Skip to content

Archive

Media Mentions

  • Congress should warn Trump’s lawbreakers that there will be consequences

    August 31, 2020

    With about two months to go until Election Day, President Trump has abandoned any pretense of following, let alone enforcing, the laws he has sworn to uphold. He directed government employees to assist him in putting on a political extravaganza at the White House. His secretary of state dialed in from Jerusalem for a purely political role as Trump’s cheerleader at the Republican National Convention, in violation of both the Hatch Act and his own departmental guidelines. Trump instructed his director of national intelligence to refuse to brief members of Congress in person on efforts to disrupt the 2020 election, a choice House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and House Intelligence Committee Chairman Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.) declared “a shocking abdication of its lawful responsibility to keep the Congress currently informed, and a betrayal of the public’s right to know how foreign powers are trying to subvert our democracy.” And Postmaster General Louis DeJoy has instituted measures that have slowed the mail, even as more Americans will rely on the Postal Service to cast their ballots. The way to handle Trump is to beat him at the polls. But what about the aides who participate in illegal activities or block Congress from performing oversight? ... “It’s well past time for Congress to lose its subpoena inhibitions, now that the Roberts court has unanimously rejected the administration’s claims of absolute presidential immunity in a ringing reaffirmation of the principle that no executive official is above the law,” says constitutional scholar Laurence Tribe. “The White House participants who engaged in flagrant Hatch Act violations should all be held in contempt if they defy facially valid congressional subpoenas, and there’s no legitimate basis for the new administration to give such participants a bye just because the president personally isn’t covered by the Hatch Act.”

  • State AGs Taking On Bigger Workplace Enforcement Role

    August 31, 2020

    State attorneys general have stepped up their workplace enforcement efforts in recent years by suing employers that short workers on pay, fighting job misclassification and challenging noncompete agreements binding low-wage workers, according to a new report by the Economic Policy Institute. The liberal think tank's Aug. 27 report runs down dozens such actions taken since 2018 by state attorneys general offices, some of which have recently formed units dedicated to prosecuting employment violations. These new efforts comprise another layer of protection for vulnerable workers in an especially precarious time, said report author Terri Gerstein, who heads the State and Local Enforcement Project at Harvard Law School's Labor and Worklife Program. "Offices that have done this work have really had an impact and done really great work," said Gerstein, a veteran of the New York State Office of the Attorney General and that state's Department of Labor. "These issues are so important right now. They were before the pandemic and now even more so, and they should really be top-line issues for leaders in all of our states and cities." Gerstein's report charts increased efforts by attorneys general to curb several workplace abuses, including wage theft, which occurs when employers short workers on overtime and minimum wage. Attorneys general in Massachusetts, New York, West Virginia and other states have filed numerous such actions, securing millions of dollars in combined pay for construction, health care, grocery, car wash and other workers, according to the report...Historically, the attorneys general offices of California, Massachusetts and New York — which have long had dedicated workers' rights units — have been the most active in the employment space. But others have recently caught up amid growing awareness of income inequality and the precarity of low-wage work, Gerstein said.

  • TV Ratings for Biden and Trump Signal an Increasingly Polarized Nation

    August 31, 2020

    Americans who watched the political conventions on television opted for news networks with partisan fan bases to a degree unseen in recent years, another sign of an increasingly divided electorate as the nation hurtles toward the November election...Television viewers’ turn to perceived safe spaces raises questions about the ability of political conventions — which reached a broader TV audience in the pre-internet era — to persuade undecided voters. And it underscores fears about a polarized information environment where Americans can receive little exposure to political ideas that run counter to their own...On MSNBC, three Trump critics — Rachel Maddow, Joy Reid and Nicolle Wallace — lambasted the president’s address and interrupted the convention for several fact-checking segments. The channel’s ratings for the Republican convention were among its lowest prime-time weeks of the year. For the Democratic convention, the picture was sharply reversed. MSNBC clocked its highest-rated prime-time week in the network’s 24-year history, with a 10 p.m. average of 5.7 million viewers. Fox News’s viewership fell far below its usual prime-time average. “What we saw in the last presidential election was that Clinton supporters distributed their attention much more evenly among a broader range of outlets, and Trump supporters concentrated much more heavily on Fox News,” said Yochai Benkler, a co-director of the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School. “The fact you have such a high proportion of viewers of the Democratic convention on MSNBC does suggest, to some extent, a gravitation on the Democratic side toward a more partisan, viewpoint-reinforcing network,” Mr. Benkler said.

