Public Interest Commons^™

Promoting Equity Through Equitable Risk Tradeoffs, W. Kip Viscusi, Thomas J. Kniesner

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

The impact and economic merits of President Biden’s Executive Order 13985 on equity depend on how the executive order is implemented. While policy discussion to date has focused on equitable outcomes, we propose framing risk equity policies in terms of equitable risk tradeoff rates based on six policy guidelines. The starting point for ex ante evaluation of equity for mortality risk policies should be the symmetric application of the value of a statistical life (VSL) to all groups. Because of the substantial heterogeneity in VSLs by income and demographic characteristics, symmetric tradeoff rates generate subsidies and deficits relative to private …

Another Look At The Concept Of Nation-State Borders In The Time Of Covid And Ukraine, John J. Chung

Law Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Disparities In The Use Of Prophylactic Treatments In Reproductive Health Between The Sexes: A Recommendation For The Use Of Hpv Vaccination Schemes Rather Than Surgical Interventions To Reduce Inequities And Threats To The Public’S Health, Paul Mclaughlin

Scholarly Works

This Article will examine the unequal treatment of the sexes under the law with regard to prophylactic treatments against STDs. The second section of this Article will discuss the ethical and legal issues in the use of prophylactic treatments and the issues involving informed consent regarding their use. The third section of this Article will discuss the historic and current use of prophylactic surgeries on both sexes to prevent disease and the challenges that have been raised against such practices. The fourth section of this Article will discuss the use of the H.P.V. vaccinations in both sexes to reduce the …

Inspectors General And The Law Of Oversight Independence, Andrew Brunsden

Articles & Chapters

President Trump's defiance of basic norms threatened the oversight institutions of American democracy. His brazen assault on the prosecutorial and investigative independence of federal law enforcement was well documented. Yet few have thoroughly scrutinized his violations of the oversight independence of internal institutions that monitor the government to promote integrity, transparency, and accountability. This Article examines the independence of Inspectors General (IGs), the internal watchdogs of the Executive Branch, and the President's attacks on the institution. President Trump breached long-standing independence norms when he fired or replaced IGs in retaliation for their legitimate exercise of oversight duties. Then, in some …

Designing An Independent Public Health Agency, Jacqueline Salwa, Christopher Robertson

Faculty Scholarship

We believe that Congress should act on a bipartisan basis to fix U.S. public health institutions. Legislators could decide to merely buttress current institutions, as former commissioners have suggested be done for the FDA.1 Alternatively, legislators could consider a broad reorganization of public health functions and create a superagency, whose purview would include everything from the approval of drugs and devices to the maintenance of national stockpiles of protective equipment.

Establishing A Conditional Driver's Permit In Texas, Texas A&M University School Of Law Community Development Clinic, Madeline Marguerite Byers, Olivia Countryman, Taylor Garner, Crystal Hernandez, Luz E. Herrera, Lisa Mares

Legal Clinics

This report recommends expanding access to state-issued driver permits for Texans who are unable to obtain a driver license due to state requirements imposed pursuant to federal law. Many Texans, especially some of our most vulnerable residents, have difficulty meeting heightened identification requirements under federal law, and consequently drive without state authorization and auto insurance. This report also highlights the benefits of establishing a new driver’s permit and why it should be accessible by Texans who are natural disaster victims, experiencing homelessness, family violence survivors, and immigrants with no lawful status, a complicated immigration status, or in the process of …

Testimony Of Alvin Bragg Regarding The Jurisdiction Of The Civilian Complaint Review Board, Alvin Bragg

Briefs, Court Filings, and Testimonies

January 13, 2021

Alvin Bragg, on behalf of the New York Law School Racial Justice Project, respectfully submits the following testimony in support of the New York City Civilian Complaint Review Board’s (“CCRB”) authority to investigate allegations of untruthful testimony and written statements made by members of the New York City Police Department (“NYPD”) as well as allegations of sexual misconduct by NYPD officers.

