“At the beginning of the pestilence and when it ends, there’s always a propensity for rhetoric….It is only in the thick of a calamity that one gets hardened to the truth, to silence.” – Albert Camus, The Plague Trump presidential debilities are more serious than simple policy missteps or errors. This administration is far more [...]
*Editor’s Note: The title as written is not ungrammatical, but rather refers to an internet meme you can read about here. Apparently, quarantine means never having to say you’re sorry. All of a sudden, people are coming out with hot takes you never would have expected. Except you did all along. For example, a remarkable [...]
Sometimes, it takes a troll to make a point. It can certainly get people thinking, anyway. Harvard Law professor Adrian Vermeule’s most recent essays are a case in point. For better or worse, “originalism,” or the idea that the United States Constitution should be interpreted in light of its meaning when it was ratified, is [...]
It’s a truism that when lobbyists push a bill supposedly intended to help the disadvantaged, the real beneficiary is someone else. After all, lobbyists don’t work for free, and the disadvantaged can’t afford to hire them. The Copyright Alternative in Small-Claims Enforcement (CASE) Act is no exception. At least, in theory, the CASE Act is [...]
Like everyone, the copyright cops want to have their cake and eat it too. They claim that copyright is a kind of property, so the law should protect it just like any other kind of property. But they also claim that authors are morally entitled to copyright ownership because of their special contribution to society. [...]
With the astonishing speed of the spread of COVID-19 – affecting more than 199 countries, 1,315,989 confirmed COVID-19 cases, and 74,000 deaths – many countries are implementing extraordinary measures to meet this unprecedented challenge and to cope with the severe implications of the coronavirus crisis. The key measures of the containment strategy have entailed multiple [...]
The COVID-19 outbreak has shocked and de-globalized the international community. The World Health Organization (WHO) has declared the outbreak a pandemic and several scholars have argued that China breached International Health Regulations (IHR) by not preventing the spread of the deadly COVID-19. The IHR aim to aid the international community in preventing and responding to [...]
Sometimes, it takes a crisis to make a change. Especially for the legal profession, which is notoriously allergic to change, no matter how necessary. For decades, the legal profession has debated how and why to evaluate attorneys before admitting them to the bar. But it looks like the COVID-19 pandemic may finally force its hand. [...]
At the moment, there are over 70.8 million people forcibly displaced from their homes. The fast mobility of large populations is an inalienable part of humanity that is driven by drought, famine, earthquake, climate change, political opinion, massive violation of human rights, religious persecution, racial discrimination, ideological conflict, war, and pandemic diseases. People fleeing such [...]
“The world is contending with the increasing incidence and severity of a wide range of highly infectious diseases.” These words appear in Responsibility for Epidemics, an article I wrote in 2018. There have of course been dire warnings about a global pandemic for a while. In Responsibility for Epidemics, I argue that a broader conceptualization [...]
