Los Angeles, California / USA - May 1, 2020: People in front of Los Angeles’ City Hall protest the state’s COVID-19 stay at home orders in a “Fully Open California” protest.

Social Distancing, Social Protest, and the Social Constitution of a New Body of Law

By Lindsay F. Wiley

COVID-19 mitigation orders, court decisions adjudicating challenges to them, and legislation adopted to constrain similar orders in the future are constituting a new body of law governing social distancing.

The emerging law of social distancing is vital to the future of public health. It also offers more general lessons about how law interacts with individual behavior, social norms, and social contestation of what we owe each other as members of a community.

Social protests — including massive protests for racial justice and against police violence as well as much smaller anti-lockdown protests — are playing an important role in these developments.

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HIPAA and the Physician-Patient Privilege: Can Doctors Defending Against Medical Malpractice Suit Carry Out Ex Parte Interviews with the Plaintiff’s Treating Physicians?

By Alex Stein

Whether a litigant’s right to conduct informal ex parte interviews with fact witnesses extends to the plaintiffs’ treating physicians, given the confidentiality provisions of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA), is a question of considerable practical importance. This question has recently received a positive answer from the Kentucky Supreme Court in Caldwell v. Chauvin, — S.W.3d —-, 2015 WL 3653447, (Ky. 2015), after “percolating through state courts, federal district courts, and academic circles for a decade.” Id. at *5. Read More