Public Health In The Opioid Litigation, Daniel G. Aaron

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

Today, the opioid crisis is playing out in the nation’s courts. Litigants have taken a microscope to defendant opioid companies whose misconduct ignited and exacerbated the opioid crisis. As the litigation continues, one could imagine numerous ways its resolution could contribute to the end of a multi-decade overdose crisis and prevent future ones. Options include holding defendant companies accountable, releasing previously secret information for research on root causes of the epidemic, and prohibiting future misconduct through injunctive relief. Unfortunately, to date, the litigation has not been so capacious. Rather, the participants—judge included—have been preoccupied with rapid monetary settlement. Though understandable, …

When Thoughts And Prayers Are Not Enough: Why Age-Based Restrictions On Purchasing Firearms Pass Constitutional Muster, Madeline P. Fuller

American University Law Review

After the tragic shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School that took the lives of seventeen students and staff members and injured countless others, the community debated how this event could have been prevented. There were security failures on the part of the school and police—unlocked doors, passive deputies and a security guard, and a broken PA system—all of which may have lessened the casualties had they been operating properly. However, these security measures might not have been tested and found lacking if another preventative measure had already taken place: prohibiting the young shooter from legally purchasing a weapon.

Florida …

The Debt Collection Pandemic, Pamela Foohey, Dalié Jiménez, Christopher K. Odinet

Faculty Scholarship

As of May 2020, the United States' reaction to the unique and alarming threat of COVID-19 has partially succeeded in slowing the virus’s spread. Saving people’s lives, however, came at a severe economic cost. Americans’ economic anxiety understandably spiked. In addition to worrying about meeting basic expenses, people’s anxieties about money necessarily included what might happen if they could not cover already outstanding debts. The nearly 70 million Americans with debts already in collection faced heightened anxiety about their inability to pay.

The coronavirus pandemic is set to metastasize into a debt collection pandemic. The federal government can and should …

Nonessential Businesses And Liability Waivers In The Time Of Covid-19, Zahra Takhshid

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

States are gradually reopening after months of lockdown. However, the risk of exposure to the deadly COVID-19 virus still remains. While states would like to have the economy up and running, the price that small businesses may be forced to pay following possible coronavirus personal injury lawsuits may drive them out of business. Nonessential businesses, such as dine-in restaurants, will turn to waivers of liability to insulate themselves from COVID-19 related liability: an area known as assumption of risk. This essay argues that in this climate of crisis, and due to the invisible nature of the virus, waivers are an …

Constitutional Cohesion And The Right To Public Health, James G. Hodge, Daniel G. Aaron, Haley R. Auger, Ashley Cheff, Joseph Daval

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

Despite years of significant legal improvements stemming from a renaissance in public health law, Americans still face major challenges and barriers in assuring their communal health. Reversals of legal reforms coupled with maligned policies and chronic underfunding contribute to diminished public health outcomes. Underlying preventable morbidity and mortality nationally are realities of our existing constitutional infrastructure. In essence, there is no general obligation of government to protect or promote the public’s health. Under principles of “constitutional cohesion,” structural facets and rights-based principles interwoven within the Constitution protect individuals and groups from governmental vices (i.e., oppression, overreaching, tyranny, and malfeasance). Structural …

Winning The Right To Housing : Critical Reflections On A Holistic Approach To Public Interest Litigation, Fay Faraday, Tracy Heffernan, Helen Luu

Articles & Book Chapters

No abstract provided.

Reclaiming The Role Of Lawyers As Community Connectors, David F. Levi, Dana Remus, Abigail Frisch

Faculty Scholarship

With the prospect of nonlawyers stepping in to do low-fee legal work, how should the legal profession conceive of its relationship to that work and ensure that nonlawyers bolster rather than undermine the value that lawyers add to society? Lawyers should reclaim their role as connectors in their communities: interstitial figures with the knowledge, skill, and trust to help resolve disputes, move beyond stalemates, dispel tensions, and otherwise bring people and resources together in productive solutions. They should do so, at least in part, through pro bono work for poor and low-income clients. It would be a mistake to stand …

Dynamic Relationships Between Social Norms And Pro-Environmental Behavior: Evidence From Household Recycling, W. Kip Viscusi, Joel Huber, Jason Bell

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Social norms are strongly associated with pro-environmental behaviors, but the evolution and dynamic effects of norms are less well understood. This article builds on the distinction of norms being descriptive, characterizing what people actually do, or injunctive, characterizing what people should do. It identifies four categories of norms with the further distinction of whether the norms arise from the personal beliefs and actions or from the behaviors and judgments of others. The analysis uses five years of longitudinal US data that track household recycling and controls for household characteristics as well as differences in state recycling laws. The results extend …

Should We Use A Class Action's Impact On Stock Price To Gauge The Reasonableness Of Class Counsel's Fee?, John Fitzgerald Ready

Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy

If a deterrence rationale fuels the engine that is class action litigation, then its principles should inform our efforts to cure the imperfections in class counsel compensation schemes. Class action defendants are deterred from wrongdoing when it becomes economically unwise to act as such. For publicly-traded companies, the economic prudence of their conduct depends on shareholder perception. Class actions are bad news for shareholders of the named defendant public company. In response, the market reacts, a company’s share price decreases, and a message is sent to the company about the imprudence of its conduct. A question then arises: should we …

A Guide To Understanding And Addressing Vacant Property In The City Of St. Louis, Dana M. Malkus

Faculty White Papers

The City of St. Louis has a serious vacant property challenge. Since the population peak in 1950, the City has experienced a 63% decline in population and now has one of the highest rates of vacancy in the nation. The City has approximately 25,000 vacant properties. Approximately 12,000 of these are owned by the Land Reutilization Authority (LRA) or other public agencies, which means that approximately 13,000 are privately owned. Most of those vacant properties are concentrated in the north and southeast portions of the City. For a city of its size, the City has "an extremely large" number of …

The Supreme Court’S Countermajoritarianism? What Impact Does Public Opinion Have On The Supreme Court Decisions?, Evan Tompkins

Political Science Theses and Capstones

Although normative questions about the role of the Supreme Court as a countermajoritarian institution have been commonly debated in political science research, an updated empirical question on Mishler and Sheehan’s (1993), study on public opinion and its impact on the Court must be asked. It has been 25 years since the publication of their study and numerous high profile cases such as Bush v. Gore, Citizens United v. FEC, and Obergefell v. Hodges have brought nationwide attention to the Supreme Court and how it interacts with public opinion. Results from empirical measurements of the Supreme Court’s decisions and what impact …

Sponsorship Of National Health Organizations By Two Major Soda Companies, Daniel G. Aaron, Michael B. Siegel

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

This is the first study to systematically catalog sponsorship of national health organizations by soda companies. Because health organizations have strong voices in lawmaking and politics, it is important to understand the extent and nature of sponsorships by soda companies. This study found that the Coca-Cola Company sponsored 94 and PepsiCo sponsored 13 national health organizations. Although it seems the Coca-Cola Company may invest more than PepsiCo in sponsorships, this result is likely due to bias from increased availability of Coca-Cola sponsorship records. These records were released as part of the transparency initiative, which the Coca-Cola company started after it …

Reforming Regulation, Ganesh Sitaraman

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

The debate over federal regulation has long been at the center of political contests. But surprisingly, the degree of agreement about regulation is considerable. No serious commentator denies that regulation is essential to ensuring well-functioning markets; protecting the health and safety of workers and families; and preventing fraud, corruption, and theft. Smart regulation is what makes cars safe to drive, lakes and rivers safe to swim in, and food safe to eat. At the same time, every serious commentator recognizes that poorly designed regulations can be detrimental; they can stack the deck in favor of special interests, prevent competition, and …

The Cyber-Industrial Complex, Connor O’Malley

Political Science Theses and Capstones

When Edward Snowden released a massive trove of classified files from the National Security Agency, the world became aware of numerous global surveillance systems. As Snowden hoped, a global dialogue began concerning surveillance, privacy, and government transparency. While there was a lively discourse surrounding the leak and Snowden, another story was missed. Snowden was not an employee of the NSA; rather he was an employee of Booz Allen Hamilton, a private contractor maintaining computer systems for the NSA. The deeper story here is the emerging relationship between government agencies and technology companies. This paper discusses the theory of iron triangles …

Lawyers, Power, And Strategic Expertise, Colleen Shanahan, Anna Carpenter, Alyx Mark

Faculty Articles

This empirical study analyzes the experience of the parties described above, specifically the power, representation, and strategic expertise they bring to a dispute. Our analysis of these factors clarifies how representation may be a solution to the access to justice crisis. We find that a representative helps most parties most of the time. We also find that the other party’s representation and the representative’s strategic expertise are significant factors for understanding representation for civil litigants. This study analyzes a database of 1,700 unemployment insurance appeals in the District of Columbia over a two-year period, the broadest and deepest collection of …

Can A Little Representation Be A Dangerous Thing?, Colleen Shanahan, Anna Carpenter, Alyx Mark

Faculty Articles

Access to justice interventions that provide a little representation, including nonlawyer representation and various forms of limited legal services, may be valuable solutions for low- and middle-income Americans. However, a thoughtful approach to improving access to justice efforts should recognize that a little representation may have risks. In particular, one potential risk of a little representation is that while it provides assistance with a discrete legal need in a specific moment, the nature of the assistance is incompatible with challenging the law. As a result, individual litigants do not have the benefit of legal challenges in their own cases and …

