Note Adaptation

April 16, 2021 0

Taxation Without Representation: The D.C. Statehood Question Renewed

(Source) Sirens blaring and helicopters overhead are a normal occurrence in Washington, D.C. On January 6, however, the sounds were persistent with no end in sight. The lower third of several news networks read “Trump Protestors Storm U.S. Capitol.” At around 12:00 p.m., D.C. residents received an alert issuing a curfew from Mayor Bowser telling them all to stay inside their homes. The news coverage continued for hours and most commentors were perplexed that the National Guard had not gotten this situation under control. When there were peaceful protestors on Black Lives Matter Plaza, they were tear-gassed to make room for a presidential photo-op. Where was the National Guard to protect our capital city now that it was under attack? The National Guard was not there because Washington, D.C. is not a state, and therefore does not have a governor who can deploy the National Guard. The D.C. National Guard is under the control of the President (whom the insurrectionists were trying to keep in power) and orders to deploy the guard are usually administered by the Secretary of the Army after a request from the Mayor. In one of the darkest days in modern-day American history, the D.C. National [read more]

October 30, 2020 0

One Person, No Vote: How Gerrymandering Will Steal Our Elections if We Don’t Stop It

(Source) “I propose that we draw the maps to give a partisan advantage to 10 Republicans and 3 Democrats… I think electing Republicans is better than electing Democrats… so I drew this map to help foster what I think is better for the country.” This is an actual, real-life statement made by Representative David Lewis, a Republican member of the North Carolina General Assembly’s redistricting committee. And it wasn’t made at a political fundraiser or at a campaign rally—it was made at an official meeting of the North Carolina state legislature, a body that purports to put the voices of its constituents above its own partisan goals. Even more alarming than the statement itself is the fact that Representative David Lewis and his colleagues were able to do exactly what he proposed, and with the blessing of the U.S. Supreme Court. You may be thinking that Lewis’s statement is disturbing but that we have more important and urgent things to worry about—after all, we are only days away from the November election, and we need to focus all of our energies on getting our friends and family to turn out to vote. If we can do that, then the [read more]

July 6, 2020 0

Policing Property

(Source) I. Property and Criminality In the first week after Derek Chauvin killed George Floyd in Minneapolis, the New York City Police Department arrested more than two thousand protesters in New York City. At least a quarter of those arrested were charged with burglary. Mayor Bill de Blasio distinguished between protesters and perceived opportunists, “doing things like looting for pure financial gain, pure criminal gain, nothing to do with protests whatsoever.” The specter of the looter—lying in wait for the opportunity to take advantage of social upheaval—is connected to ideas about the latent criminality of unpropertied people. It has been used to justify the extensive surveillance of nonwhite communities, and protest movements calling account to injustice. “Law and order” has roots in the protection of property and in white supremacy. The conflation of Blackness and criminality is inextricably tied to the relationship between property and policing, distinguishing criminals from non-criminals. Racial categories emerge from the governance of property relative to those who have historically had none, who we therefore imagine “harbor criminal disregard for the propertied order.” Whiteness is a property, valuable insofar as categorically excluding Black people maintains it. Maintaining property interests has always been central to the modern [read more]

June 22, 2020 0

Diagnostic Methods as a Category of Patent-Ineligible Subject Matter

(Source) The authority to grant to patents arises from Article Eight of the United States Constitution. Specifically, Clause Eight grants Congress the power to “promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.” Through this clause, Congress is empowered by the Constitution to grant copyrights and patents. Under this authority, Congress has enacted and promulgated various statutes in furtherance of promoting the progress of science and the useful arts. One such statute is 35 U.S.C. § 101, whose interpretation has been embroiled in controversy over the past decade. The statute delineates the types of subject matter that are patentable. Section 101 renders patentable “any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof.” Laws of nature and natural phenomena are prima facie unpatentable. Additionally, a mathematical formula is unpatentable because it “is merely a statement of a law of nature.” Similarly, medical diagnostic processes should be deemed as a category of patent-ineligible subject matter for numerous reasons. First, courts have repeatedly struck down patent claims to medical diagnostic processes unless they include a step of [read more]

May 11, 2020 0

Unauthorized Disclosure: Judicial Violation of Mental Health Privacy

(Source) Brandon Sharp managed a gas company in East Texas. Healthy, in his thirties, Sharp rarely saw a doctor. And yet he owed thousands of dollars in medical bills. Sharp was the target of medical identity theft, which victimizes tens of thousands of people each year. Thieves steal patient information, including names, Social Security numbers, addresses, and medical histories, and then submit fraudulent insurance claims for surgery and prescriptions. Victims, like Sharp, face more than inconvenience: sometimes police arrest them instead of the thief for insurance fraud, or their information is conflated with the thief’s, leading to misdiagnosis. Contrary to popular opinion, the most common mode of theft is not computer hacking or breaking and entering but unauthorized disclosure by providers. Section 33.13 of New York’s Mental Hygiene Law aims to prevent unauthorized disclosure. It prohibits providers from releasing patient information, specifically mental health records, absent an exception. A mental health record includes “all pertinent documents relating to the patient” about legal status, examination, care, and treatment. However, New York state courts routinely violate Section 33.13. Claimants often sue New York when a patient in a state hospital injures them. In these cases, New York courts have ordered hospitals to [read more]