  • Jacob Blake, Chris Paul, and the hidden power of the NBA

    August 31, 2020

    Among the blessings that NBA players possess and most mortals lack—lots of money, little body fat—here’s another that was highlighted this week: They belong to a union. As teams abandoned the hardwood Wednesday to focus on how best to respond to the police shooting of Jacob Blake, they knew where to turn for guidance: the National Basketball Players Association. On Thursday, the players agreed to continue with their season, reportedly at the urging of their union leaders, Oklahoma City Thunder star Chris Paul and the Miami Heat’s Andre Iguodala, who persuaded them that they will have more leverage to battle deep-seated racism and push for change if they don’t walk out...The fight they are taking up is over broader social concerns, not their own wages or working conditions. And despite the prospect of a huge financial hit, team owners and management have been supportive of the players’ actions, which technically began as a wildcat strike by those on the Milwaukee Bucks. Still, the basic point shouldn’t be overlooked: The players were able to mobilize quickly and take a stand, in large measure, because they are organized. Very few others are, however. A mere 6% of private-sector workers in the United States today are part of a union—a position of weakness that has translated into stagnant wages and shrunken benefits across the American labor force...Yet there is ample evidence that one factor, above all, is to blame for the fall of unions: a fierce and relentless effort by businesses to bust them, abetted by their political allies in Washington and in so-called right-to-work states. When it comes to turning back union organizers, “companies will use any and all means they can get away with,” says Larry Beeferman, a fellow at Harvard Law School’s Labor and Worklife Program. Many executives have demonstrated that they’ll even violate the law to thwart collective bargaining.

  • Why a rights-based UN response to cholera matters for COVID-19

    August 31, 2020

    An article by Beatrice Lindstrom, Mario Joseph and Brian Concannon: If UN Secretary-General António Guterres is serious about his clarion call for “a strong, coordinated and coherent multilateral response” to COVID-19 that is based on solidarity, he should start by keeping his promises to victims of the UN-caused cholera epidemic in Haiti. Providing cholera victims the justice they have sought for a decade would restore the credibility the UN needs to lead the fight against COVID-19, and set an example of an effective human rights-based response to global health threats.  Cholera broke out in Haiti in 2010 as a result of the reckless disposal of contaminated waste from a UN base into Haiti’s largest river system. Unlike COVID-19, cholera is easily preventable with clean water. But Haiti’s epidemic has killed more than 10,000 people and sickened over 800,000—a per capita infection rate that exceeds the confirmed prevalence of COVID-19 in any country to date. The UN responded to the epidemic by withholding information, denying its obvious responsibility and blaming victims for their poverty-generated underlying vulnerability to the disease—a template now being used by some governments in unsuccessful COVID-19 responses. The UN also refused to provide the victims a fair hearing on their claims for justice, in violation of international law. In 2016, the Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, Phillip Alston, called this response “morally unconscionable, legally indefensible and politically self-defeating.” Later that year, facing an extraordinary mobilization by the victims and their allies, the UN issued an unprecedented public apology and announced a “new approach” that was to “place victims at the center” and deliver a concrete expression of the UN’s regret through material assistance for victims.

  • Responding to a Contested Election, Step by Step

    August 31, 2020

    An article by Cass Sunstein: After Nov. 3 — Election Day — there is a chance of constitutional chaos. It could take the form of acute uncertainty, not only about who won the election but also about the process by which that question will be settled. We might have a perfect storm: close contests in key states, issues with mail-in voting, allegations of voter suppression and fraud, and an incumbent president who is unwilling to accept a loss (and who is already paving the way toward contesting the results as “rigged”). To see the problem, it is essential to understand that Nov. 3 is only the first of three defining days. The second is Dec. 14, when members of the Electoral College cast their votes. The third is Jan. 6, 2021, when Congress meets in joint session to declare the winner. What happens on Nov. 3 is almost always enough to decide the presidential election. That isn’t because victory goes to the candidate with the most votes nationally, but because the popular vote, within the states, settles the outcome in the Electoral College. In nearly every state, the candidate who receives the most votes statewide is entitled to the vote of all of the state’s electors. Suppose, for example, that President Donald Trump receives 47.3% of the vote in Ohio, and that former Vice President Joe Biden receives 47.2% of the vote there. All of Ohio’s 18 electoral votes would be allocated to Trump. But what if we don’t know on Nov. 3, or even a month later, who won Ohio? Or Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Florida? What if it takes a long time to count the votes, and what if the results are disputed?

