Law Commons^™

Intellectual Property And “The Lost Year” Of Covid-19 Deaths, Madhavi Sunder, Haochen Sun

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Protecting intellectual property (IP) is a question of life and death. COVID-19 vaccines, partially incentivized by IP, are estimated to have saved nearly 20 million lives worldwide during the first year of their availability in 2021. However, most of the benefits of this life-saving technology went to high- and upper-middle-income countries. Despite 10 billion vaccines being produced by the end of 2021, only 4 percent of people in low-income countries were fully vaccinated. Paradoxically, IP may also be partly responsible for hundreds of thousands of lives lost in 2021, due to an insufficient supply of vaccines and inequitable access during …

25th Annual Open Government Summit: Your Guide To The Access To Public Records Act & Open Meetings Act, Peter F. Neronha, Roger Williams University School Of Law

School of Law Conferences, Lectures & Events

No abstract provided.

Brief Of The Petitioners-Taxpayers Edward A. And Doris Zelinsky, Edward A. Zelinsky

Faculty Amicus Briefs

As a matter of state law, New York’s own regulations and case law do not permit taxation of Professor Zelinsky’s income earned at home in Connecticut for the COVID-19 period starting on March 15, 2020. Even if New York law permitted the taxation of Professor Zelinsky’s Cardozo salary during this COVID-19 period, as a matter of federal constitutional law, the Due Process and dormant Commerce Clauses do not permit New York’s taxation of this salary earned in Connecticut. In addition, Zelinsky v. Tax Appeals Tribunal, 1 N.Y. 3d 85 (2003), cert. denied, 541 U.S. 1009 (2004), does not apply to …

Law School In A Pandemic Ungrouped: How Online J.D. Experiences Varied Across Students, Tiffane Cochran, Sherrie Godette, Gallup

AccessLex Institute Research

At the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, law schools and students resiliently forged ahead, endeavoring — many for the first time — to pursue their J.D. programs online. AccessLex Institute® and Gallup partnered to survey law students about their experiences with online J.D. courses during this time, releasing two Law School in a Pandemic reports in 2021 and 2022 to discuss each year’s findings. This third and final report in the series examines the extent to which student perceptions of their J.D. programs during the pandemic differed by various characteristics — namely race/ethnicity, age, enrollment status, caregiver status, and law …

Rojas Reflects On Law School During A Pandemic, James Owsley Boyd

Keep Up With the Latest News from the Law School (blog)

During her sophomore year of college, Alexa Rojas was an intake intern with a children’s advocacy center outside of Joliet, Illinois. It sparked the realization that she knew she wanted to make a difference in the lives of kids who have endured abuse and trauma. In her position, Rojas served as the first point of contact for families scheduling forensic interviews with law enforcement and prosecutors. In order to lessen the impact on the victim, substantial logistical work went on behind the scenes to ensure that the child only had to tell their story once—to someone they trusted.

Disaster Discordance: Local Court Implementation Of State And Federal Eviction Prevention Policies During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Lauren Sudeall, Elora Lee Raymond, Philip M.E. Garboden

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Eviction sits at the nexus of property rights and the basic human need for shelter—the former benefits from a strong framework of legal protection while the latter does not. In most eviction courts across the country, therefore, the right to housing is unrecognized, while landlords’ economic interests in property are consistently vindicated.

The public health crisis unleashed by COVID-19 temporarily upended that (im)balance. Emergency federal and state eviction prevention policies issued in response to COVID-19 prioritized public health—-and the need for shelter to prevent the spread of disease—-over typically dominant property rights. In doing so, they presented courts with an …

Pathogen Genomes As Global Public Goods (And Why They Should Not Be Patented), Jorge L. Contreras

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

During past viral outbreaks, researchers rushed to patent genomic sequences of the viruses as they were discovered, leading to disputes and delays in research coordination. Yet similar disputes did not occur with respect to the genomic sequence of SARS-CoV-2, the virus responsible for COVID-19. With respect to COVID-19, global research collaboration occurred rapidly, leading to the identification of new variants, the ability to track the spread of the disease, and the development of vaccines and therapeutics in record time. The lack of patenting of SARS-CoV-2 is likely due the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2013 ruling in Association for Molecular Pathology v. …

Post-Pandemic Finra Arbitration: To Zoom Or Not To Zoom?, Jill I. Gross

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This Article contributes to the literature exploring the impact of the pandemic on arbitration and explores whether parties arbitrating their disputes during the pandemic have had access to justice equivalent to the justice that was available pre-pandemic. Though it is difficult to draw any conclusions about FINRA arbitration due to the confidential and non-reasoned nature of awards, the Article focuses on arbitration of securities industry disputes at one forum, FINRA DRS. In particular, the Article analyzes data about FINRA customer arbitrations over the course of the pandemic, from onset in March 2020 through mid-2022, when most municipalities had lifted COVID-19 …

Changemakers: 'You Have To Adapt To Survive', Roger Williams University School Of Law

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Sanitation: Reducing The Administrative State’S Control Over Public Health, Lauren R. Roth

