Health and health care should close the partisan divide, not rip it open further. Politicizing health and health care is not new. Remember Senator John McCain’s famous thumbs down on repealing the ACA? It was a rare act of overcoming the partisan divide. Absent politics, many people agree that the American diet should be healthier,…
Written: August 2024 In Chevron v. NRDC, the Supreme Court created what became known as the Chevron doctrine. The 1984 case required courts to uphold an agency’s reasonable interpretation of an ambiguous law. There was some leeway – courts did not uphold arbitrary or capricious interpretations or interpretations of rules outside the agency’s expertise. They…
Parenthetical in-text citations are a mainstay of many academic journals. They are distracting. But more importantly, they edge authors toward eliminating explanatory footnotes. I suggest it is best to use footnotes for all citations and to describe the main thesis of the article cited, clarify the context, and distinguish the facts or context. Law reviews…
Open access publishing has major benefits to readers, library systems, and anyone who would forgo reading due to the subscription price or who would pay subscription fees. I am (or maybe was) a huge fan. In the 1990s open access arose as a non-profit, often university-based system. Around 2002, commercial publishers entered the market. Along…
The Family Miranda Rights bill in New York would give parents much-needed protections from abusive actions by the child protective services industrial complex. Miranda warnings are a mainstay of the US Constitution – their role in offering some protections in criminal law are well documented. Miranda warnings were established in Miranda v. Arizona as a…
Adapted and including significant excerpts from Zimmerman, A. “Our System for Reporting Child Abuse is Unethical” Hastings Center Forum, September 29, 2023. “Take Care of Maya” documents the tragic circumstances of powerful child abuse pediatrician Sally Smith and social worker Cathi Bedy, who, with doctors and the infrastructure of the Department of Children and Families…
Some articles in mainstream media and academics could be paraphrased as statements that begin “I am concerned about AI proliferation because. . .” Answers can be broadly grouped into two distinct categories: existential threats and grounded, proven and anticipated harms. Math is not going to “take over the world”. While that is an odd statement,…
The “rule of rescue” describes the imperative people feel to rescue those in imminent danger. That kneejerk reaction is distinct from the ethical imperative that is described as a duty to rescue. The firm territory of the moral duty to rescue involves rescue that puts the rescuer at little inconvenience or cost and does not…
Medical tourism presents ethical dilemmas and has many downsides. The CDC does recognize that many people from the United States travel to Mexico for care and its website provides some guidance and warnings. Last week, members of a drug cartel kidnapped four travelers to Mexico and killed two of them. Safety along the US-Mexico border…
In federal court, Seattle School District #1 is suing big tech companies under Washington state’s public nuisance law, alleging social media harms children’s mental health. Also, as a result of consolidating 100 cases, a large multi-district lawsuit in federal court in California is using products liability to take aim at big tech for harming children’s…