Georgetown University Law Center

About: Georgetown University Law Center is a based out in . It is known for research contribution in the topics: Supreme court & Public health. The organization has 585 authors who have published 2488 publications receiving 36650 citations. The organization is also known as: Georgetown Law & GULC.

Advancing the right to health through global organizations: The potential role of a Framework Convention on Global Health.

Abstract: Organizations, partnerships, and alliances form the building blocks of global governance. Global health organizations thus have the potential to play a formative role in determining the extent to which people are able to realize their right to health. This article examines how major global health organizations, such as WHO, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria, UNAIDS, and GAVI approach human rights concerns, including equality, accountability, and inclusive participation. We argue that organizational support for the right to health must transition from ad hoc and partial to permanent and comprehensive. Drawing on the literature and our knowledge of global health organizations, we offer good practices that point to ways in which such agencies can advance the right to health, covering nine areas: 1) participation and representation in governance processes; 2) leadership and organizational ethos; 3) internal policies; 4) norm-setting and promotion; 5) organizational leadership through advocacy and communication; 6) monitoring and accountability; 7) capacity building; 8) funding policies; and 9) partnerships and engagement. In each of these areas, we offer elements of a proposed Framework Convention on Global Health (FCGH), which would commit state parties to support these standards through their board membership and other interactions with these agencies. We also explain how the FCGH could incorporate these organizations into its overall financing framework, initiate a new forum where they collaborate with each other, as well as organizations in other regimes, to advance the right to health, and ensure sufficient funding for right to health capacity building. We urge major global health organizations to follow the leadership of the UN Secretary-General and UNAIDS to champion the FCGH. It is only through a rights-based approach, enshrined in a new Convention, that we can expect to achieve health for all in our lifetimes.

Rules, Principles, and the Accounting Crisis in the United States

Abstract: The Sarbanes-Oxley Act and the Securities Exchange Commission move too quickly when they prod the Financial Accounting Standards Board, the standard setter for US GAAP, to move immediately to a principles-based system. Priorities respecting reform of corporate reporting in the US need to be ordered more carefully. Incentive problems impairing audit performance should be solved first through institutional reform insulating the audit from the negative impact of rent-seeking and solving adverse selection problems otherwise affecting audit practice. So long as auditor independence and management incentives respecting accounting treatments remain suspect, the US reporting system holds out no actor plausibly positioned to take responsibility for the delicate law-to-fact applications that are the hallmarks of principles-based systems. Principles, taken alone, do little to constrain rent-seeking behaviour. In a world of captured regulators, they invite applications that suit the regulated actor’s interests. Rules, with all their flaws, better constrain managers and compromised auditors. Broadbrush reformulations of rules-based GAAP should follow only when institutional reforms have succeeded.

From local adaptation to activism and global solidarity: framing a research and innovation agenda towards true health equity

Abstract: The proposal for a global health treaty aimed at health equity, the Framework Convention on Global Health, raises the fundamental question of whether we can achieve true health equity, globally and domestically, and if not, how close we can come. Considerable knowledge currently exists about the measures required to, at the least, greatly improve health equity. Why, then, do immense inequities remain? Building on this basic question, we propose four areas that could help drive the health equity research and innovation agenda over the coming years. First, recognizing that local contexts will often affect the success of policies aimed at health equity, local research will be critical to adapt strategies to particular settings. This part of the research agenda would be well-served by directly engaging intended beneficiaries for their insights, including through participatory action research, where the research contributes to action towards greater health equity. Second, even with the need for more local knowledge, why is the copious knowledge on how to reduce inequities not more frequently acted upon? What are the best strategies to close policymakers' knowledge gaps and to generate the political will to apply existing knowledge about improving health equity, developing the policies and devoting the resources required? Linked to this is the need to continue to build our understanding of how to empower the activism that can reshape power dynamics. Today’s unequal power dynamics contribute significantly to disparities in a third area of focus, the social determinants of health, which are the primary drivers of today’s health inequities. Continuing to improve our understanding of the pathways through which they operate can help in developing strategies to change these determinants and disrupt harmful pathways. And fourth, we return to the motivating question of whether we can achieve health equity. For example, can all countries have universal health coverage that comprehensively meets all of people’s health needs? How to foster the national and global solidarity to achieve such equity? The answers to questions such as these can help point the way to measures, often well outside the narrow realm of technical solutions, to realize the right to health, and to achieve and sustain substantive health equality.

Taxing Capital Income in Emerging Countries: Will FATCA Open the Door?

Abstract: For many emerging and developing economies, it is exceedingly difficult to constrain residents from evading tax liability on income from capital, whether earned domestically or abroad. Meanwhile, an international regime for combatting offshore tax evasion is emerging, and the form of the new regime will be established during a narrow window of opportunity over the next few years. If a uniform, multilateral automatic information exchange system is established, it would improve emerging countries’ ability to tax the offshore accounts of their residents and, perhaps more importantly, their capacity to collect information about and tax domestic-source income from capital. However, a fragmented automatic information exchange regime likely would not benefit countries outside the developed economies. Interestingly, the concerns of emerging and developing economies regarding the contours of the new international regime substantially align with the concerns of multinational financial institutions. As a result, these emerging countries may find that multinational financial institutions can be improbable allies in the battle over taxing offshore accounts. With international financial law as the model, and the G-20 as an agenda setter, a governance structure for a uniform automatic information exchange regime that could be useful to emerging countries’ tax administrations could materialize. The paper explores the requisite governance structure and concludes by describing steps emerging countries may take in bilateral and multilateral settings to help create that structure.Note: An earlier version of this working paper was entitled 'Emerging Countries and the Taxation of Offshore Accounts' and another was entitled 'Will FATCA Open the Door to Taxing Capital Income in Emerging Countries?'.

Global Health Security in an Era of Explosive Pandemic Potential

Abstract: Pandemics pose a significant risk to security, economic stability, and development. Annualized expected losses from pandemics are estimated at $60 billion per year. Despite the certainty and magnitude of the threat, the global community has significantly underestimated and under-invested in avoidance of pandemic threats.We cannot wait or continue with the status quo, in which we pay attention to infectious disease threats only when they are at their peak and then are complacent and remain vulnerable until the next major outbreak. To reinforce and sustain international focus, funding, and action, it is crucial that pandemics rise to the level of “high politics,” becoming standing agenda items for political actors.In this article, we make the case for fundamental reform of the international system to safeguard global health security. We build on the action agenda offered by four international commissions formed in the wake of the Ebola epidemic, calling for the recommended “peace dividend” (an annual incremental investment of $4.5 billion — 65 cents per person) to strengthen global preparedness, for the United Nations to play a greater role in responding to major global health and humanitarian emergencies, and for an effective and efficient R&D strategy with multiple stakeholders — governments, academics, industry, and civil society — identifying R&D priorities and leading a coordinated response. If our action plan were adopted, it would safeguard the global population far better against infectious disease threats. It would reap dividends in security, development, and productivity.