The Zika epidemic caused serious concerns about fetal health throughout Latin America and some southern states in the United States. The prevailing governmental response throughout the region continues to emphasize two disease control factors: pregnancy delay and mosquito abatement. This essay argues that the current health policy approach of the World Health Organization, the Centers for Disease Control, and various national governments fails in three primary ways. First, the approach does not adequately consider the intersection of gender and poverty; thus, the current policy fails to respond to the needs of women living in poverty. Second, the health policy response fails to consider the impact of gender-based violence in its efforts to control the epidemic. The recommendation to delay pregnancy, for example, fails to account for the widespread incidence of intimate partner violence in the region. A high rate of sexual violence in intimate partnerships makes the policy less effective, because some women will be impregnated as a direct result of intimate partner violence and others will be unable to negotiate for safe sex for the same reason. Third, the policy response fails to address the broader question of access to contraception and abortion in the region. Two decades of research concerning the connections between gender and HIV/AIDS transmission have taught policymakers a great deal about the need to carefully consider gender in the design and implementation of a public health response. Those lessons, however, have not translated to the Zika context and, unfortunately, the myopic public health response will leave women and their children increasingly vulnerable to Zika infection.

Now that President Donald Trump has commenced the fifth month of his administration, federal courts experience 121 circuit and district court vacancies. These statistics indicate that Mr. Trump has a valuable opportunity to approve more judges than any new President. The protracted open judgeships detrimentally affect people and businesses engaged in federal court litigation, because they restrict the expeditious, inexpensive and equitable disposition of cases. Nevertheless, the White House has been treating crucial issues that mandate careful attention—specifically establishing a government, confirming a Supreme Court Justice, and keeping numerous campaign promises. How, accordingly, can President Trump fulfill these critical duties and his constitutional responsibility to nominate and, with Senate advice and consent, appoint judges?
This Article initially canvasses judicial appointments in the administration of President Barack Obama. The evaluation ascertains that Republican obstruction allowed the upper chamber to approve merely twenty jurists across the entire 114th Congress, leaving 105 empty seats and fifty-one expired nominations when the Senate adjourned on January 3, 2017. The Republican Senate majority’s refusal to confirm a single jurist after July 6, 2016— encompassing three circuit nominees whom the Judiciary Committee approved with bipartisan support and twenty district court aspirants whom the committee voice voted without dissent—could portend that President Trump will renominate comparatively few of President Obama’s nominees. The Article then scrutinizes the consequences for the judiciary, the Senate, the President, and the country of confronting many judicial openings. The appeals and district courts require all of their judges to deliver justice, but President Trump addresses numerous troubling concerns—which include global matters, such as the Middle East and the South China Sea, and domestic problems, encompassing health care, economic inequality, and responding to a probe of Russia’s efforts to meddle in the 2016 United States elections—and tendered merely one lower court nominee prior to May 8. The last Part, thus, proffers suggestions to fill the numerous openings with a finely-tuned assessment of the persons nominated by emphasizing those who secured committee reports.

The Supreme Court recently heard the case of an Alabama death row inmate, James McWilliams. A thus far overlooked argument could save his life and help level the playing field in other capital cases. The Court in 1985 promised independent expertise. Now is its chance to make good on that promise.

When Donald Trump became President, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit had four judicial vacancies that the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts (AO) identified as “judicial emergencies.” The court also faces a larger caseload than all the other regional circuits, and has frequently decided appeals the least swiftly. The 2016 election returns indicate that more confirmations will be necessary due to additional court members’ probable retirement or assumption of senior status during President Trump’s administration. Striking politicization could frustrate this effort, however. Soon after the inauguration, President Trump signed a novel executive order proscribing U.S. immigration travel from seven predominantly Muslim nations— which the court of appeals subsequently blocked—leading President Trump to criticize the tribunal as chaotic and the motions panel opinion and the judges who decided the case as “so political.” Because the Ninth Circuit resolves the greatest number of filings, and often does so more slowly than other regional circuits even when the tribunal is at full capacity, the compelling need for the President and the Senate to fill these four open positions deserves scrutiny.

This article describes regional institutional organizing efforts to bring racial justice to the Charlotte courts and community through a collaborative called Race Matters for Juvenile Justice (RMJJ). The authors explain community and institutional organizing in-depth using the example of minority overrepresentation in the juvenile justice system, but recognize the pervasiveness of racial and ethnic disparities. Moreover, as the Race Matters for Juvenile Justice-Charlotte Model has gained national prominence, many jurisdictions seek to replicate the collaborative and the authors, therefore, provide RMJJ’s history as well as strategies for changing the narrative through communication and education, workforce development, data and research, community collaboration, practice change, and legislation reform.

This term, the Supreme Court will consider Fry v. Napoleon Community Schools. Fry implicates a circuit split on the proper scope of the exhaustion requirement in 20 U.S.C. § 1415(l) of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). That section requires parents of students with disabilities to exhaust state administrative remedies “before the filing of a civil action . . . seeking relief that is also available under” the IDEA. Two different approaches to this requirement have emerged among the courts of appeals: an “injury-centered” approach and a “relief-centered” approach. Under the injury-centered approach, exhaustion is required when a child’s injuries are education-related. In contrast, the relief-centered approach demands exhaustion only if a parent seeks a form of relief that can be obtained under the IDEA. If the Supreme Court adopts the injury-centered approach in Fry, it should be cautious in its application of the approach. The Court’s application of the injury-centered approach could have important, unforeseen consequences for students with disabilities. The approach requires courts to consider what “educational” means under the IDEA—an analysis that bears on the scope of the IDEA’s substantive protections. And the Court has yet to provide guidance as to the definition of “educational.” Therefore, the Court’s application of the approach in Fry could have a significant impact on students’ access to special education services.

The “Cashgate” scandal has had far-reaching consequences for the southern African nation of Malawi and its people. Western donors suspended budgetary aid—circa $150 million annually—upon learning that civil servants and senior cabinet ministers in former President Joyce Banda’s administration had manipulated the government’s financial management system to embezzle more than $45 million over an eighteen-month period. As a precondition to the resumption of aid, the donors required that the government not only implement financial management reforms but also fully prosecute the perpetrators and recover the stolen assets. The donors’ position solidified when audits of Malawian government ledgers from 2009 to 2014 could not account for $356 million.

This essay examines whether Malawi’s Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) has the institutional capacity to achieve the prosecutorial benchmarks set by Western donors. Despite the obstacles inherent in an overstretched and underfunded criminal justice system, the ACB has made some progress, with fifteen convictions on theft and money laundering charges, and $1.4 million in cash and property recovered. Yet, as this essay observes, the quest to secure convictions and recover assets in the more complex cases of senior officials will become quixotic unless the government provides the ACB with sufficient independence, authority, and resources. Lacking ACB operational success, donors seem disinclined to resume direct budgetary support to Malawi. And as Western countries retract, China moves in, extending its influence.