  • Ill. Gov. Pritzker pushes back on Exelon call for aid

    August 28, 2020

    Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker dialed up the heat on Exelon Corp. last week with an energy plan that rejected the Chicago company's call for policy changes to prop up its nuclear fleet. Yesterday, Exelon pushed back on Pritzker and Illinois legislators, threatening to close two nuclear plants in the northern half of the state that the company had previously warned were at risk. Besides the loss of an additional 1,500 jobs if the plants close and millions of dollars in local taxes for governments challenged by an economic downturn from COVID-19, the closures would mean the loss of 4,300 megawatts of Illinois' carbon-free energy at a time when the governor has promised to cut carbon emissions (Greenwire, Aug. 27). Nuclear industry supporters say there's no getting around the fact that the closure of the two plants would lead to an increase in carbon emissions, at least in the short run. And no matter their view of Exelon, elected officials in Illinois, including Pritzker, don't want to see the reactors shut down, costing local jobs and tax revenue...That's especially true if Exelon is looking for help outside the Statehouse, said Ari Peskoe, director of the Electricity Law Initiative at the Harvard Law School Environmental and Energy Law Program. At the federal level, Democrats in Congress have discussed a federal clean energy standard. But that would be on the table only if the party can take control of the Senate this fall and former Vice President Joe Biden defeats President Trump (Climatewire, Aug. 26). Even then, passing and implementing such a bill wouldn't be quick or easy. Regulators led by a new Federal Energy Regulatory Commission chairman under a Biden administration could also seek changes to PJM market rules (Energywire, Aug. 24). Such a process can take years to work through. "There's a lot of things the state or Congress or FERC could do, but those would take time," Peskoe said. Even if Biden and the Democrats win big in November, "it's not going to happen on Jan. 21."

  • “Is the Stakeholder Pledge Just a ‘PR Move?’ Directors Respond”

    August 28, 2020

    The widely acclaimed pledge that 181 CEOs signed last year to redefine the purpose of corporations was “largely a public-relations move,” according to Lucian Bebchuk, one of the country’s best-known academics on corporate governance and founder of the influential blog the Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance. More importantly, writes Bebchuk, most CEOs who joined the pledge never planned to shift from the current model of shareholder primacy. Board directors and governance experts run the gamut in reacting to Bebchuk’s appraisal. What they do agree upon, however, is that the topic requires every board to take a more nuanced approach than the academic chose to in his recent pronouncement. “I believe that boards and CEOs understand that stakeholder capitalism is really a ‘thing’ and they understandably want to figure out how it will work,” writes Howard Brod Brownstein, director at P&F Industries, in an e-mail. “[B]oard directors should rightfully require management to explain fully how interests of non-shareholder stakeholders are being taken into account, and at what cost, if any, to shareholders.” On the other hand, Henry D. Wolfe, the founder and chairman of private equity firm De La Vega Occidental & Oriental Holdings, responds that he doubts that many boards and CEOs are in favor of the stakeholder model of governance. “And, yes, I think it is terrible for shareholders if by stakeholder capitalism the intent is to treat all stakeholders ‘equal.’” Bebchuk is a professor of law, economics, and finance at Harvard Law School and directs its corporate governance program. He was also a director of mining and metals company Norilsk Nickel of Russia, which trades on the Moscow and London stock exchanges.

  • Professional Athletes Went On Strike Over Police Brutality. So Let’s Call It A Strike.

