By Seth Rubinstein, J.D.
“[O]ur system of courts is archaic and our procedure behind the times.”
– Roscoe Pound (Former Dean of Harvard Law School), 1906
The coronavirus pandemic has given new urgency to the failings of the U.S. legal system to provide meaningful access to justice for many Americans. These failings are by no means new, but the pandemic has shone a spotlight on them.
By Chloe Reichel
In 2020, topics relating to bioethics, health law policy, and biotechnology took center stage in the collective national and global consciousness.
The COVID-19 pandemic has, unfortunately, posed countless urgent bioethical and health law policy questions. The police killing of George Floyd in May 2020 sparked wider awareness of the systemic racial injustice in the U.S., which permeates all aspects of society and has profound detrimental effects on health.
Our contributors have grappled with these issues on the pages of this blog.
By Chris Zheng, J.D.
The absence of a cohesive federal strategy during the pandemic has allowed many businesses to continue operating without standard safety guidelines, endangering employee health. And with new cases of COVID-19 in the United States nearing 200,000 per day, employees’ risk of exposure will only continue to grow. Early litigation and regulatory measures have highlighted two particularly vulnerable groups in need of protection in the workplace: older employees and disabled employees. This post will first examine general deficiencies in employee health protections. Then, it will assess two primary pieces of legislation that afford legal protections to aging and disabled workers. Finally, it will explore possibilities for how to best protect American workers moving forward.
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The COVID-19 pandemic has posed an impossible set of choices for governments, forcing them to weigh the competing interests of protecting public health, ending social isolation, and safeguarding privacy and civil rights. Each of these ends offer distinct societal benefits, but without a vaccine or effective COVID treatment, governments can only accomplish two of the three at one time. South Korea provides an interesting example of the tradeoffs countries have made in pursuit of these competing objectives. The country is widely regarded as a model for successfully managing the pandemic, averaging approximately 77 new cases a day since April—roughly the equivalent of 480 cases a day in U.S. population terms. South Korea’s story is especially impressive given that, in March, the country was considered one of the biggest infection hot spots outside of China. Comparing these statistics with the actual infection rate in the U.S. illustrates the success of the South Korean approach: on November 23, 2020, the CDC reported 147,840 new cases, for a total of 12,175,921 known infections in the U.S. since the pandemic began.
Cross-posted, with slight modification, from Harvard Law Today, where it originally appeared on November 21, 2020.
By Chloe Reichel
Experts gathered last month to discuss the ethical, social, and legal implications of technological advancements that facilitate the early detection of dementia.
“Detecting Dementia: Technology, Access, and the Law,” was hosted on Nov. 16 as part of the Project on Law and Applied Neuroscience, a collaboration between the Center for Law, Brain and Behavior at Massachusetts General Hospital and the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School.
The event, organized by Francis X. Shen ’06 Ph.D. ’08, the Petrie-Flom Center’s senior fellow in Law and Applied Neuroscience and executive director of the Center for Law, Brain and Behavior at Massachusetts General Hospital, was one of a series hosted by the Project on Law and Applied Neuroscience on aging brains.
Early detection of dementia is a hopeful prospect for the treatment of patients, both because it may facilitate early medical intervention, as well as more robust advance care planning.
By Annie Kapnick
The United States has entered a ‘third’ wave of Covid-19 , and many students are entering yet another month of online learning. The American education system has long been plagued with racial and socio-economic inequalities, but the COVID-19 pandemic and the nationwide shift to online learning has transformed what was an already widening inequality gap into a massive chasm.
By Morgan Sandhu
In March, President Trump relied on a little-used public health rule to drastically restrict immigration at the United States’ land borders. President Trump determined that, because COVID-19 was present in Mexico and Canada, there was a serious danger that migrants might further introduce coronavirus into the United States. Although it applies to both borders equally, this new restriction has primarily impacted immigrants at the Southern border.
By Annie Kapnick
Now that Pfizer and Moderna have begun distributing their COVID-19 vaccines to hospitals across the U.S., a new question has gained national attention — how will the vaccine be allocated?
Cross-posted from Harvard Law Today, where it originally appeared on December 3, 2020.
By Jeff Neal
The race to approve and distribute a vaccine for COVID-19 got a huge shot in the arm this week.
On Tuesday, the United Kingdom approved a vaccine developed by pharmaceutical giant Pfizer. On the same day in the United States, a panel of experts advising the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended a first-stage plan for distributing the vaccine to some of the most at-risk Americans. Separately, another advisory committee is set to meet twice in the coming weeks to evaluate for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration the safety and efficacy of both the Pfizer vaccine and a similar one produced by Moderna.
To better understand the impact of these developments, Harvard Law Today recently spoke with public health expert Carmel Shachar J.D./M.P.H. ’10, the executive director of the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School, about the vaccine, who is likely to get it first, and whether employers and states can require people to get vaccinated.
By Chloe Reichel
Racism was embedded in the founding of the United States and has persisted in virtually all aspects of our society through the present day.
In 2020, structural racism was made especially apparent in the disproportionate toll the COVID-19 pandemic has taken on communities of color, which can be traced back to the social determinants of health, and in grotesque displays of police violence, such as the killings of Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and Elijah McClain.
Racism is the public health issue of our time, after having been woefully un- or under-addressed for centuries. The following posts, which were published on Bill of Health this year, highlight some of the most pressing issues to confront, as well as potential ways forward.