Health Law and Policy Commons^™

Bring The Masks And Sanitizer: The Surprising Bipartisan Consensus About Safety Measures For In-Person Voting During The Coronavirus Pandemic, Joshua A. Douglas, Michael A. Zilis

Georgia Law Review

Requiring masks at the polls might implicate a clash
between two vital rights: the constitutional right to vote and the
right to protect one’s health. Yet the debate during the 2020
election over requirements to wear a mask at the polls obscured
one key fact: a majority of Americans supported a mask
mandate for voting. That is the new insight we provide in this
Essay: when surveyed, Americans strongly supported safety
measures for in-person voting, and that support was high
regardless of partisanship. One implication of our results is
that by making some widely supported safety modifications,
state election officials …

The World Health Organization: A Weak Defender Against Pandemics, Chenglin Liu

Faculty Articles

Why did the World Health Organization (WHO) not act in a timely fashion to declare the coronavirus outbreak a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC)? If it had done so, could the United States have heeded the warning and controlled the spread of the virus? Is the WHO's delay a factual cause of the calamities that the United States has suffered? This article addresses these questions. Part I examines the development of the WHO and its governance mechanism, major powers and limits, and past achievements and failures. It also explores how the WHO responded to the COVID-19 pandemic and …

Difficulty Of Care: Alligning Tax And Health Care Policy For Family Caregiving, Christine S. Speidel

Faculty Publications

In the United States millions of people live with disabilities, many of whom require assistance with activities of daily life to remain in their homes and communities. However, financial support for this assistance is limited. Many caregivers forgo working outside the home in order to provide care to a family member. And while state and federal programs provide some compensation for caregiving, caregivers frequently face problems including poverty, lack of health insurance, lack of Social Security and Medicare credits, and lack of retirement savings. Our nation’s paltry support for caregiving threatens the practical ability of people with disabilities to choose …

“It Didn’T Matter What The Bill Said...”: Influences On Abortion Policy Legislative Decision-Making In Georgia, Erica Barton, Subasri Narasimhan, Dabney P. Evans

Journal of the Georgia Public Health Association

Background: In March 2019 the Georgia legislature passed HB 481 described as a “heartbeat bill”, prohibiting abortion at around six weeks gestation. Given the prevalence of anti-abortion legislation and the public health implications of abortion restrictions, we sought to understand how Georgia legislators made decisions on this early abortion ban legislation.

Methods: We conducted in-depth interviews with nine legislators from the Georgia House of Representatives who participated in the 2019 legislative session. In-depth interviews were conducted in-person and over the phone. Interview recordings were transcribed verbatim and inductive codes identified. Codes focused primarily on views of: abortion in general; specific …

Employees With Intellectual Disabilities During The Covid-19 Pandemic: New Directions For Disability Anti-Discrimination Law?, Leslie P. Francis

Oklahoma Law Review

No abstract provided.

Equal Protection And Ectogenesis, Brit J. Benjamin

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

Ectogenesis is the gestation of a fetus in an artificial womb. This suite of technologies, now in use to preserve the lives of premature infants, is on the cusp of being a viable method of reproduction from conception to term. This Article argues that an equal protection challenge to a ban on utilizing ectogenetic technologies should be analyzed under intermediate or strict scrutiny. Should the US Supreme Court apply the rational basis or rational basis “with bite” standard of review to such a challenge, the petitioner should prevail.

The nature of ectogenesis is a technological alternative for a sex-specific organ. …

How Much Can Potential Jurors Tell Us About Liability For Medical Artificial Intelligence?, W. Nicholson Price Ii, Sara Gerke, I. Glenn Cohen

Articles

Artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly entering medical practice, whether for risk prediction, diagnosis, or treatment recommendation. But a persistent question keeps arising: What happens when things go wrong? When patients are injured, and AI was involved, who will be liable and how? Liability is likely to influence the behavior of physicians who decide whether to follow AI advice, hospitals that implement AI tools for physician use, and developers who create those tools in the first place. If physicians are shielded from liability (typically medical malpractice liability) when they use AI tools, even if patient injury results, they are more likely …

Ethical Challenges In The Middle Tier Of Covid-19 Vaccine Allocation: Guidance For Organizational Decision-Making, Nancy Berlinger, Matthew Wynia, Tia Powell, Aimee Milliken, Parinda Khatri, Fatma Marouf, Keisha Ray, Johanna Crane

Faculty Scholarship

This supplement to The Hastings Center’s “Ethical Framework” aims to help structure time-sensitive discussion of significant, foreseeable ethical concerns in responding to Covid-19 and to support collaboration across institutions throughout pandemic response and recovery. It is designed for use by county health systems and by hospitals, community health centers, and other health care organizations responsible for patient care or preventive health, including vaccine education, vaccine distribution, and vaccination. This document aims to support formal and informal convening and policy work within the same geographic region, such as a municipality, county, metropolitan area, state, or multistate area, led by public health …

The Future Of Facts: The Politics Of Public Health And Medicine In Abortion Law, Aziza Ahmed

University of Colorado Law Review

While a great deal of public scrutiny has focused on how information circulates through online outlets including Twitter and Facebook, less attention has been devoted to how more traditional institutions traffic in factual assertions for the sake of setting a particular distributional agenda into motion.1 Of these more traditional institutions, courts play a central role in legitimating legal and factual claims in the process of applying and clarifying legal rules. In public health-related adjudication, courts play at least two important roles: first, judges and juries make decisions between competing sets of public health and medical claims and second, courts legitimate …

Abortion Rights In The Supreme Court: A Tale Of Three Wedges, Jennifer S. Hendricks

Publications

No abstract provided.