Scholarly Works

On April 18, 2022, in Health Freedom Defense Fund, Inc. v. Biden, United States District Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle vacated the mask mandate issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Following a framework laid out in other decisions restricting CDC actions in response to COVID-19, the court found that the agency lacked statutory authority to protect the public from the virus by requiring mask wearing during travel and at transit hubs because Congress did not intend such a broad grant of power. Countering decades of public health jurisprudence, the federal district court failed to defer to experts and …

Lessons Of The Plague Years, Barry Sullivan

Faculty Publications & Other Works

The COVID-19 pandemic has challenged governments of every description across the globe, and it surely would have tested the mettle of any American administration. But the pandemic appeared in the United States at a particularly inopportune time. January 2020 marked the beginning of a presidential election year in a deeply polarized country. President Donald Trump was a controversial figure, beginning the fourth year of a highly idiosyncratic administration. He was both a candidate for re-election and the subject of an ongoing impeachment proceeding. In these circumstances, the pandemic quickly became politicized. President Trump's response to the COVID-19 pandemic has often …

Climate Security Insights From The Covid-19 Response, Mark P. Nevitt

Faculty Articles

The climate change crisis and COVID-19 crisis are both complex collective action problems. Neither the coronavirus nor greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions respect political borders. Both impose an opportunity cost that penalizes inaction. They are also increasingly understood as nontraditional, novel security threats. Indeed, COVID-19’s human cost is staggering, with American lives lost vastly exceeding those lost in recent armed conflicts. And climate change is both a threat accelerant and a catalyst for conflict—a characterization reinforced in several climate-security reports. To counter COVID-19, the President embraced martial language, stating that he will employ a “wartime footing” to “defeat the virus.” Perhaps …

Covid-19 & The Warn Act During A Bankruptcy Case, Audrey Victor

Bankruptcy Research Library

(Excerpt)

The Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act (“WARN Act”) provides that “an employer shall not order a plant closing or mass layoff until the end of a 60-day period after the employer serves written notice of such order to each impacted employee.” Under the WARN Act, a plant closing is “permanent or temporary shutdown of a single site of employment, or one or more facilities or operating units within a single site of employment….” A mass layoff is “a reduction in force which…(a) is not the result of the plant closing; and (b) results in an employment loss at …

Parens Patriae After The Pandemic, Meredith Johnson Harbach

Law Faculty Publications

The COVID-19 pandemic prompted extraordinary state action to protect American children. Acting in its longstanding role as parens patriae, the state stepped in to protect children and their families from the ravages of the pandemic as well as from the dramatic upheaval it precipitated. This Article will evaluate the state’s pandemic response vis-à-vis children and their families, mining the experience for lessons learned and possible ways forward. Specifically, this project will argue that the state’s pandemic response represented a departure from the state’s conventional approach to parens patriae. Conventional practice prior to the pandemic was characterized by a state model …

Masking Vulnerability: Including Ppe As A Covered Service In Health Insurance, Mary Leto Pareja

Faculty Scholarship

The COVID-19 pandemic laid bare the shared vulnerability inherent in the human condition, prompting a collective recognition of our physical susceptibility to infectious diseases. While great strides have been made in combating COVID-19 through vaccinations and treatments, a portion of the population remains profoundly vulnerable due to health conditions that make the disease more dangerous, that limit vaccine efficacy, or that prevent vaccination altogether. This article explores a path forward by proposing a solution within health benefit plans—encompassing both private health insurance and public health benefits. Specifically, the article advocates for a coverage mandate for over-the-counter personal protective equipment (PPE) …

Trademarks And Censorship In The Time Of Covid-19, Xuan-Thao Nguyen

Articles

During the devastating year of 2020, China quickly conquered the novel coronavirus and roared back economically while the United States faced staggering deaths and economic losses. But underneath the divergent experience of the two countries is an untold story of trademark and censorship in the time of COVID-19. This Article observes that while the United States Supreme Court has lifted the ban on trademark registrations for unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination, opening the door for offensive COVID-19 trademark applications, China has transformed trademark law into the law for censorship as Chinese authorities press forward to achieve twin victories over the coronavirus and …

'More Of The Same, But Worse Than Before': A Qualitative Study Of The Challenges Encountered By People Who Use Drugs In Nova Scotia, Canada During Covid-19, Emilie Comeau, Matthew Bonn, Sheila Wildeman, Matthew Herder

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Background

To learn about the experiences of people who use drugs, specifically opioids, in the Halifax Regional Municipality (HRM), in Nova Scotia, Canada during the COVID-19 pandemic through qualitative interviews with people who use drugs and healthcare providers (HCP). This study took place within the HRM, a municipality of 448,500 people. During the pandemic many critical services were interrupted while overdose events increased. We wanted to understand the experiences of people who use drugs as well as their HCPs during the first year of the pandemic.

