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Tag: Development

Washington and Lee Law Review - Development

Development

Profiteering Off Public Health Crises: The Viable Cure for Congressional Insider Trading

by Charles L. Slamowitz

This article takes an approachable, forward-thinking, and academic dive into congressional insider trading in the wake of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. After a confidential briefing by the Senate Health Committee warned of COVID-19, massive stock sell-offs by members of Congress and their spouses suddenly ensued. Some senators even publicly disparaged COVID-19’s viral effects while their own shares were being offloaded. By the time the American people were made aware of its dangers, vast investment holdings by congressional insiders had already been sold. Shockingly, it is unclear if congressional insiders trading on confidential coronavirus information are actually breaking the law. Congress members are also not required to timely disclose trades, even during pandemics, leaving the American people in the dark. This article provides the only viable remedy to congressional insider trading, crucial for governmental transparency and accountability to precipitously curb public health crises moving forward.

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Development

COVID-19 and the Conundrum of Mask Requirements

by Robert Gatter & Seema Mohapatra

As states begin to loosen their COVID-19 restrictions, public debate is underway about what public health measures are appropriate. Many states have some form of mask-wearing orders to prevent the spread of COVID-19 infection. Public health guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization has conflicted. From a public health point of view, it is not clear what the right answer is. In the absence of directives, individuals are also making their own choices about mask use. At a time when public health measures, like shelter-in-place orders and social distancing, are being used to stop the spread of coronavirus, wearing masks can be seen as a form of solidarity and desire to not infect others. Similarly, not wearing a mask can also be a political statement of sorts. Additionally, black men wearing masks have reported being asked to leave stores and fearing for their own safety. This Article provides an overview of the legal and policy landscape and focuses on the potential for policing against black Americans when mask mandates are in place. Despite the public health benefits of mask usage, due to mask mandates likely being enforced discriminatorily, we advise caution against mask mandates.

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Development

COVID-19 and the Provisional Licensing of Qualified Medical School Graduates as Physicians

by Paul J. Larkin Jr.

State lawmakers should allow those graduates to receive a provisional license so that they can provide emergency medical care under the supervision of a licensed physician to help treat the ever-increasing number of COVID-19 patients we will see throughout the near future, or those patients who suffer from more common illness and injuries. Each level of government has its own peculiar responsibilities to address the COVID-19 pandemic. The states are responsible for licensing physicians who can treat the affected people. Each year, a large number of American and foreign medical school graduates do not find a residency position in the United States. Medical school graduates who have passed the qualifying examination have acquired a considerable amount of education and training during their medical studies, far more than physician assistants, nurses, military corpsmen and medics, and civilian paramedics or emergency medical technicians. They comprise a pool of talent that could be immensely useful in ameliorating the shortage of physician care throughout the country during the pandemic.

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Development

Discretionary Life Sentences for Juveniles: Resolving the Split Between the Virginia Supreme Court and the Fourth Circuit

by Daniel M. Coble

At the age of 17, Donte Lamar Jones shot and killed a store clerk as she laid down on the floor during a robbery. He was spared the death penalty by agreeing instead to die in prison at the end of his life.

Two years later in Virginia, 12 individuals were murdered for doing nothing more than being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Those individuals were killed by Lee Malvo and John Muhammad, better known as the “D.C. Snipers.” While John Muhammad was given the death penalty for his heinous crimes, Lee Malvo, who was 17 during the murder spree, was given a life sentence. What these two cases have in common is one issue: as juveniles they were both condemned to die in prison. What separates their cases is their legal challenges and how two different courts have ruled—one federal, one state. While the facts of their cases might be different, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of cases across the United States that reflect similar legal proceedings, and until the Supreme Court clarifies its position, more state and federal courts will reach different conclusions.

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Development

Disentangling Choice of Law for Torts and Contracts

by Rick Kirgis

In a federal system with state lines that are easily crossed, physically and electronically, legal disputes often raise choice-of- law issues. Common among those disputes are torts and contracts cases. The courts have taken a variety of approaches to these cases, leading to inconsistent results that depend largely on which forum the plaintiff selects. Judicial fairness and economy dictate, or should dictate, that the choice-of-law issues be resolvable consistently and without unnecessarily tying up the courts or imposing large litigation costs, if it can be done in a principled manner. This article shows how it could be done.

