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.

Ban Facial Recognition Technologies for Children—And for Everyone Else

Abstract: Facial recognition technologies enable a uniquely dangerous and pervasive form of surveillance, and children cannot escape it any more than adults can. Facial recognition technologies have particularly severe implications for privacy, as they can weaponize existing photographic databases in a way that other technologies cannot, and faces are difficult or impossible to change, and often illegal to publicly obscure. Their erosion of practical obscurity in public threatens both privacy and free expression, as it makes it much harder for people to navigate public spaces without being identified, and easier to quickly and efficiently identify many people in a crowd at once. To make matters even worse, facial recognition technologies have been shown to perform less accurately for people of color, women, non-binary and transgender people, children, and the elderly, meaning that they have the potential to enable discrimination in whatever forum they are deployed. As these technologies have developed and become more prevalent, children are being subjected to them in schools, at summer camp, and other child-specific contexts, as well as alongside their parents, through CCTV, private security cameras, landlord-installed apartment security systems, or by law enforcement. The particular vulnerability of young people relative to adults might make them seem like natural candidates for heightened protections from facial recognition technologies. Young people have less say over where they go and what they do, inaccurate evaluations of their faces could have a particularly strong impact on their lives in contexts like law enforcement uses, and the chilling effects of these technologies on free expression could constrain their emotional and intellectual development. At the same time, some of the harms young people experience are near-universal privacy harms, such as the erosion of practical obscurity, while the discriminatory harms of facial recognition’s inaccurate assessment of their faces are shared by other demographic groups. The dangers facial recognition technologies pose to human flourishing are insidious enough that a ban on both commercial and government uses is necessary, as more modest proposals will likely be insufficient to counteract its inescapability and discriminatory effects. But children’s heightened vulnerability to privacy violations and discrimination from the use of facial recognition technologies doesn’t diminish the severity of the harms that other groups and the population at large experience. The use of facial recognition technologies on children should be prohibited, and the same goes for their use on everyone else.

Second-Liens and the Leverage Option

Abstract: The finance literature has long recognized the existence of embedded put options within mortgage contracts, such as a prepayment option and a walk-away default option. This Article identifies a previously unrecognized option embedded in residential mortgages: a mortgagor’s unilateral option to increase total leverage on the collateral property through junior liens irrespective of existing mortgagees’ wishes. We term this the “leverage option.” We show how the leverage option was created as an unintended consequence of a federal law enacted to deal with seller financing arrangements that prevailed during the inflationary economy of the 1970s. The leverage option was of little importance until the housing bubble in the 2000s, as homeowners massively increased their leverage using second-lien mortgages. We demonstrate the problems that the leverage option causes for lenders, for homeowners (who pay for it, regardless of whether they want it), for regulators, and for the economy at large. We propose a discrete legal change that will convert the leverage option from being a mandatory embedded option to a bargained-for, unembedded option that will enable efficient pricing and force the information about total mortgage market leverage that is necessary for both effective market oversight.

Swine Flu Vaccine: What Is Fair?

Abstract: A novel strain of influenza A (H1N1)--so-called swine flu--spread through Mexico in April 2009, and by June 11th, the World Health Organization raised the alert level to a full-blown pandemic. (1) The virus spread widely during the Southern hemisphere's regular flu season, with the Northern hemisphere bracing for its peak flu season. The United States continues to report the largest number of cases of any country worldwide. The surprisingly rapid global transmission has focused political attention on developing an effective vaccine. Australia initiated the first vaccine trials in July, followed by Europe and the United States. Finding a medical solution to this threat is attractive but also raises questions of fundamental fairness. Cost Comparisons In 2009 Congress authorized $7.65 billion in spending for the Department of Health and Human Services, the vast majority of which is for therapeutic interventions such as vaccine development and distribution and stockpiling of the antiviral Tamiflu. This funding, together with private spending and the more than $7 billion federal authorization for research and development on and medical interventions for influenza A (H5N1)--avian flu--amounts to a windfall for the pharmaceutical industry. Roche has reported that sales of Tamiflu have tripled, and GlaxoSmithKline predicts huge profits from a vaccine. (2) Politicians on all sides of the spectrum support large expenditures, but it is not obvious that novel influenza should be such a high resource priority. Human-to-human transmission of H5N1 is rare, with only a small number of human cases and deaths worldwide. (3) Although H1N1 is widespread, the first wave was not highly pathogenic; it caused far fewer deaths than seasonal influenza, which kills some thirty-six thousand Americans and up to five hundred thousand globally each year. And even the number of deaths pales in comparison to those caused by chronic diseases such as diabetes, coronary heart disease, and respiratory disease. (4) But while government falls over itself to fund therapeutic interventions for exotic infections such as anthrax, SARS, and novel strains of influenza, it continues to chronically underfund more cost-effective public health services. Approximately 2 percent of total health expenditures goes to prevention and population-based services. The political dilemma, of course, is that H1N1 could mutate--through reassortment with H5N1, for example--rendering it much more lethal. We should recall that the first wave of the 1918 Spanish flu, which killed some fifty million people in a much less populated world, was relatively benign. It is that slight but serious potential that has the public and health officials concerned. Research: Detecting Adverse Events Clinical trials of swine flu vaccine have enrolled relatively few human subjects and are being conducted in a compressed time frame. In Australia and Europe, there are calls to truncate the research even further and to fast-track the vaccine. In the United States, initial trials are being conducted on healthy adult volunteers, including the elderly, followed by children as young as six months and pregnant women, who are at higher risk. The problems of obtaining informed consent among participants with limited capacity can probably be managed. More worrying is the inability of small trials to detect rare but serious adverse effects that cannot be fully understood until the vaccine is rolled out to a mass population. Although the first trials did not use adjuvants that stimulate the immune system, these may be necessary to stretch the vaccine supply, even though they cause more side effects. For its part, the Food and Drug Administration will be under public and political pressure to quickly approve vaccines without large clinical trials for safety and effectiveness. Also, the FDA has never approved a human vaccine containing adjuvants, which could increase the complexity of its decision. …

