The opioid crisis is one that continues to astonish the public.[1] From the lack of accountability, poor government oversight, inconsistent enforcement, and an all-out failure to bring it to a head, the crisis is a never-ending disaster seemingly playing on loop.[2] The question that experts ask and fail to answer is what remedies courts should consider in future settlements beyond monetary damages and whether the suggested remedies would help in preventing a recurrence of another opioid-type public health crisis. While this question is important and deserves an answer, it is not the correct question that needs to be asked presently.
Continue reading “A Prescription for Crisis: Opioids, Patients, and the Controlled Substances Act”Month: May 2022
When Binding Doesn’t Really Mean Binding: The Early Decision College Application
Student-college contracts have been extensively researched, interpreted, and adjudicated over the years. With the advent of the Early Decision application, this Article examines the contracting process and reaches the conclusion that the Early Decision application is not, in fact, legally binding because no enforceable contract has been formed by the application alone. However, colleges have little incentive to share their true interpretation of the term “binding” as applied to the Early Decision application. Barring judicial review of the enforceability of the Early Decision application as a legal agreement, prospective students will continue to base their college application choices on an erroneous belief that “binding” really means binding.
Continue reading “When Binding Doesn’t Really Mean Binding: The Early Decision College Application”Square Pegs and Round Holes: Differentiated Instruction and the Law Classroom
As the academic semester begins, law students enter the classroom with sharpened pencils and charged laptops. Law professors enter the classroom with prepared notes and tabbed casebooks. But how will law professors ensure that the learning of each individual student is supported? Students do not take one path to law school. From English majors to engineering majors, students enter law school immediately upon graduating from college or years after graduation with various professional experiences. Despite criticism that legal education is resistant to change and over-relies on the Socratic Method, law school educators know that learning is not a one-size-fits-all experience. Yet, law school educators need to do more to respond to the needs of all learners.
Continue reading “Square Pegs and Round Holes: Differentiated Instruction and the Law Classroom”Witnessed From the Justice Bus: COVID Drove Equal Justice Off the Road, but Technology Grabbed the Wheel and Is Steering Us Into the Future
Thirty feet above the marble entrance to the Supreme Court looms the Great American Promise: “Equal Justice Under Law.” Chiseled by hand before the building was completed in 1935, the bold pledge—though etched in stone—remains distant and unfulfilled in neighborhoods just a few miles away. Burdened with poverty and a lack of resources—access to technology and easy transportation, first and foremost—the less fortunate have long found equal justice mostly out of reach. COVID-19 has only increased the problem, isolating needy Americans in their most desperate time. Yet as you drive into any rural area of America, you find that the virus also revealed what has already proven to be one of the great equalizers of our age: technology. It’s making a profound difference and traveling across America makes that clear.
Continue reading “Witnessed From the Justice Bus: COVID Drove Equal Justice Off the Road, but Technology Grabbed the Wheel and Is Steering Us Into the Future”An Unexpected Result of Gender Equality Initiatives in Sports-The Sexualization of Female Athletes
Female athletic uniforms have received notable attention and media coverage in recent years. However, there is a lengthy history underlying women’s involvement in sports and the hypersexualization of female athletes. This Article aims to address the long historical journey of female athletes who have been sexualized and begins by reviewing recent media coverage of female athletic uniforms, before discussing the history of women in sports. Title IX’s impact on female participation in athletics is examined. The changes to female athletic attire are considered before this Article scrutinizes the lack of progress in our current state of affairs. Finally, this Article closes by proposing ways to address the hypersexualization of female athletes in an effort to promote positive change.
Continue reading “An Unexpected Result of Gender Equality Initiatives in Sports-The Sexualization of Female Athletes”The Runaway Jury of Joaquín ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán; Or Dishonesty Only Our Justice System Could Ratify
Joaquín Guzmán Loera, known as “El Chapo,” was convicted of an array of drug offenses on February 12, 2019, in a federal court in Brooklyn after an eleven-week trial. The Second Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the conviction on January 25, 2022. The trial earned unprecedented media coverage and was by far the most significant narcotics trial in history. Eight days after the verdict, a VICE News story by Keegan Hamilton reported a member of the jury reached out to him and admitted pervasive misconduct, including jurors constantly following the case in the media. Unless Hamilton invented the malfeasance, Guzmán deserves an evidentiary hearing to explore VICE’s account and legitimate consideration to whether he should be granted a new trial.
Continue reading “The Runaway Jury of Joaquín ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán; Or Dishonesty Only Our Justice System Could Ratify”Women, Motherhood, and the Quest for Easier Entry Into Campaigns for Elected Office
As more and more women enter the field of electoral politics and become candidates for federal and state office, they will continue to bring their unique perspectives to the myriad of policy questions and challenges of governing. The increased number of women in electoral politics will indelibly reshape our nation’s laws. To that end, and quite fittingly, before a new generation of female lawmakers reshape our halls of legislation in both state capitals and in Washington D.C., they are first changing the ways in which they arrive in those very halls.
Continue reading “Women, Motherhood, and the Quest for Easier Entry Into Campaigns for Elected Office”The Crimes of Digital Capitalism
The European Union (“EU”), among other polities, has illuminated the ways in which hegemonic digital platforms like Amazon, Facebook, Google, and Uber have disrupted the way the public understands competition, democracy, information, and data privacy. As detailed in a recent EU Commission report, the market power enjoyed by these and other digital monopolies entails not only risks to competition but also to consumer well-being itself. Tribunals from diverse countries such as Australia, the U.S., and the UK reached similar conclusions. In fact, multiple court rulings and public investigations have established that the data of 85 million Facebook users were traded, exposed, and commodified for political purpose in violation, not only of Facebook’s own terms and conditions, but of various national and international laws and treaties. Such data exploitation threatens the privacy of users. And although these privacy concerns are serious, they are not the only threat.
Continue reading “The Crimes of Digital Capitalism”Boarding Mental Health Patients in Minnesota Emergency Departments-The Unintended Consequence of an Inadequate Mental Health System
Mental illness has become increasingly prevalent throughout our society. It is estimated that one in five adults already suffer from a mental health condition each year. The situation has undoubtedly worsened with twice as many adults now reportedly struggling with their mental health due to the novel coronavirus pandemic. Mental health issues are soaring at an all-time high for adults and children alike. Unfortunately, Minnesota lacks the magnitude of mental health services necessary to appropriately care for all these patients in need, resulting in numerous heartbreaking stories across the state. People in mental health crises frequently go to local emergency departments, desperately seeking help, only to find themselves languishing in emergency rooms for days, even weeks, waiting for an inpatient psychiatric bed to open. This devastating practice is known as “boarding.”
Continue reading “Boarding Mental Health Patients in Minnesota Emergency Departments-The Unintended Consequence of an Inadequate Mental Health System”Legacies of a Pandemic: Remote Attestation and Electronic Wills
The coronavirus pandemic has compelled governors and legislatures to fast-track remote attestation laws, a previously prohibited form of witnessing that has largely been left out of the thoughtful, nearly two-decades-long but largely unsuccessful, effort to validate electronic wills. This Article examines the unforeseen problems that have arisen in the rush to institute remote attestation in the current crisis, urges lawmakers to interpret the presence requirement as encompassing remote attestation, and predicts that the current experiment with remote attestation will speed the enactment of electronic-will legislation.
Continue reading “Legacies of a Pandemic: Remote Attestation and Electronic Wills”