Law Commons^™

Survival Voting And Minority Political Rights, Douglas M. Spencer, Lisa Grow Sun, Brigham Daniels, Chantel Sloan, Natalie Blades

Publications

The health of American democracy has literally been challenged. The global pandemic has powerfully exposed a long-standing truth: electoral policies that are frequently referred to as "convenience voting" are really a mode of "survival voting" for millions of Americans. As our data show, racial minorities are overrepresented among voters whose health is most vulnerable, and politicians have leveraged these health disparities to subordinate the political voice of racial minorities.

To date, data about racial disparities in health has played a very limited role in assessing voting rights. A new health lens on the racial impacts of voting rules would beneficially …

Identity By Committee, Scott Skinner-Thompson

Publications

Even in school districts with relatively permissive approaches to defining and embodying gender, the identities of transgender and gender variant students are often governed by complex regulatory protocols. Ensuring that a student is able to live their gender at school can involve input from a host of purported stakeholders including medical providers, mental health professionals, school administrators, the student’s parents, and even the broader community. In essence, trans and gender variant students’ identities are governed by committee, which reduces students’ control over their lives, inhibits self-determination, constricts the scope of permissible gender identities, subjects them to incredible degrees of state …

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 …

Put More Women In Charge And Other Leadership Lessons From Covid-19, Peter H. Huang

Publications

COVID-19 teaches us lessons about leadership, the most important of which is to put more women in charge. This Article provides an interdisciplinary analysis of these lessons, which come at the very high price of many forever disrupted and lost human lives. COVID-19 is a global tragedy. COVID-19 can also be a cruel, relentless and unforgiving teacher of valuable lessons about leadership. During COVID-19, leaders had to quickly mobilize many resources and convince many people to change their established behaviors and familiar routines. Leaders had to rely on effective and persuasive communication to achieve buy-in and voluntary compliance by a …

A Novel Response: How Law Libraries Adapted To The Pandemic, Aamir S. Abdullah

Publications

No abstract provided.

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.

Abortion Rights In The Supreme Court: A Tale Of Three Wedges, Jennifer S. Hendricks

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No abstract provided.

When We Breathe: Re-Envisioning Safety And Justice In A Post-Floyd Era, Aya Gruber

Publications

10th Annual David H. Bodiker Lecture on Criminal Justice delivered on Wed., Oct. 21, 2020 at Ohio State University Moritz College of Law.

Intersectionality In The Opioid Crisis: Anti-Black Racism And White, Pregnant, Opioid Users, Craig Konnoth

Publications

No abstract provided.

Regulatory De-Arbitrage In Twenty-First Century Cures Act's Health Information Regulation, Craig Konnoth

Publications

Health data regulation can be thought of at two levels. First, the micro- level of regulation has to do with Electronic Health Records (EHRs). Second, the macro-level concerns the networks on which EHRs are transmitted. The micro- and macro-levels of regulation interact. For example, EHRs need to be configured so that they can be transmitted on mandated networks. As a result, the lines do sometimes blur.

That said, the 21st Century Cures Act (Cures) clearly takes a dual approach to regulation. Cures was passed in December 2016 on a bipartisan basis. Its mandate was to address health data regulation at …

Taming America's Sugar Rush: A Traffic-Light Label Approach, Alexia Brunet Marks

Publications

Excess added sugar negatively impacts health and can lead to a litany of problems, such as diet-related chronic diseases, e.g., diabetes, cancer, heart disease, and obesity, costing Americans millions in rising medical bills each year. Even more, new studies reveal that individuals with these underlying chronic diseases are at a higher risk of complications from COVID-19 and other viruses compared to those who are deemed healthy. And yet added sugars are difficult to avoid because unlike naturally occurring sugars found in fruits, vegetables, and milk, these sweeteners are added during food processing and preparation.

The problem is that while consumers …

Reproductive Health Care Exceptionalism And The Pandemic, Helen Norton

Publications

No abstract provided.

