions impacting Asian American and Latino voters. The second Essay focuses on challenges to including immigrants, Asian Americans, and Latinos in the 2020 Census. Together, the Essays critique …

School Police Reform: A Public Health Imperative, Thalia Gonzalez, Emma Kaeser

Faculty Scholarship

Out of the twin pandemics currently gripping the United States—deaths of unarmed Black victims at the hands of police and racialized health inequities resulting from COVID- 19—an antiracist health equity agenda has emerged that identifies racism as a public health crisis. Likewise, calls for reform of school policing by those advocating for civil rights, racial justice, and Black Lives Matter have simultaneously intensified. Yet each remains siloed, despite the natural connection and implicit overlap between these separate movements and debates. Indeed, there are documented negative health effects of school policing for Black, Indigenous, people of color (BIPOC) youth. But these …

Restorative Justice, School Reopenings And Educational Equity: A Contemporary Mapping And Analysis Of State Law, Thalia Gonzalez, Rebecca Epstein, Claire Krelitz, Rhea Shinde

Faculty Scholarship

The opportunity to use restorative justice practices to address structural inequalities and reimagine school structures has become increasingly important in the wake of twin social and public health pandemics. As research-based restorative practices continue to grow across the country with the aim of fostering supportive, safe, and anti-racist learning environments, calls to codify school-based restorative justice are spreading. Despite the prevalence of on-the-ground practices since the 1990s and a growing evidence base for school-based restorative practices, there is little understanding of the effect of the legalization of restorative justice on individual- or school-level outcomes. This study is the first analysis …

Race, School Policing, And Public Health, Thalia Gonzalez

Faculty Scholarship

The ever-growing list of names of Black victims who have died at the hands ofpolice has emboldened a new public narrative that frames police violence—and other more commonplace, though less lethal, disparate policing practices—as a public health crisis rooted in this country’s history of racism and anti-Blackness. This public narrative in turn has spawned a diverse set of responsive actions in both the public and private sectors directed at addressing the effects of individual and structural racism on health. Yet missing from this linkage between police violence and racialized health disparities is any focus on the educational system, despite the …

Prescription-Drug Policing: The Right To Health Information Privacy Pre-And Post-Carpenter, Jennifer D. Oliva

Faculty Scholarship

This Article operates at the intersection of privacy law, Fourth Amendment doctrine, and prescription-drug surveillance instigated by the U.S. drug-overdose crisis. Reputable reporting sources frequently frame that ongoing crisis as a prescription-drug-overdose “epidemic.” Current epidemiological data, however, indicate that the majority of American overdose deaths are now a result of illicit and polysubstance drug use and not prescription-opioid misuse. The prescription-opioid- centric frame has nonetheless sparked the rapid rise of surveillance of prescribers and patients in the form of state prescription-drug monitoring program (“PDMP”) databases. State PDMPs, which maintain and analyze significant data concerning every dispensed controlled substance, surreptitiously collect …

Retheorizing Progressive Taxation, Manoj Viswanathan

Faculty Scholarship

Progressively taxing consumption has much normative appeal, but pre­ vious legal scholarship has incorrectly assumed that directly accounting for the expenditures of individual taxpayers is administratively infeasible. Changes in consumer spending and advances in technology require revisiting this assumption. This article proposes a novel framework through which an individual accounting progressive consumption tax (IAPCT) can be imple­ mented and establishes the IAPCT's superiority to previously proposed forms of progressive consumption taxation. IAPCT advantages include a significant reduction in tax filing costs, improved enforcement, and the immediate de­ ployment of place-based tax policy.

An Examination Of Not-For-Profit Ceo Transformational Leadership Style And Its Influence On Entrepreneurial Behavior And Social Enterprise Initiation, Susan Marie Buchholtz

Dissertations from the Executive Doctorate in Business Administration Program

US Not-for-Profits (NFPs) are fragile, and during the COVID-19 pandemic many had to close programs, cut services, or close their doors. They need diversified revenues beyond traditional charitable or government support. This study investigated the relationships between a transformational leadership style of the NFP CEO and the influence of entrepreneurial behavior on social enterprise creation, and on social enterprise self-efficacy in a post-hoc analysis (replacing social enterprise self-efficacy as the dependent variable). The moderating effects of risk-taking propensity were also investigated. The theoretical underpinnings of this study included both transformational leadership theory and an entrepreneurship framework. Results from the analysis …

Study Protocol For A Randomized Controlled Trial Comparing Two Low-Intensity Weight Loss Maintenance Interventions Based On Acceptance And Commitment Therapy Or Self-Regulation, Jason Lillis, Leah Schumacher, J. Graham Thomas, Michael E. Levin, Shira Dunsiger, Jessica L. Unick, Erin Evans, Jacqueline F. Hayes, Rena R. Wing

Psychology Faculty Publications

Background: Weight regain is common following behavioral obesity treatment and attenuates many of the benefits of initial weight loss. This paper describes a randomized controlled trial that will evaluate the efficacy of two low-contact weight loss maintenance interventions based on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) and self-regulation (SR). Potential mechanisms of action and moderators of treatment effects will also be evaluated.

Methods: Adults (anticipated N=480)with overweight or obesity will complete an initial 3-monthonline weight loss program (Phase 1). Participants who achieve ≥4 kg weight loss (anticipated N=288) will then be randomized to an ACT or SR weight loss maintenance intervention. …

A Randomized Trial Of Brief Online Interventions To Facilitate Treatment Seeking For Social Anxiety, Margaret R. Tobias, Lauren N. Landy, Michael E. Levin, Joanna J. Arch

Psychology Faculty Publications

Objective: This study developed and evaluated a brief, single-session online intervention designed to facilitate treatment seeking among adults with clinically significant social anxiety (SA) symptoms, who generally seek treatment at exceptionally low rates.

Method: Adults (N= 267) reporting significant SA symptoms were recruited online and randomized to a brief, single-session online intervention: Education consisted of brief psychoeducation and treatment resources, or Education+Motivation which added treatment seeking-focused motivational content adapted from Motivational Interviewing and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. Attitudes, intentions, perceived control, and treatment seeking were assessed at Pre, Post, and one-month follow-up (FU).

Results: Both interventions were feasible …

The Effects Of New Teacher Induction Programs On New Teacher Retention In Urban School Districts, Lisa Maria Smith-Sherrod

Theses and Dissertations

This applied dissertation was designed to determine the effect of new teacher inductions programs on new teacher retention in urban school districts. Teachers are leaving urban school districts at alarming rates. The expectation that every student will receive a quality educational experience is becoming increasingly less common for the neediest students, who are often minorities in rural or urban settings, or who have special needs (Snodgrass, 2018). Urban school districts and institutions of higher education need to determine strategies that will retain highly effective educators in the field. This applied dissertation was designed to provide insight into how to improve …