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Full-Text Articles in Law
Public Health And The Power To Exclude: Immigrant Expulsions At The Border, Sarah R. Sherman-Stokes
Public Health And The Power To Exclude: Immigrant Expulsions At The Border, Sarah R. Sherman-Stokes
Faculty Scholarship
We are presently in the midst of a crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border, as Courts, and indeed the Biden Administration, are struggling to manage thousands of immigrants waiting to seek asylum in the midst of a global pandemic. Beginning in March of 2020, against the advice of public health experts, the U.S. Government closed the southern U.S.-Mexico border, disproportionately impacting would-be asylum seekers from Central America, who are now immediately expelled from the United States should they reach the border under a process known as “Title 42.” Not only do these expulsions lack a legitimate public health rationale, but they …
The Jury Trial Reinvented, Christopher Robertson, Michael Shammas
The Jury Trial Reinvented, Christopher Robertson, Michael Shammas
Faculty Scholarship
The Framers of the Sixth and Seventh Amendments to the United States Constitution recognized that jury trials were essential for maintaining democratic legitimacy and avoiding epistemic crises. As an institution, the jury trial is purpose-built to engage citizens in the process of deliberative, participatory democracy with ground rules. The jury trial provides a carefully constructed setting aimed at sorting truth from falsehood.
Despite its value, the jury trial has been under assault for decades. Concededly, jury trials can sometimes be inefficient, unreliable, unpredictable, and impractical. The COVID–19 pandemic rendered most physical jury trials unworkable but spurred some courts to begin …
Effects Of Political Versus Expert Messaging On Vaccination Intentions Of Trump Voters, Christopher Robertson, Keith Bentele, Beth Meyerson, Alexander Wood, Jacqueline Salwa
Effects Of Political Versus Expert Messaging On Vaccination Intentions Of Trump Voters, Christopher Robertson, Keith Bentele, Beth Meyerson, Alexander Wood, Jacqueline Salwa
Faculty Scholarship
To increase COVID-19 vaccine uptake in resistant populations, such as Republicans, focus groups suggest that it is best to de-politicize the issue by sharing five facts from a public health expert. Yet polls suggest that Trump voters trust former President Donald Trump for medical advice more than they trust experts. We conducted an online, randomized, national experiment among 387 non-vaccinated Trump voters, using two brief audiovisual artifacts from Spring 2021, either facts delivered by an expert versus political claims delivered by President Trump. Relative to the control group, Trump voters who viewed the video of Trump endorsing the vaccine were …
Standard Racism: Trying To Use “Crisis Standards Of Care” In The Covid-19 Pandemic, George J. Annas, Sondra S. Crosby
Standard Racism: Trying To Use “Crisis Standards Of Care” In The Covid-19 Pandemic, George J. Annas, Sondra S. Crosby
Faculty Scholarship
Lowering the standard of care in a pandemic is a recipe for inferior care and discrimination. Wealthy white patients will continue to get “standard of care” medicine, while the poor and racial minorities (especially black and brown people) will get what is openly described as substandard care rationalized by the assertion that substandard care is all that we can deliver to them in a crisis. (IOM Citation2009) Paul Farmer’s experience in responding to the Ebola outbreak in West Africa is a shocking, if extreme, example of how dangerous to patients this practice is. White patients were treated with the …
Addressing Public Health’S Failings During Year One Of Covid-19, George J. Annas, Sandro Galea
Addressing Public Health’S Failings During Year One Of Covid-19, George J. Annas, Sandro Galea
Faculty Scholarship
By almost any measure, public health fell short during 2020. In retrospect, the list of what public health professionals, including federal and state public health officials, public health practitioners, and academics, could have done better is easy to articulate, and has already been the subject of angry books about the disasterous responses to the pandemic in Europe and the US [1,2]. It falls to all of us to pause, reflect, and ask: how do we move forward? We have five suggestions.
The Need For A Strong And Stable Federal Public Health Agency Independent From Politicians, Jacqueline Salwa, Christopher Robertson
The Need For A Strong And Stable Federal Public Health Agency Independent From Politicians, Jacqueline Salwa, Christopher Robertson
Faculty Scholarship
The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed the precariousness of federal public health institutions in the United States, and how disastrously things can go when those institutions are undermined by political forces. Such institutions can be disbanded, underfunded, populated with incompetent political hacks, manipulated, or sidelined. As a field, public health in particular needs some political space, given that it requires deep scientific expertise and needs to communicate to the public clearly, reliably, and with authority to engender trust. Key public health agencies, such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in particular, should be buttressed against future political encroachment, …
Race, Risk, And Personal Responsibility In The Response To Covid-19, Aziza Ahmed, Jason Jackson
Race, Risk, And Personal Responsibility In The Response To Covid-19, Aziza Ahmed, Jason Jackson
Faculty Scholarship
The COVID-19 crisis has tragically revealed the depth of racial inequities in the United States. This Piece argues that the disproportionate impact of the pandemic on racial minorities is a symptom of a failing approach to public health, one that privileges individual behaviors over the structural conditions that generate vulnerability and inequitable health outcomes. Despite clear racial disparities in illness and deaths, the neoliberal ideology of personal responsibility shifts the onus for mitigation of risk away from the social and legal determinants of health and onto the individual. To understand how and why these disparate racial outcomes arise, this Piece …