Can You Hear Me Later And Believe Me Now? Behavioral Law And Economics Of Chronic Repeated Ambient Acoustic Pollution Causing Noise-Induced (Hidden) Hearing Loss, Peter H. Huang, Kelly J. Poore

Publications

This Article analyzes the public health issues of Noise-Induced Hearing Loss (“NIHL”) and Noise-Induced Hidden Hearing Loss (“NIHHL”) due to Chronic Repeated Ambient Acoustic Pollution (“CRAAP”). This Article examines the clinical and empirical medical data about NIHL and NIHHL and its normative implications. It applies behavioral law and economics and information economics to advance legal policies to reduce CRAAP. Finally, this Article advocates changing individual and social attitudes about deafness and hearing loss to raise political awareness and social consciousness about NIHL and NIHHL. One way to change our attitudes is by practicing compassion, empathy, and kindness, including Loving-Kindness Mindfulness …

Hiv Law And Policy In The United States: A Tipping Point, Scott Skinner-Thompson

Publications

The fight to effectively treat and stop the spread of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) has made meaningful progress both in the United States and globally. But within the United States that progress has been uneven across various demographic groups and geographic areas, and has plateaued. While scientific advances have led to the development of medicine capable of both treating and preventing HIV, law and policy dictate who will have ready access to these medicines and other prevention techniques, and who will not. Law and policy also play a crucial role in determining whether HIV will be stigmatized, discouraging people …

A Recent Renaissance In Privacy Law, Margot Kaminski

Publications

Considering the recent increased attention to privacy law issues amid the typically slow pace of legal change.

Unsafe At Any Campus: Don't Let Colleges Become The Next Cruise Ships, Nursing Homes, And Food Processing Plants, Peter H. Huang, Debra S. Austin

Publications

The decision to educate our students via in-person or online learning environments while COVID-19 is unrestrained is a false choice, when the clear path to achieve our chief objective safely, the education of our students, can be done online. Our decision-making should be guided by the overriding principle that people matter more than money. We recognize that lost tuition revenue if students delay or defer education is an institutional concern, but we posit that many students and parents would prefer a safer online alternative to riskier in-person options, especially as we get closer to fall, and American death tolls rise. …

Medicalization And The New Civil Rights, Craig Konnoth

Publications

In the last several decades, individuals have advanced civil rights claims that rely on the language of medicine. This Article is the first to define and defend these “medical civil rights” as a unified phenomenon.

Individuals have increasingly used the language of medicine to seek rights and benefits, often for conditions that would not have been cognizable even a few years ago. For example, litigants have claimed that discrimination against transgender individuals constitutes illegal disability discrimination. Others have argued that their fatigue constitutes chronic fatigue syndrome (which was, until recently, a novel and contested diagnosis) to obtain Social Security disability …

Narrowly Tailoring The Covid-19 Response, Craig Konnoth

Publications

No abstract provided.

Contracts And Covid-19, Andrew A. Schwartz

Publications

No abstract provided.

Medical Civil Rights As A Site Of Activism: A Reply To Critics, Craig Konnoth

Publications

See Craig Konnoth, Medicalization and the New Civil Rights, 72 Stan. L. Rev. 1165 (2020).

See also Rabia Belt & Doron Dorfman, Response, Reweighing Medical Civil Rights, 72 Stan. L. Rev. Online 176 (2020), https://www.stanfordlawreview.org/online/reweighing-medical-civil-rights/; Allison K. Hoffman, Response, How Medicalization of Civil Rights Could Disappoint, 72 Stan. L. Rev. Online 165 (2020), https://www.stanfordlawreview.org/online/how-medicalization-of-civil-rights-could-disappoint/.

Powerful Speakers And Their Listeners, Helen Norton

Publications

In certain settings, law sometimes puts listeners first when their First Amendment interests collide with speakers’. And collide they often do. Sometimes speakers prefer to tell lies when their listeners thirst for the truth. Sometimes listeners hope that speakers will reveal their secrets, while those speakers resist disclosure. And at still other times, speakers seek to address certain listeners when those listeners long to be left alone. When speakers’ and listeners’ First Amendment interests collide, whose interests should prevail? Law sometimes – but not always – puts listeners’ interests first in settings outside of public discourse where those listeners have …

Keynote: The Protection Of Lgbt Youth, Craig Konnoth

Publications

This keynote contains three parts. Part I addresses the intersection of two metaphors: medicine and childhood in LGBT Rights. Part II addresses the state regulation of LGBT youth. Part III offers Professor Konnoth's concluding remarks on the protection of LGBT youth.

