Law Commons^™

A Proportionality-Based Framework For Government Regulation Of Digital Tracing Apps In Times Of Emergency, Sharon Bassan

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

Times of emergency present an inherent conflict between the public interest and the preservation of individual rights. Such times require granting emergency powers to the government on behalf of the public interest and relaxing safeguards against government actions that infringe rights. The lack of theoretical framework to assess governmental decisions in times of emergency leads to a polarized and politicized discourse about potential policies, and often, to public distrust and lack of compliance.

Such a discourse was evident regarding Digital Tracing Apps (“DTAs”), which are apps installed on cellular phones to alert users that they were exposed to people who …

Osha’S Comprehensive Failure To Protect Workers During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Nancy M. Modesitt

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

Under the Trump Administration, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (“OSHA”), failed to protect workers from COVID-19, which has led to deadly workplace outbreaks of the virus. OSHA’s failures began when it refused to produce legally-binding rules, known as emergency temporary standards, that would mandate the most basic step of requiring masks in the workplace to protect workers from the risks of infection on the job. In addition, while OSHA did produce non-binding guidance for employers, that guidance was unclear and fundamentally deficient in failing to require masks in all workplaces and failing to require recordkeeping that would identify potential …

Increasing Substantive Fairness And Mitigating Social Costs In Eviction Proceedings: Instituting A Civil Right To Counsel For Indigent Tenants In Pennsylvania, Robin M. White

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

The U.S. Constitution provides criminal defendants the right to a court-appointed attorney but gives no similar protection to civil litigants. Although federal law does not supply any categorical rights to counsel for civil litigants, all 50 states have instituted the right in at least one category of civil law that substantially impacts individuals’ rights. Since 2017, several U.S. cities have enacted such a right for tenants facing eviction. In so doing, these cities responded to American families’ increasing rent burden, the recent publication of nationwide eviction data, the sociological research concerning the impact of eviction, and the lack of procedural …

Health Care Sanctuaries, Medha D. Makhlouf

Faculty Scholarly Works

It is increasingly common for noncitizens living in the United States to avoid seeing a doctor or enrolling in publicly funded health programs because they fear surveillance by immigration authorities. This is the consequence of a decades-long shift in the locus of immigration enforcement activities from the border to the interior, as well as a recent period of heightened immigration enforcement. These fears persist because the law incompletely constrains immigration surveillance in health care.

This Article argues that immigration surveillance in health care is a poor choice of resource allocation for immigration enforcement because it has severe consequences for health …

Immigrants And Interdependence: How The Covid-19 Pandemic Exposes The Folly Of The New Public Charge Rule, Medha D. Makhlouf, Jasmine Sandhu

Faculty Scholarly Works

On February 24, 2020, just as the Trump administration began taking significant action to prepare for an outbreak of COVID-19 in the United States, it also began implementing its new public charge rule. Public charge is an immigration law that restricts the admission of certain noncitizens based on the likelihood that they will become dependent on the government for support. The major effect of the new rule is to chill noncitizens from enrolling in public benefits, including Medicaid, out of fear of negative immigration consequences. These chilling effects have persisted during the pandemic. When noncitizens are afraid to (1) seek …