JLPP Archives -

November 23, 2020

Fashion (Law) Forward: An Interview with Professor Susan Scafidi

(Source) Fashion (Law) Forward: An Interview with Professor Susan Scafidi This podcast transcript has been edited for concision and clarity. Christina Lee Hello, my name is Christina Lee, and today I am happy to have you on The Issue Spotter Podcast. Today, our Online Associate Jamie Smith will be interviewing Professor Susan Scafidi, and we are super excited to welcome both of them to the podcast. So, thank you so much and looking forward to hearing this. Jamie Smith Thanks, Christina. And hello, Professor Scafidi, thank you so much for joining me today. I’m so glad we can finally meet each other. For those who don’t know you, I’d like to give a brief introduction before we get into what I’m sure will be a scintillating discussion. Professor Susan Scafidi is the founder and academic director of the Fashion Law Institute at Fordham Law School. As the first professor to offer a course on fashion law, Professor Scafidi is an internationally recognized expert in the field. A frequent commentator on fashion and fashion law, Professor Scafidi has been featured in publications from The New York Times to Women’s Wear Daily and NPR. Professor Scafidi’s advocacy work ranges from support [read more]

November 20, 2020

Virtual Recruitment: The U.S. Military’s Campaign into Twitch and Esports

(Source) Twitch.tv is a live-streaming platform that has exploded in popularity over the last several years. The platform, focusing primarily on broadcasting live video game content, attracts the curious eyes of over seventeen million visitors each day, and has been cementing itself as the de facto “king” of live video game streaming over the last half decade. In 2020 thus far, viewers have spent over 950 billion minutes watching content on Twitch. Of its immense viewing congregation, fourteen percent are between the ages of thirteen and seventeen, making Twitch a particularly valuable resource for those looking to market to Gen Z. Coincidentally, after missing recruitment goals in 2018, the Army turned to Twitch in advertising and recruiting efforts aimed at teens. As part of its Gen-Z-centered campaign, the Army has been leveraging esports to reach the substantial centennial population on Twitch. To their credit, this campaign has certainly borne fruit; the Army’s push to use esports in recruiting has generated over 13,000 recruiting leads so far this year. This success has caught the eye of several prominent U.S. military branches, including the Air Force and Navy, who have also begun to establish a presence on Twitch and in esports. [read more]

November 16, 2020

An Overdue Overturning: The Insular Cases and the Need for Heightened Judicial Review for Puerto Rico

(Source) In the aftermath of Hurricane Maria, which left the entirety of Puerto Rico without power, President Donald Trump visited the island. Towards the end of his trip, President Trump began tossing paper towels into a crowd — as if he were a rock star tossing T-shirts to a concert crowd. This conduct, while disrespectful, perhaps serves as an allegory of the United States’ treatment of Puerto Rico throughout the island’s history. Despite being U.S. citizens, Puerto Ricans are treated as second-class citizens who are not afforded most of the fundamental rights of mainland Americans. Most notably, Puerto Ricans are not allowed to vote in U.S. elections. This second-class treatment is the result of Puerto Rico’s territorial status as an “unincorporated territory.” The constitutional backbone of this arrangement was cemented by the Supreme Court in the Insular Cases of the early 1900s. These cases, which justified the United States’ colonial expansion and unilateral control over its territories, are still held as good law today. In light of the disparate treatment Puerto Ricans receive and the racist context in which the Insular Cases were written, it is time for American jurisprudence and the Supreme Court to overturn these cases and [read more]

November 13, 2020

Teaching Abstinence Does Not Work: How California and Neighboring States can Better Teach Wildfire Safety

(Source) We have all seen the headlines running about the raging forest fires in California and neighboring states. This past summer, dozens of extremely large forest fires ignited across the state of California, ruining rural and suburban communities, damaging and killing wildlife, and covering cities across the U.S. in a smoggy haze. Forest fires are common to California and neighboring states, and fire season always poses a challenge to the state, but over the past ten years, the fires have been larger and more destructive than ever before. From 2001 to 2010, California saw 7.03 million acreage of their land destroyed by fires; from 2011 to 2020, the number increased to 10.3 million acres. Yet, 2020 has topped every year with the largest and most destructive forest fires in California’s history: around 3.2 million acres of land being destroyed (as of September). And, to give a sense, San Francisco is “only” 30,000 acres. Coinciding with traditional attempts to stop the spread of these record-breaking fires, hundreds of firefighters have been deployed, along with calls for mutual aid. However, this reactive means of firefighting has proven to be almost hopeless, for the fires are too large and powerful for humankind [read more]

November 9, 2020

Increased Tuition for an Inferior Product: The University’s Guide to Not Caring

(Source) Imagine you decided to go to the dealership to buy yourself a brand-new car. After carefully researching the model and make of car and shopping around for a good deal, you finally decide to make the purchase. When the car gets delivered, you are excited to take it out for a drive, only to realize that the dealer has sent you a Vespa (an electric scooter). You complain to the dealer and they tell you to “make the best” out of a bad situation. You might think this is ridiculous, but it is in fact the experience of almost every university-enrolled student during the COVID-19 pandemic. It is a poorly-kept secret that tuition rates in the United States have risen at an alarming pace. In 1963, the average cost of attending college was $9,918 (adjusted for inflation), while in 2017, the average cost was $23,091. This precipitous increase has led students to borrow alarmingly high amounts and at increasing rates, resulting in a cumulative student loan debt teetering over $1.5 trillion. Today, students are leaving universities crippled by student loans and, in many cases, unable to pay them back. According to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, 10.8% of [read more]

November 6, 2020

Patent Rights in a Pandemic: Does the Race for a Covid-19 Vaccine Mean Inequitable Access?