    August 28, 2020

    When the Milwaukee Bucks announced Wednesday that they would not be playing their NBA playoff game due to the police shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin, the media couldn’t agree on what to call this extraordinary thing that was unfolding. Were the players mounting a protest? Were they initiating a boycott? Or were they carrying out a strike or work stoppage? Other teams in the NBA, WNBA and Major League Baseball followed the Bucks’ lead by refusing to suit up and play in solidarity, calling for an end to police brutality against Black people. Professional athletes across sports are throwing their collective weight around in historic fashion, and it’s good to call these actions what they really are: They’re strikes...Workers typically carry out strikes against their employers, and they usually do it for economic reasons. Here, the players’ beef is not with their leagues or their teams’ ownership. They are not trying to win raises or better health care coverage. They are demanding an end to social injustice. But what’s happening is still a strike, for the same reason it doesn’t fit the definition of a boycott: Workers, not consumers, are applying the real pressure here. NBA fans did not decide to halt the playoffs; the players did. And that matters because it could inspire other workers to push for social justice through their workplaces...Sharon Block, director of the Labor and Worklife Program at Harvard Law School, said the situation brought to mind the walkout led by employees of Wayfair, the online home furnishings retailer, because the company was supplying beds to U.S. detention centers for migrant children. The dispute was about social injustice ― not working conditions ― and the workers were asking the broader community to stand by them in condemning it. “Whatever the label is, this is about solidarity,” Block said of the athletes’ move. “It’s not just to advance their own interest, but to lead on a bigger public policy issue...They’re asking the public to join them in saying there’s something more important going on than sports.”

  • ‘Strike?’ ‘Boycott?’ What to call it when athletes won’t play, and why it matters

    August 28, 2020

    The front of the New York Times sports section on Thursday commemorated a historic day in sports, when three NBA playoff games, along with games across Major League Baseball, Major League Soccer and the WNBA, were postponed because athletes refused to play, in protest over the police shooting of Jacob Blake, an unarmed black man in Kenosha, Wisc. The image was simple: an empty court in the NBA bubble in Orlando. The headline was one word: “Boycott.” And the backlash, once the Times tweeted the image Wednesday night, came quickly. “You need to change it to STRIKE,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-New York, wrote on Twitter. Ocasio-Cortez spread her frustration around the media, responding to a tweet by The Washington Post that also called the action a “boycott," though the story itself used “strike." "NBA players are courageously on strike (withholding labor), NOT boycotting (withholding their $ /purchase),” she wrote. "The diff is important bc it shows their power as *workers*.” Others piled on. In New York magazine, Sarah Jones and Chas Danner offered their own critique of sportswriters who referred to the day’s events as a boycott. “The term,” they wrote, "is inaccurate, and dampens the political thrust of the Bucks’ protest.” ...Benjamin Sachs, a professor of labor and industry at Harvard Law School, [says] labeling what happened may be less important than describing what happened, and why. “We tend to think about strikes as about wages and benefits," Sachs said. "Those are very important, but this was about something much bigger than that, something involving the character and future of the country. So you can call it whatever you want, but the name seems less important than the meaning of what happened.”

  • Democracy In Crisis, Part 1: What’s Wrong With Elections?

    August 28, 2020

    In the late 1980’s and early 1990’s western-style democracy appeared ascendant and inevitable.  U.S. President George Herbert Walker Bush hailed events such as the fall of the Berlin Wall and the dissolution of the Soviet Union as heralding a New World Order, based on democracy and global capitalism.  But the last thirty years have seen, not an expansion of democracy, but a rebirth of authoritarianism.   Across the globe,  electoral fraud, political corruption, disenfranchisement of political minorities and the specter of fascism now seem the rule rather than the exception.  In 2017, the London-based Economist Democracy Index hit its lowest score ever, including the downgrading of the United States from a “Full Democracy” to a “Flawed Democracy.”  Today, we start a three-part series, Democracy in Crisis, which will explore the failures of our current electoral system and perhaps, provide some hope for an alternative model.  Joining WORT host Brian Standing...Lawrence Lessig is the Roy L. Furman Professor of Law and Leadership at Harvard Law School. Prior to returning to Harvard, he taught at Stanford Law School, where he founded the Center for Internet and Society. Lessig is the founder of Equal Citizens and a founding board member of Creative Commons. His books include: They Don’t Represent Us: Reclaiming Our Democracy, Fidelity and Constraint: How the Supreme Court Has Read the American Constitution, America, Compromised and  Republic, Lost v2.