Rethinking Consumer Protection: Escaping Death By Regulation, Thomas L. Tacker

Publications

This book is designed to appeal to anyone who is at all interested in topics related to making life better and safer—for all us consumers. Our current approach to consumer protection is extremely flawed; sometimes costing lives rather than saving them. There are better ways to protect ourselves and the people we love.

Pregnancy And The First Amendment, Helen Norton

Publications

Suppose that you are pregnant and seated in the waiting room of a Planned Parenthood clinic, or maybe in a facility that advertises “Pregnant? We Can Help You.” This Essay discusses the First Amendment rules that apply to the government’s control of what you are about to hear.

If the government funds your clinic’s program, the U.S. Supreme Court has held that it does not violate the First Amendment’s Free Speech Clause when it forbids your health-care provider from offering you information about available abortion services. Nor does the government violate the Free Speech Clause, the Court has held, when …

Drugs' Other Side Effects, Craig J. Konnoth

Publications

Drugs often induce unintended, adverse physiological reactions in those that take them—what we commonly refer to as “side-effects.” However, drugs can produce other, broader, unintended, even non-physiological harms. For example, some argue that taking Truvada, a drug that prevents HIV transmission, increases promiscuity and decreases condom use. Expensive Hepatitis C treatments threaten to bankrupt state Medicaid programs. BiDil, which purported to treat heart conditions for self-identified African-Americans, has been criticized for reifying racial categories. Although the Food & Drug Administration (“FDA”) has broad discretion under the Food, Drugs, and Cosmetics Act (“FDCA”) to regulate drugs, it generally considers only traditional …

Child Obesity, School Food Environments And The Best Interests Of The Child, Benedetta Faedi Duramy

Publications

This article is about child obesity, school food, and the key role schools can play in creating environments that can enhance children’s eating patterns and lifestyle behaviours and, thus, can support the realization of children’s best interest in relation to food and health. In contrast to the traditional approach that frames the obesity problem as a personal issue or as a matter of parental responsibility, this article argues that the prevention of child obesity should be interpreted as a State obligation under both international and domestic laws. Analysis turns to the example of the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act, adopted in …

Childhood Obesity And Positive Obligations: A Child Rights-Based Approach, Benedetta Faedi Duramy

Publications

Childhood obesity is one of the most serious current public health challenges. Its prevalence has increased at an alarming rate. The World Health Organization estimated that in 2016 the global number of overweight children under the age of five was over 41 million. Although there is widespread concern about the rising rates of childhood obesity, there is not as much consensus on how to address the problem. Obesity has been mostly considered either a matter of personal responsibility or of parental responsibility when it concerns children. Inadequate attention has been given instead to the obligations borne by States to prevent …

Researching Colorado Health Law, Kerri Rowe

Publications

No abstract provided.

Data Collection, Ehrs, And Poverty Determinations, Craig Konnoth

Publications

Collecting and deploying poverty-related data is an important starting point for leveraging data regarding social determinants of health in precision medicine. However, we must rethink how we collect and deploy such data. Current modes of collection yield imprecise data that is unsuited for research. Better data can be collected by cross-referencing other sources such as employers and public benefit programs, and by incentivizing and encouraging patients and providers to provide more accurate information. Data thus collected can be used to provide appropriate individual-level clinical and non-clinical care, and to systematically determine what share of social resources healthcare should consume.

An Expressive Theory Of Privacy Intrusions, Craig Konnoth

Publications

The harms of privacy intrusions are numerous. They include discrimination, reputational harm, and chilling effects on speech, thought, and behavior. However, scholarship has yet to fully recognize a kind of privacy harm that this article terms "expressive."

Depending on where the search is taking place and who the actors involved are--a teacher in a school, the police on the street, a food inspector in a restaurant--victims and observers might infer different messages from the search. The search marks the importance of certain societal values such as law enforcement or food safety. It can also send messages about certain groups by …