A Novel Response: How Law Libraries Adapted To The Pandemic, Aamir S. Abdullah

Publications

No abstract provided.

When We Breathe: Re-Envisioning Safety And Justice In A Post-Floyd Era, Aya Gruber

Publications

10th Annual David H. Bodiker Lecture on Criminal Justice delivered on Wed., Oct. 21, 2020 at Ohio State University Moritz College of Law.

Pandemic Emotions: The Good, The Bad, And The Unconscious —Implications For Public Health, Financial Economics, Law, And Leadership, Peter H. Huang

Publications

Pandemics lead to emotions that can be good, bad, and unconscious. This Article offers an interdisciplinary analysis of how emotions during pandemics affect people’s responses to pandemics, public health, financial economics, law, and leadership. Pandemics are heart-breaking health crises. Crises produce emotions that impact decision-making. This Article analyzes how fear and anger over COVID-19 fueled anti-Asian and anti-Asian American hatred and racism. COVID-19 caused massive tragic economic, emotional, mental, physical, and psychological suffering. These difficulties are interconnected and lead to vicious cycles. Fear distorts people’s decision readiness, deliberation, information acquisition, risk perception, and thinking. Distortions affect people’s financial, health, and …

The Regulatory Production Of Vaccine Hesitancy, Eugene Mccarthy

Brooklyn Law Review

This article argues that U.S. vaccine law produces the “anti-vax” movement. The anti-vax movement is a growing problem, as more than half of American parents have concerns about vaccinating their children. Remarkably, these “vaccine-hesitant” individuals tend to be highly educated, wealthy, and experienced parents. Three legal structures cause vaccine hesitancy: strict immunization mandates, lax regulatory oversight, and blanket limited liability for vaccine manufacturers. The United States stands alone with regard to its vaccine mandates—no other developed democracy requires its citizens to receive such a large number of childhood vaccines. Meanwhile, the law permits financial conflicts of interest in vaccine approval …

Functional Statehood In Contemporary International Law, William Thomas Worster

Brooklyn Journal of International Law

The international community lacks a form of territorial-based, international legal personality distinct from statehood, and yet, non-state, territorial entities of varying degrees of autonomy or independence need to function within the international community in some form. Some of these entities cannot be recognized as states because their creation violates jus cogens norms, though others are not recognized based on an assessment that they may not fully qualify as a state or that there are political reasons to refuse recognition. However, existing states still need to engage with these territorial quasi-states through the only paradigm the international community has—statehood. For example, …

Directors’ Duty Of Care In Times Of Financial Distress Following The Global Epidemic Crisis, Leon Yehuda Anidjar

Brooklyn Journal of International Law

The global COVID-19 pandemic is causing the large-scale end of life and severe human suffering globally. This massive public health crisis created a significant economic crisis and is reflected in a recession of global production and the collapse of confidence in the functions of markets. Corporations and boards of directors around the world are required to design specific strategies to tackle the negative consequences of the crisis. This is especially true for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) that suffered tremendous economic loss, and their continued existence as ongoing concern is under considerable risk. Given these uncertain financial times, this Article …

Mandating Covid-19 Vaccines, Lawrence O. Gostin, Daniel A. Salmon, Heidi J. Larson

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) vaccines hold promise to control the pandemic, and help restore normal social and economic life. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted emergency use authorization (EUA) for 2 mRNA vaccines and will likely issue full biologics licenses in the coming months. Anticipating vaccine scarcity, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practice (ACIP) published guidance on vaccine priorities.

Data show 95% efficacy for vaccines granted an EUA, but even highly effective vaccines cannot curb the pandemic without high population coverage and maintenance of other mitigation strategies. Recent data from 1,676 adults surveyed November 30-December …

The "People's Total War On Covid-19": Urban Pandemic Management Through (Non-)Law In Wuhan, China, Philipp Renninger

Washington International Law Journal

Although COVID-19 was first detected in the People’s Republic of China, the pandemic now appears contained there. Western and Chinese media attribute this apparent success to the central level of the Chinese state and the Communist Party. However, this article reveals that local entities provided critical contributions to China’s COVID-19 management, particularly in the pandemic’s first epicenter: Wuhan city in Hubei province. Chinese cities like Wuhan can fight public health emergencies through legal and nonlegal instruments. Although Wuhan had prepared for possible pandemics, its existing plans, institutions, and warning systems initially failed against COVID-19. The city did not contain the …

Right To Health In Gats: Can The Public Health Exception Pave The Way For Complementarity?, Swati Gola

Pace International Law Review

This paper demonstrates how a right to health approach in the interpretation of the public health exception outlined in GATS Article XIV(b) can bring about a harmonious application of international human rights and international trade law regimes. Focusing on the interpretive value of the right to health for the public health exception in GATS, it examines whether a WTO Member, who has committed itself under GATS to fully liberalize all service sectors that have implications for health (e.g., hospital and other healthcare services), still retains the regulatory space to undertake measures to fulfill their right to health obligations and can …

An Australian Conundrum: Genomic Technology, Data, And The Covidsafe App, David Morrison, Patrick T. Quirk

Pace International Law Review

This paper examines the difficulties that have arisen in Australia in the use of its contact-tracing app. We examine the privacy implications around the use of the app, the wider economic imperative, and the balancing of those concerns against the health threat of the COVID-19 pandemic. We posit that default options are superior in times of emergency and rather than begging for the adoption of lifesaving technology, we suggest that the evidence gathered by behavioral economists provides an apposite and powerful alternative worthy of consideration.