(Source) The coronavirus pandemic has changed life as we know it. The world has come a long way since the initial outbreak, but the uncertainty surrounding a potential Covid-19 vaccine persists. Even with mounting uncertainty, the demand for a safe and effective vaccine continues to increase. The Food and Drug Administration’s approvals and authorizations for the Covid-19 vaccine are only some of the obstacles in this respect. Even if these approvals come through and a vaccine becomes marketable, there is no guarantee that the vaccine will be widely accessible. This is where intellectual property starts playing a crucial role in the distribution and affordability of a potentially successful vaccine. If this vaccine is patented, it would grant exclusive rights to the patent holder to exclude others from making, using, importing, and selling the patented innovation for the duration of the patent grant, within the boundaries of the United States. In the pharmaceutical industry, it is necessary to strike a balance between innovation and the ethical implications of patents for human health. Patent protection is required to stimulate innovation and incentivize pharma companies given the extensive time and resources needed for the development of a new drug. This incentive is [read more]

November 2, 2020

The Issue Spotter Podcast, Episode 1: An Interview with Ankush Khardori

http://jlpp.org/blogzine/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Interview-with-Ankush-Khardori-Final.mp3 (Image Source) Please Note: The following transcript has been edited for clarity and concision. Christina Lee : Hello and welcome to The Issue Spotter podcast. My name is Christina Lee and I am the Senior Online Editor for the Journal of Law and Public Policy at Cornell. Today, we are really excited to welcome you to our first podcast ever, so welcome and thank you so much for tuning in. I’m going to turn it over to our Online Associate, Trevor Thompson, who will introduce our first guest. Thanks again. Trevor Thompson: Thanks, Christina. So, yeah, my name is Trevor Thompson and I’m a 2L here at Cornell Law and I’m very excited to get the podcast rolling for the Issue Spotter. Our guest today, who we’re very excited to have on, is Ankush Khardori. Ankush is an attorney and former federal prosecutor based in Washington, D.C. Until January of this year, he specialized in financial fraud and white-collar crime in the Fraud Section of the Criminal Division of the Justice Department. Before that, he worked at a law firm in New York City and clerked for a judge in the Southern District of New York. He has written on [read more]

October 31, 2020

Opresión en casa, rechazo en el extranjero: cómo la ley de inmigración de los Estados Unidos decepciona el ejército de batas blancas de Cuba

(Fuente) Introducción Desde febrero de 2020, más de 200,000 personas solo en los Estados Unidos han muerto con COVID-19. Los expertos estiman que más de un millón de personas han muerto con el virus en todo el mundo y, según la Organización Mundial de la Salud, una de cada diez en todo el mundo puede haber contraído el virus en algún momento. Mientras los Estados Unidos y el mundo luchan por recuperarse de los efectos catastróficos de la pandemia del coronavirus, los trabajadores de la salud se han ganado un nuevo sentido de respeto y aprecio, tanto en casa como en el extranjero. En el contexto de esta crisis internacional, y para sorpresa de muchos, un país en particular está ganando un nuevo reconocimiento por su subsidio y difusión de talentosos profesionales de la salud: la República de Cuba. Si bien la exportación de Cuba de un número aparentemente impresionante de médicos y enfermeras no es una novedad para la comunidad internacional, el reciente despliegue de estos trabajadores está atrayendo una atención significativa e, inevitablemente, suscitando algunas preguntas importantes. Específicamente, ¿es el encargo de profesionales de la salud una clase magistral de caridad internacional? ¿O hay algo más siniestro en [read more]

October 31, 2020

Oppression at Home, Rejection Abroad: How U.S. Immigration Law Disappoints Cuba’s White Coat Army

(Source) Introduction Since February of 2020, more than 200,000 people in the United States alone have died with COVID-19. Experts estimate over a million people have died with the virus worldwide and according to the World Health Organization, one in ten worldwide may have contracted the virus at some point. As the U.S. and the world struggle to recover from the catastrophic effects of the coronavirus pandemic, health care workers have earned a newfound sense of respect and appreciation, both at home and abroad. Against the backdrop of this international crisis, and to many a surprise, one country in particular is gaining newfound recognition for its subsidization and dissemination of talented health care professionals: The Republic of Cuba. While Cuba’s exportation of a seemingly impressive number of doctors and nurses is hardly news to the international community, the recent deployment of these workers is garnering significant attention and, inevitably, raising some salient questions. Specifically, is Cuba’s commissioning of health care professionals a master class in international charity? Or has something more wicked this way come? Unfortunately—and increasingly as seems to be the case in developments involving the Republic of Cuba—when it comes to the Pearl of the Antilles, the devil [read more]

October 30, 2020

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]

1 2 3 … 6 »