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Development

Citizen Lewis Powell

by David Westin

This speech was given at the 2015 Lewis F. Powell Lecture on April 1, 2015 in the Millhiser Moot Court Room at Washington and Lee University.

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From Mayberry to Ferguson: The Militarization of American Policing

by Cadman R. Kiker III

We are at the dawn of a new era of policing in the United States. In recent months, images of armed police officers patrolling the streets of Ferguson, Missouri, and of a toddler burned by a Georgia SWAT team’s grenade have been indelibly branded into America’s social consciousness. There is a unique bipartisan outcry from Washington in a time otherwise marked by bitter political divides. Politicians and journalists alike are questioning the efficacy of a militaristic police force and the path that led to this shift in the paradigm of policing.

This Essay examines the how and why of police militarization in the United States; it details some of the most egregious instances of police overreach, mission creep, and proliferation of military-style police units treating citizens as an enemy population. It seems all is quiet in Congress after a few seemingly futile hearings on militarization. The Executive Branch has released suggestions that are expected to manifest in an executive order any day. Unfortunately, all of these solutions are too little, too late. The streets of America are much more akin to a war zone than the democratic nation that our Founders envisioned, and it is up to the people, at a local level, to reclaim what was intended.

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Same-Sex Marriage and Loving v. Virginia: Analogy or Disanalogy?

by Ronald Turner

In its 1967 decision in Loving v. Virginia, the United States Supreme Court struck down Virginia antimiscegenation laws prohibiting and criminalizing interracial marriages, holding that the challenged laws violated the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. In recent federal appeals court decisions, Loving has been invoked as an authoritative analogy supporting plaintiffs’ claims that same-sex marriage bans violate the Constitution. This Essay considers the posited Loving analogy and the contentions (1) that different-race marriage and same-sex marriage prohibitions present similar, albeit not identical, instances of unconstitutional state limitations on an individual’s freedom to marry the person of his or her choice, and (2) that interracial marriage bans are conceptually distinguishable from laws forbidding same-sex marriages and therefore do not violate the Constitution. The Essay concludes that Loving is a useful and authoritative analogy supporting the claims of plaintiffs who contend, among other things, that states may not constitutionally deny same-sex couples the right to marry based solely on the traditional view that marriage is, and should only be, the legal union of one man and one woman.

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Here Come the Trade Secret Trolls

by David S. Levine and Sharon K. Sandeen

Within the past few years, the U.S. federal government has been forced to confront the massive but hard-to-quantify problem of foreign and state-sponsored cyberespionage against U.S. corporations, from Boeing to small technology start-ups, and (as of this writing) perhaps Sony Pictures Entertainment. As part of that effort, Congress has taken up the Defend Trade Secrets Act and the Trade Secret Protection Act, which would create a private cause of action under the federal Economic Espionage Act. This Article addresses the possibility of introducing trolling behavior—using litigation as a means to extract settlement payments from unsuspecting defendants—to trade secret law through creation of a federal private trade secret misappropriation cause of action. Like the existing problem of patent trolls, trade secret trolling has the potential to undermine the structure of trade secret law and create serious problems and costs for innovators across all industries. Thus, this Article addresses the heretofore unexplored link between patent and trade secret trolling established by this legislation. It assesses in detail the benefits and downsides of creation of a federal trade secret misappropriation cause of action and, for the first time, the risk of trolling.

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Development

Contents May Have Shifted: Disentangling the Best Evidence Rule from the Rule Against Hearsay

by Colin Miller

The rule against hearsay covers a statement offered to prove the truth of the matter asserted but does not cover a statement offered for another purpose. Meanwhile, the Best Evidence Rule states that a party seeking to prove the content of a writing, recording, or photograph must produce the original or account for its non-production. Does this mean that the Rule is inapplicable when a party seeks to prove something other than the truth of the matter asserted in a writing, recording or photograph? Most courts have answered this question in the affirmative. This Essay argues these courts are wrong.

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