  • Pa. is part of growing movement of state AGs defending workers’ rights, report finds

    August 28, 2020

    Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro brought criminal charges last September against a Centre County mechanical contractor for allegedly underpaying its workers by more than $64,000 over at least five years. The charges against Goodco Mechanical and its owner, Scott Good, were just one part of the attorney general’s strategy to crack down on scofflaw employers — a strategy that, according to a new report, places Pennsylvania on the forefront of a trend of state attorneys general using their powers to protect workers’ rights. In the last five years, several state attorney general offices — including those in Pennsylvania and New Jersey — have launched units focused on defending workers, transforming their offices into what report author Terri Gerstein describes as a rarity: a high-profile government entity that’s willing to hold employers accountable. Previously, only three states had such units; now, there are nine, according to Gerstein’s Economic Policy Institute report published Thursday. The trend marks a major shift, as attorneys general have not traditionally taken action on worker-related issues, said Gerstein, director of the State and Local Enforcement Project at the Harvard Law School Labor and Worklife Program. The shift comes as workers have faced increasingly precarious working conditions, and the percent of the workforce represented by a union has dropped to a historic low. It’s also part of a local worker protection movement, as cities and states attempt to fill the void left by the Trump administration, which has not prioritized workers’ rights. But perhaps most of all, worker issues have found footing in the national consciousness: “If you go back to 2008,” Gerstein said, “[these issues] were not in the newspaper headlines. It wasn’t a matter of such intense, focused, public concern.” In most states, including Pennsylvania, the attorney general is an elected position. Voters, she said, care about these issues.

  • Is M&A Work Steady When Markets Are Up and the Economy Is Down?

    August 28, 2020

    Two primary drivers for deal activity, company market valuations and overall economic conditions, are diverging more than ever. That’s creating opportunities for both law firms and their corporate clients—and challenges for others. M+A lawyers are increasingly talking about “the winner and the losers” in the market. That’s reinforcing the need for law firms to have a diversified range of clients, including clients that are more resilient and buoyant in today’s economy, some observers say. Brian Richards, chair of Paul Hastings’ global private equity practice, said deal flow in his practice has seen an increase in August, which he said is normally a down time for deals...During the initial phases of the pandemic, the U.S. economy and the markets took a unified downturn, effectively halting large deals and providing a level of uncertainty that put even smaller deals on hold. But the stock market has rebounded, and with authority...The economy, on the other hand, has not fared near as well...John Coates, a professor of law and economics at Harvard Law School, said most law firms are probably not in a terrible spot. “As a general matter, compared to say most professional services industries, the legal services for M+A work is very fragmented,” Coates said. “Individual firms don’t tend to have a significant share of overall M+A work, so one firm isn’t necessarily being hit harder than another.” Firms that have specialized their M+A work around industries hit hard by the pandemic, like real estate or hospitality, he said, could end up in that loser bin for the time being, but most firms are geared to handle that impact as well. “Well-run firms pay attention to not letting any one client generate a large percentage of their revenues, and there aren’t too many firms that are too dependent on that,” he said. “Regardless of how the market and the economy affect companies, law firms are normally sufficiently diversified.”

  • The High Court of Facebook

    August 27, 2020

    Today, Kate Klonick is back as the guest host. She is an assistant professor at St. John’s Law School, a fellow at the Information Society Project at Yale Law School, and researcher of the intersection between law and tech. She’s also co-host of a daily YouTube series called In Lieu of Fun. On the Gist, in 2020, every online company has a community of standards and manually reviews user content. In the interview, Kate talks to Harvard law professor Noah Feldman about his idea for Facebook to create a Supreme Court to adjudicate disputes over speech. They discuss how he came up with the idea and pitched it to Sheryl Sandberg and Mark Zuckerberg, the influences it draws from political systems, and the size of the case it should choose as its first. Feldman hosts the podcast Deep Background. In the spiel, Facebook’s oversight board could be the start of something revolutionary within big tech.