The Snowden Effect: The Conflict In A Free Society, Who Values Privacy Versus Who Values Security?, Matthew C. Blake

Political Science Theses and Capstones

The Obama Administration has come under scrutiny by both the public and Congress, since former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Edward Snowden made known the scope of government surveillance programs being utilized by the U.S. government to gather intelligence on domestic citizens. Snowden’s disclosures about the government’s surveillance practices to the mainstream media began in June 2013. I focus on how public opinion towards the government’s surveillance practices and an individual’s reasonable right to privacy has shifted after revelations made by Edward Snowden on the practices of the NSA. Individuals may show support for more government surveillance in the name …

Towards Principles And Standards For The Benefit-Cost Analysis Of Safety, W. Kip Viscusi, Scott Farrow

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Benefit-cost analysis (BCA) is frequently applied to decisions involving public safety which requires analyzing risk and assessing options to manage risks. Principles and standards may assist analysts, decision-makers, and the public in developing and interpreting such BCAs. Principles and standards at best represent commonly held views among a community of practice. Such views are continually evolving with advances in the field. This paper presents a modularized format towards principles and standards that may assist in focusing discussion and decisions about whether such proposals actually reflect principles and standards within the benefit-cost analysis community of practice. Among topics covered are welfare …

The Project Model Of Clinical Education, Anna Carpenter

Faculty Articles

In clinical legal education, there is growing interest in the development of project-based clinical work, which includes a broad range of activities, such as legislative and policy reform, community economic development and community legal education. In the project model, students use non-litigation advocacy strategies to solve challenging legal problems for clients and engage a broad range of multidimensional legal skills, including complex problem-solving, strategic planning, project management, and professional communication skills. Clinical scholarship on project-based learning has suggested that key pedagogical methods, particularly maximizing role assumption and student ownership of clinic work, must be compromised in projects due to the …

Unemployed Veterans During A Recession: Factors Affecting The Completion Rate Of The Vocational Rehabilitation And Employment Program, Chris Witt

Political Science Theses and Capstones

The purpose of my research is to determine what factors affect the outcome of the Vocational Rehabilitation and Employment program. Previous literature examines individuals from each state in various stages of the program to determine which factors cause their individual outcome. Although previous research covered a broad spectrum of factors there still remains a lack of significant evidence to determine the observed outcome. I added state expenditures to the previous data to attempt to determine whether or not there is a correlation between funding and the completion of the program. I used the Department of Veteran Affairs 2007 Veterans Employability …

Workplace Consequences Of Electronic Exhibitionism And Voyeurism, William A. Herbert

Publications and Research

The popularity of email, blogging and social networking raises important issues for employers, employees and labor unions. This article will explore contemporary workplace issues resulting from the related social phenomena of electronic exhibitionism and voyeurism. It will begin with a discussion of the international social phenomenon of individuals electronically distributing their personal thoughts, opinions, and activities to a potential worldwide audience while at the same time retaining a subjective sense of privacy. The temptation toward such exhibitionism has been substantially enhanced by the advent of Web 2.0. The article then turns to the legal implications of electronic voyeurism including employer …

Anatomy Of An Aggregate Settlement: The Triumph Of Temptation Over Ethics, Lester Brickman

Articles

In an aggregate settlement, usually of a mass tort claim, a defendant agrees to pay a specific dollar amount to be divided up by the lawyer among her multiple clients which may number in the hundreds and even thousands. Each client, therefore, is in competition with all of the lawyer’s other clients suing the same defendant for a share of the fixed sum. Rule 1.8(g) of the ABA Rules of Professional Conduct requires that each client give their informed consent to their allocation. To facilitate the settlement and the often quite substantial contingency fees to be earned, lawyers may mislead …

One Day, All Americans..: Considering A Tfa-Style Lawyer Corps, Gregory Zlotnick

Faculty Articles

This Note argues for the creation of a public interest recruiting and placement organization like Teach for America, in the tradition of Edgar and Jean Cahn's call for federally funded neighborhood legal services and TFA founder Wendy Kopp's call for the creation of a national teacher corps. Part I argues that such a recruiting and placement organization should be implemented now, in light of the constitutional and legal limitations of federally funded legal services; an excess supply of lawyers coupled with a disparity in those receiving legal services; cutbacks in public interest positions such as legal aid and public defender …