Methodology

We conducted a qualitative study using semi-structured interviews with 13 people who use …

Accessing Justice With Zoom: Experiences And Outcomes In Online Civil Courts, Victor D. Quintanilla, Kurt Hugenberg, Ryan Hutchings, Nedim Yel

Articles by Maurer Faculty

The global COVID-19 pandemic brought significant change to our civil justice system, particularly in the rapid shift from in-person to remote court proceedings. Courts across the country, facing the unprecedented challenge of a global health emergency, embraced rapid innovation and the adoption of remote proceeding platforms, such as Zoom and Webex. State courts did so across case types, including within high-volume civil dockets containing evictions, debt collections, small claims, and family law cases, where millions of self-represented and unrepresented litigants encounter the U.S. civil justice system each year. Amid the pandemic, voices converged to encourage these justice innovations, including the …

Intellectual Property And The Politics Of Public Good In Covid-19: Framing Law, Institutions, And Ideas During Trips Waiver Negotiations At The Wto, Sara E. Fischer, Lucia Vitale, Akinyi Lisa Agutu, Matthew M. Kavanagh

O'Neill Institute Papers

Context: To facilitate the manufacturing of COVID-19 medical products, in October 2020, India and South Africa proposed a waiver of certain WTO intellectual property (IP) provisions. After 18 months, a narrow agreement that did little for vaccine access passed the ministerial, despite the pandemic’s impact on global trade, which the WTO is mandated to safeguard.

Methods: The authors conducted a content analysis of WTO legal texts, key actor statements, media reporting, and the WTO’s procedural framework to explore legal, institutional, and ideational explanations for the delay.

Findings: IP waivers are neither legally complex nor unprecedented within WTO …

Restoring Confidence In Educational Technologies, Ariel Newman

Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

Public Ownership And The Wto In A Post Covid-19 Era: From Trade Disputes To A 'Social' Function, Paolo Davide Farah, Davide Zoppolato

Articles

Public ownership is closely bound to the need of the government to protect and guarantee the well-being of its citizens. Where the market cannot, or does not want to, provide goods and services, the State uses different tools to intervene, influence, and control some aspects of the private sphere of expression of its citizens in the name and interest of the collectivity. Although, in the past century, this behavior was accepted as one of the expressions of the public authority and part of the social contract, this perception has shifted partially in accordance with the wave of privatization programs initiated …

Surveillance Normalization, Christian Sundquist

Articles

Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the government has expanded public surveillance measures in an attempt to combat the spread of the virus. As the pandemic wears on, racialized communities and other marginalized groups are disproportionately affected by this increased level of surveillance. This article argues that increases in public surveillance as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic give rise to the normalization of surveillance in day-to-day life, with serious consequences for racialized communities and other marginalized groups. This article explores the legal and regulatory effects of surveillance normalization, as well as how to protect civil rights and liberties …

Science, Technology, Society, And Law, Paolo Davide Farah, Justo Corti Varela

Book Chapters

Traditionally, science and technology have been granted as sources of knowledge and objective truth. However, much more recently, they are also seen as human activities, conducted in a social environment. This new approach focuses on the intersections between science, technology and society, and particularly their regulation by the law. Concerns on how to best regulate the interaction come up in modern societies, and when either their use or their impacts are global, international law and international organizations become involved. The impact of the fourfold relation is so high that science and technology are seen as one of the reasons for …

Price Gouging In A Pandemic, Christopher Buccafusco, Daniel Hemel, Eric L. Talley

Faculty Scholarship

The COVID-19 pandemic led to acute supply shortages across the country as well as concerns over price increases amid surging demand. In the process, it reawakened a debate about whether and how to regulate “price gouging” — a controversy that continues as inflation has accelerated even as the pandemic abates. Animating this debate is a longstanding conflict between laissez-faire economics, which champions price fluctuations as a means to allocate scarce goods, and perceived norms of consumer fairness, which are thought to cut strongly against sharp price hikes amid shortages.

This Article provides a new, empirically grounded perspective on the price …

States Of Emergency: Covid-19 And Separation Of Powers In The States, Richard Briffault

Faculty Scholarship

No event in recent years has shone a brighter spotlight on state separation of powers than the COVID-19 pandemic. Over a more than two-year period, governors exercised unprecedented authority through suspending laws and regulations, limiting business activities and gatherings, restricting individual movement, and imposing public health requirements. Many state legislatures endorsed these measures or were content to let governors take the lead, but in some states the legislature pushed back, particularly — albeit not only—where the governor and legislative majorities were of different political parties. Some of these conflicts wound up in state supreme courts.

This Essay examines the states’ …

Exemplary Legal Writing 2020: Four Recommendations, Jed S. Rakoff, Lev Menand

Faculty Scholarship

For some years, John Coffee of the Columbia Law School, one of the country’s leading experts on corporate and securities law, has been critical of the government’s failure to effectively prosecute corporate crime. In this book, Coffee both propounds a general theory of why such criminality is rarely prosecuted in a meaningful way, and also offers some creative solutions to such underenforcement.

The Nih-Moderna Vaccine: Public Science, Private Profit, And Lessons For The Future, Christopher J. Morten

Faculty Scholarship

This commentary highlights the scientific history of the NIH-Moderna COVID-19 vaccine and corroborates Sarpatwari’s theme of private capture of value created by the public. The commentary also identifies missteps by the Trump and Biden Administrations and offers policy recommendations: better contracts with and incentives for pharmaceutical manufacturers and a not-for-profit “public option” for pharmaceutical development.