  • Covid Gag Rules at U.S. Companies Are Putting Everyone at Risk

    August 27, 2020

    Lindsay Ruck was just starting her Father’s Day brunch shift at the Cheesecake Factory in Chandler, Ariz., when her boss told her a co-worker had Covid-19...Her boss, the general manager, told her she wasn’t allowed to mention the coronavirus case to anyone, including fellow staff. The company was informing only the people who’d worked during the sick employee’s last shift, and, per Cheesecake higher-ups, even the information that any worker had tested positive was deemed private, Ruck recalls...In the past few months, U.S. businesses have been on a silencing spree. Hundreds of U.S. employers across a wide range of industries have told workers not to share information about Covid-19 cases or even raise concerns about the virus, or have retaliated against workers for doing those things, according to workplace complaints filed with the NLRB and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). Workers at Amazon.com, Cargill, McDonald’s, and Target say they were told to keep Covid cases quiet. The same sort of gagging has been alleged in OSHA complaints against Smithfield Foods, Urban Outfitters, and General Electric...In July, Colorado’s governor signed a similar law, making it illegal for companies to require workers to keep health concerns private or retaliate against workers who raise them. A few days after the Colorado bill signing, Virginia’s state safety board passed its own binding Covid regulations, including a ban on retaliation against workers who raise reasonable concerns at work or on social media and a requirement that companies notify co-workers and the state about coronavirus cases. Other states should adopt such standards and could go further by alerting the public about companies with clusters of cases, says Terri Gerstein, a former labor bureau chief for New York’s attorney general’s office and now a fellow at Harvard Law School. “It’s a matter of public health,” she says, “and of opening the economy in a long-term way instead of start-and-stop sputtering.”

  • Can the Post Office Handle the Election?

    August 27, 2020

    A podcast by Noah Feldman: Elaine Kamarck, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who studies the post office and electoral politics, discusses whether the agency can handle a pandemic election.

  • The Supreme Court’s Attack on Habeas Corpus in DHS v. Thuraissigiam

    August 26, 2020

    An article by Gerald NeumanAt a time when the rule of law is under threat and xenophobic incitement has become a central government policy, a five-Justice majority of the Supreme Court has called into question the Constitution’s fundamental guarantee against executive detention. Refugees are the primary target of the Court’s decision in Department of Homeland Security v. Thuraissigiam, but the immediate implications of Justice Samuel Alito’s opinion are much wider, and the opinion endangers everyone – U.S. citizens included – by reopening settled questions about the Habeas Corpus Suspension Clause of the Constitution. This important case has gotten less public attention than it deserves.   The opinions may be hard for non-experts to follow, because they arise in a technically complex area of immigration law, and because Alito mischaracterizes some of the issues. The case arose when Vijayakumar Thuraissigiam fled Sri Lanka in the hope of being protected by the United States and was arrested by immigration officials in 2017 at a short distance from the southern border. He was placed in rudimentary “expedited removal” proceedings, where his claims for protection were quickly rejected. The statutory provisions on expedited removal clearly preclude anyone in his position from obtaining judicial review, including by habeas corpus, of the legality of the removal decision. The central issue raised by the case was whether this total preclusion of habeas corpus for a refugee within the United States violated the Suspension Clause. Once the Supreme Court granted certiorari, it was likely that five Justices would rule against the refugee’s right to have his particular claims reviewed; the more urgent question was how broadly they would uphold preclusion of judicial review. As it turned out, concerns about a broad ruling were justified. Justice Alito not only rewrote and marginalized prior precedent on habeas corpus, but reached out to decide an important procedural due process issue that his own analysis had rendered irrelevant.

  • 2020’s States with the Most Underprivileged Children

    August 26, 2020

    In an ideal world, all children would live worry-free and have access to their basic needs: nutritious food, a good education, quality health care and a secure home. Emotionally, they all would feel safe and be loved and supported by caring adults. When all such needs are met, children have a better chance of a stable and happy adult life. But in reality, not every child is so privileged — even in the richest nation in the world, and conditions are even harder for underprivileged children this year during the COVID-19 pandemic...Some states address the problems of underprivileged children better than others. To determine where children are most disadvantaged, WalletHub compared the 50 states and the District of Columbia across 27 key indicators of neediness. Our data set ranges from the share of children in households with below-poverty income to the child food-insecurity rate to the share of maltreated children. Read on for our findings, expert insight on how to improve conditions for children and a full description of our methodology...What measures can state and local governments take to ensure the stability of vulnerable children’s educational and social environment during this crisis? Elizabeth Bartholet: "Vulnerable children are seriously at risk with schools shut down. They are at risk both for not receiving adequate education and for abuse and neglect. Children who are less privileged in socio-economic terms are likely to be at the least privileged schools, which are doing the least adequate job in terms of home education. These children are disproportionately less likely to have access to online education. Children already at risk for abuse and neglect are not being seen by teachers if schools are shut down. This means they are not being seen by teachers and other school personnel who are mandated reporters under the law – required to report suspected abuse and neglect to child protective services (CPS). This is a major problem since teachers and other school staff are the largest groups of reporters of suspected abuse."