The New Normativity: The Abuse Excuse and the Resurgence of Judgment in the Criminal Law

Abstract: This article reviews Moral Judgment: Does the Abuse Excuse Threaten Our Legal System? by James Q. Wilson (1997).There is growing interest within the academy in reviving the "normative" in criminal law scholarship. Enter a recent book, Moral Judgment, by the distinguished criminologist James Q. Wilson. Professor Wilson's work prompts the question: What is meant by the term ''judgment"? Considering three different models -- judgment as community, judgment as character, and judgment as critique -- this review argues that Professor Wilson's idea of judgment both departs from the "new normativity" in existing scholarship and shows how easily ''judgment" may stand in for partial aims. Professor Wilson argues that the "abuse excuse" is the product of modern social movements that make some defendants, like battered women, more attractive "victims" than others. For these defendants, Wilson argues, the law seeks to explain rather than judge their behavior. Unfortunately, when one comes to look at the particular defenses that Wilson embraces as proper ''judgments" and rejects as poor "explanations," Wilson's theory begins to raise serious questions. For example, although Wilson is particularly critical of battered women's claims, he leaves out important parallels to excuses typically raised by men under the rubric of a well-known and long-standing defense -- provocation. This selectivity, the review argues, not only betrays Wilson's judgment as the embrace of tradition for tradition's sake, but also tells us something important about the "abuse excuse." It tells us that the danger to our criminal justice system does not lie in a particular set of modern excuses, nor modern social movements like feminism, but in a failed theory of excuse.

Food and Drug Administration Regulation of Food Safety

Abstract: Food-borne illness remains a major public health challenge in the United States, causing an estimated 48 million illness episodes and 3000 deaths annually. The FDA Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA), enacted in 2011, gives the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) new tools to regulate food safety. The act emphasizes prevention, enhanced recall authority, and oversight of imported food. The FSMA brings the FDA’s food safety regulation in line with core tenets of public health by focusing on preventing outbreaks, rather than reacting to them, and differentiating between foods and food producers based on the degree of risk they pose. The FSMA also recognizes the increasing importance of imported food and enhances the ability of the FDA to safeguard the U.S. food supply from hazards originating abroad. The act achieves its prevention objectives through requiring food production facilities to establish preventive control plans and by increasing inspection frequency – a shortcoming of the FDA in recent years. The act also enhances the FDA’s ability to respond to food safety problems when they occur. Through pilot projects on food tracing systems and an enhanced surveillance system, the FDA will be have better tools to determine the source of outbreaks. Additionally, the act gives the FDA new mandatory recall authority – a badly needed addition to its enforcement capabilities. In an increasingly globalized food environment, the FSMA gives the FDA new authority to regulate imported food. Among other provisions, the act allows FDA to inspect foreign facilities and to partner with foreign food regulatory agencies to help build capacity. Through new tools and increased enforcement, the FSMA holds great promise for public health. The act, however, leaves several regulatory gaps, including keeping the food safety functions of the USDA and FDA separate. Additionally, the potential of the act to improve food safety may be thwarted by inadequate funding in the current budget environment. The act includes numerous programs for building the capacity of domestic and foreign regulators and food producers. Such programs are essential to an improved food safety system, but require adequate funding from Congress to be fully implemented. In addition to national capacity building, FDA and Congress should fully engage partners in government and industry to improve global food safety at the international level.