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 & Global health. The organization has 585 authors who have published 2488 publications receiving 36650 citations. The organization is also known as: Georgetown Law & GULC.

WHO’s Pandemic Influenza Preparedness Framework: A Milestone in Global Governance for Health

Abstract: In May 2008, the World Health Organization (WHO) adopted the Pandemic Influenza Preparedness Framework for the Sharing of Influenza Viruses and Access to Vaccines and Other Benefits (PIP Framework) The PIP Framework’s adoption ended years of difficult negotiations, which began after Indonesia refused to share samples of avian influenza A (H5N1) with the WHO in late 2006 Indonesia justified its actions on the need to create more equitable access for developing countries to benefits, such as vaccines and antivirals, derived from research and development on shared influenza virus samples The global health community feared that failure to share influenza virus samples would jeopardize surveillance and response efforts against the threat of pandemic influenza The PIP Framework seeks to improve pandemic influenza preparedness by addressing virus and benefit sharing on an equal footing and establishing mechanisms to achieve more equitable access to benefits To facilitate virus sharing, the PIP Framework encourages WHO member states to share influenza virus specimens It also creates a virus tracking mechanism that features two standard material transfer agreements to increase transparency concerning the use of shared viruses This mechanism represents the Framework’s most significant contribution to strengthening pandemic influenza surveillance and response The Framework’s benefit-sharing system contains many components, but its most notable accomplishment for increasing equitable access to benefits is the pharmaceutical industry’s agreement to provide monetary and in-kind contributions The PIP Framework is a landmark for global governance for health because it is the first international agreement facilitating influenza virus and benefit sharing However, the Framework is not legally binding, avoids intellectual property issues that complicated the negotiations, does not include commitments from developed countries to donate portions of influenza vaccines they purchase, and faces implementation challenges in an increasingly difficult global health environment

Agency Enforcement of Spending Clause Statutes: A Defense of the Funding Cut-Off

Abstract: This article contends that federal agencies ought more frequently to use the threat of cutting off funds to state and local grantees that are not adequately complying with the terms of a grant statute. Scholars tend to offer four arguments to explain — and often to justify — agencies’ longstanding reluctance to engage in funding cut-offs: first, that funding cut-offs will hurt the grant program’s beneficiaries and so will undermine the agency’s ultimate goals; second, that federalism concerns counsel against federal agencies’ taking funds away from state and local grantees; third, that agencies are neither designed nor motivated to pursue funding cut-offs; and fourth, that political dynamics among state governments, Congress, the White House, and the agencies themselves make funding cut-offs difficult to achieve. This article argues that these critiques are deeply flawed. Among other problems, the critiques fail to account for the variety of types of grants, grant conditions, and rationales for grantee noncompliance; reflect lack of a nuanced understanding of the ways in which distinct federalism concerns play different roles at different times in the development and implementation of grant programs; and unrealistically assume static and unified agency incentives and political relationships. After debunking these critiques, the Article offers a new conception of the potential benefit of funding cut-offs in the enforcement of federal grant programs: the threat of a funding cut-off may be appropriate when it can promote change by the noncompliant grantee and when it can signal to other grantees that the agency is serious about enforcement, thereby increasing grantees’ compliance. The article concludes by assessing the implications of this argument for administrative regime design and judicial review. This work opens up new avenues for research in administrative law on the distinct features of the federal grants regime.

Long-shot class actions:

Abstract: Author(s): Schwartz, Warren F. | Abstract: This paper considers the question whether plaintiffs, whose claims pose an important common issue, and are thought to be unlikely to prevail on this issue, should be permitted to maintain a class action in which this issue will be resolved or be required to litigate their claims in individual suits. The paper takes as its point of departure an opinion of Judge Richard Posner offering a novel and complex theoretical justification for requiring plaintiffs to proceed individually. This justification rests on ideas with respect to how claims thought to be unlikely to prevail should be viewed, how the risks created by legal uncertainty should be distributed and how decision making should be structured to take account of the different verdicts various juries might render with respect to identical cases. These ideas have very general and important implications. The paper concludes that Judge Posner's opinion suppresses important issues implicated by his analysis and that consideration of these issues leads to a view much more inclined to permit the class action to go forward than the one advanced by Judge Posner.

The Law Against Family Separation

Abstract: This Article offers the first comprehensive assessment of how domestic and international law limits the U.S. government’s ability to separate foreign children from the adults accompanying them when they seek to enter the United States. As early as March 6, 2017, then-Secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer that he was considering separating families at the border as a deterrent to illegal immigration as part of a “zero tolerance” policy whereby the Trump administration intended the strictest enforcement of immigration law against those migrants coming to the U.S. southern border . Kelly did not say upon what legal basis the administration could lawfully separate families at the border as a component of its immigration policies. Whatever the merits of maximal prosecution of adults unlawfully crossing the border, adopting this policy did not convert family separation into a lawful byproduct of the arrest of an adult. To the contrary, domestic and international law militates strongly against the lawfulness of family separation as a tool for immigration deterrence, yielding liability for the state and for individuals who implement family separation in this setting. Both litigation and Congressional action can and should play a role in addressing the Trump administration’s use of family separation and ensuring that it is halted now and not used again, by Trump or any other U.S. President. In the Article, we start with a factual chronology of the Trump Administration’s family separation policy. We then argue for our positions regarding the illegality of the policy and its implementation. In Part II, we describe the federal government’s recognized authority to enforce immigration laws and ensure border security, on the one hand, and the domestic constitutional framework for protecting the basic rights of migrant parents and children, on the other. In Part III we examine the reach of domestic law, including the common law of torts, for dealing with wrongful family separation in the immigration setting. Part IV reviews international law that protects against this harm. In the Conclusion we propose a range of steps that the U.S. Congress could take to repair at least some of the harm caused by the family separation policy, and to ensure that no future administration contemplates similar action.