  • Researchers argue health care systems should use ‘food as medicine’ interventions

    August 26, 2020

    An analysis recently published in the British Medical Journal argues for increased implementation of "food is medicine" interventions in the health care system. The article was co-authored by Seth A. Berkowitz, MD, MPH, assistant professor of medicine at the UNC School of Medicine, who mostly recently argued in the New England Journal of Medicine that food insecurity is known to be a health equity issue that disproportionately affects racial/ethnic minorities and those with lower incomes and rural communities. Thus, food insecurity is now playing a big role in the COVID-19 pandemic and associated health outcomes. Berkowitz has conducted a number of studies on health-related social needs and their effect on health outcomes, published in JAMA Internal Medicine. Sarah Downer, JD, from the Center for Health Law and Policy Innovation at Harvard Law School is the first author of the BMJ study, along with Timothy Harlan, MD, at the George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences, Dana Lee Olstad, Ph.D., at the Cumming School of Medicine at University of Calgary, and Dariush Mozaffarian, MD, MPH, DrPH, from the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University. The world is facing an epidemic of diet-related chronic diseases with one in five deaths attributed to a suboptimal diet, more than any other risk factor including tobacco, according to the authors. An emerging body of research suggests that nutrition interventions delivered in the health care system may be associated with improved outcomes.

  • In a Remote Environment, Talent Development Is Fraught With Risks

    August 26, 2020

    The early weeks of the coronavirus crisis were fraught with immediate challenges for law firms. But in the months since, as the industry and the world have adjusted, many of the initial work issues associated with the pandemic have been addressed. Yes, people can work from home. Yes, deals can be done remotely. Yes, Zoom and other platforms can be effective for interpersonal communications. Law firms are entering another phase of the pandemic fallout: Now that the immediate needs have been met, how can they plan for the future? Complex questions around safety and equity are now paramount. And one of those questions is how firms are going to train, coach and develop their talent in an effective and equitable manner at a time when the circumstances of their dispersed workforces are both inconvenient and inconsistent. “At most firms, there are no systems, structures and professional staff in place that are focused on these kinds of issues,” Scott Westfahl, professor of practice and director of executive education at Harvard Law School, says...Westfahl, a Big Law veteran of both Foley + Lardner and Goodwin Procter, says work allocation systems are critical to bringing everyone along at an appropriate pace. “My model for this is the consulting firms,” he says. “Partners there couldn’t give work to associates without the professional development person saying it fairly meets the needs of the associate body.” After the Great Recession, law firms emerged with what Beese describes as “holes” in their partner classes due to lack of leadership around career progression and talent development. “Firms had two or three years where they only had two or three people left in their classes,” he says.

  • TikTok Lawsuit Against Trump Order Is a Long Shot

    August 25, 2020

    An article by Noah Feldman: The lawsuit filed by Bytedance, the parent company of TikTok, is a bit of a long shot. Faced with President Donald Trump’s executive order effectively making it impossible for TikTok to do business in the U.S., the platform has few options. Yet, even a long-shot lawsuit may have some strategic value as the parent company tries to figure out whether it will have to sell TikTok to keep the lucrative business alive. The arguments in the lawsuit are not without legal logic. They might conceivably convince a lower court that is unsympathetic to Trump to decide that the executive order should be put on hold until the court can investigate the claims more closely. And even if that legal ploy doesn’t work, the lawsuit at least gives the company the opportunity to identify Trump’s order for what it is: a politicized, election-year effort to play up anti-China sentiment. TikTok’s legal claims can be divided into three groups. The first is the argument that Trump violated due process of law by effectively taking away TikTok’s property right to do business without giving TikTok fair notice and the opportunity to have its arguments heard. This due process claim sounds pretty logical — if you’re not a lawyer. It’s certainly true that the executive order effectively blocks TikTok from doing business. The trouble is, the provision of law on which the executive order relied, known as the IAEE, allows the president to take steps to block foreign businesses that he deems to be national security threats from operating in the U.S. Because Bytedance, the parent company of TikTok, is a Chinese company, it almost certainly does not enjoy a due process right to be heard in court before the IAEE provision is activated against it. This is why the executive order took the form of a prohibition on commercial transactions involving Bytedance.