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Full-Text Articles in Law
Revisionist History? Responding To Gun Violence Under Historical Limitations, Michael Ulrich
Revisionist History? Responding To Gun Violence Under Historical Limitations, Michael Ulrich
Faculty Scholarship
In the D.C. Circuit case Heller v. District of Columbia (Heller II), Judge Kavanaugh wrote that “Heller and McDonald leave little doubt that courts are to assess gun bans and regulations based on text, history, and tradition, not by a balancing test such as strict or intermediate scrutiny.” Now Justice Kavanaugh, will he find support on the highest court for what was then a dissenting view? Chief Justice Roberts, during oral arguments for Heller I, asked “Isn’t it enough to…look at the various regulations that were available at the time…and determine how these—how this restriction and the scope of this …
Quarantine And The Federal Role In Epidemics, Wendy K. Mariner, Michael Ulrich
Quarantine And The Federal Role In Epidemics, Wendy K. Mariner, Michael Ulrich
Faculty Scholarship
Every recent presidential administration has faced an infectious disease threat, and this trend is certain to continue. The states have primary responsibility for protecting the public’s health under their police powers, but modern travel makes diseases almost impossible to contain intrastate. How should the federal government respond in the future? The Ebola scare in the U.S. repeated a typical response—demands for quarantine. In January 2017, the Department of Health and Human Services and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued final regulations on its authority to issue Federal Quarantine Orders. These regulations rely heavily on confining persons who may …
Law And Politics, An Emerging Epidemic: A Call For Evidence-Based Public Health Law, Michael Ulrich
Law And Politics, An Emerging Epidemic: A Call For Evidence-Based Public Health Law, Michael Ulrich
Faculty Scholarship
As Jacobson v. Massachusetts recognized in 1905, the basis of public health law, and its ability to limit constitutional rights, is the use of scientific data and empirical evidence. Far too often, this important fact is lost. Fear, misinformation, and politics frequently take center stage and drive the implementation of public health law. In the recent Ebola scare, political leaders passed unnecessary and unconstitutional quarantine measures that defied scientific understanding of the disease and caused many to have their rights needlessly constrained. Looking at HIV criminalization and exemptions to childhood vaccine requirements, it becomes clear that the blame cannot be …
Pandemic Preparedness: A Return To The Rule Of Law, Wendy K. Mariner, George J. Annas, Wendy E. Parmet
Pandemic Preparedness: A Return To The Rule Of Law, Wendy K. Mariner, George J. Annas, Wendy E. Parmet
Faculty Scholarship
Current discussions of pandemic influenza and emergency preparedness would do well to heed the lessons of US Airways flight 1549, which landed in the Hudson River in January 2009. This article examines what past emergencies teach us about how to prevent or control epidemics and argues that it is time for a return to the rule of law in pandemic preparedness. The most important resource in emergency preparedness is a healthy, resilient population, which depends importantly on sustainable systems of medical care and public health. Preparedness thus requires more money than law. After September 11, 2001, however, federal emergency preparedness …
Bioterrorism, Public Health, And Civil Liberties, George J. Annas
Bioterrorism, Public Health, And Civil Liberties, George J. Annas
Faculty Scholarship
The prospect of having to deal with a bioterrorist attack, especially one involving smallpox, has local, state, and federal officials rightly concerned. Before September 11, most procedures for dealing with a bioterrorist attack against the United States were based on fiction. Former President Bill Clinton became engaged in the bioterrorism issue in 1997, after reading Richard Preston's novel The Cobra Event. In Tom Clancy's 1996 Executive Orders, the United States is attacked by terrorists using a strain of Ebola virus that is transmissible through the air. To contain the epidemic, the President declares a state of emergency, orders that …