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.

Physician Licensing and Disciplining: Lessons from Indiana

Abstract: State medical boards use professional licensing and discipline to enforce minimum performance standards. Using forty-four years of data (1972-2015) on physician licensing and discipline obtained from the Indiana Professional Licensing Agency, we identify factors associated with a higher likelihood of being discipline. Only 1.3% of the sixty-three thousand licensed physicians in our dataset were disciplined. The most common reasons for disciplinary action were drug-diversion (25%); incompetence (18%); drug abuse (17%), alcohol-abuse (10%), and sexual misconduct (9%). The most common disciplinary sanctions were probation (26%); suspension (25%); and revocation (17%). Regression analyses indicated that the following factors were associated with a higher likelihood of being disciplined: male gender; earlier license year; holding more Controlled Substance Registrations; and specializing in family medicine/general practice, psychiatry, and obstetrics and gynecology. Psychiatrists, obstetricians and gynecologists are especially likely to be sanctioned for sexual offenses; family physicians or general practitioners for drug-diversion; and anesthesiologists for substance abuse. Negligence or incompetence cases are less likely to be severely sanctioned. Research continues on the degree of overlap between the medical malpractice and disciplinary systems.

Global Health Justice: A Perspective from the Global South on a Framework Convention on Global Health

Abstract: A global coalition of civil society and academics recently launched the Joint Action and Learning Initiative on National and Global Responsibilities for Health (JALI), which is developing a post-Millennium Development Goal (MDG) framework for global health. JALI’s mission is the achievement of a global health treaty based on the right to health — a Framework Convention on Global Health (FCGH). The FCGH proposes establishing fair terms of international co-operation, with agreed-upon mutually binding obligations to create enduring health system capacities, meet basic survival needs, and reduce unconscionable inequalities in global health. States that bear a disproportionate burden of disease have the least capacity to do anything about it. The richer states are deeply resistant to expending the political capital and economic resources. When they do act, it is often more out of narrow self-interest or humanitarian instinct than a full sense of ethical or legal obligation. The result is a spiraling deterioration of health in the poorest regions, with manifest global consequences and systemic effects on trade, international relations, and security.The very concept of global health justice as conceived by JALI and the FCGH is to have the global campaign led by civil society, with the major conceptualization and advocacy coming from the Global South. This paper presents the African, particularly South African, perspective on global health justice.

The Charade of Tradition-Based Substantive Due Process

Abstract: This Article criticizes the Supreme Court's substantive due process standard, by which the Court protects unenumerated constitutional rights only if they are deeply rooted in American history and tradition. First, the Article objects to the standard by way of internal critique, arguing that it does not serve the principal rationale for its adoption, constraining judicial discretion. The standard fails to constrain judicial discretion for three main reasons: First, the Court has vast discretion in deciding which traditions to take into account. Second, there is substantial discretion in determining how to define the tradition at issue, which can be exploited to advance the predilections of the Justices. Finally, even if the Court finds that an asserted liberty interest is supported by "American tradition," it must take the further step of determining whether that interest should receive contemporaneous protection, an inquiry which depends heavily on the type of moral judgment the Court sought to avoid by using the deep roots test. Taken collectively, these points show that the deep roots test does very little to cabin judicial discretion, as the Supreme Court had hoped it would. Second, the Article objects to the standard by way of external critique, arguing that it is at war with principles of personal autonomy, majoritarianism and normative progress. To avoid these problems, the Article proposes that the Court replace the current substantive due process standard with the open-ended standard articulated by Justice Cardozo in Palko v. Connecticut.

Remix nation

Abstract: Assessing the threat the anticircumvention provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act pose for fair use.

News as Surveillance

Abstract: As inhabitants of the Information Age, we are increasingly aware of the amount and kind of data that technology platforms collect on us. Far less publicized, however, is how much data news organizations collect on us as we read the news online and how they allow third parties to collect that personal data as well. A handful of studies by computer scientists reveal that, as a group, news websites are among the Internet’s worst offenders when it comes to tracking their visitors. On the one hand, this surveillance is unsurprising. It is capitalism at work. The press’s business model has long been advertising-based. Yet, today this business model raises particular First Amendment concerns. The press, a named beneficiary of the First Amendment and a First Amendment institution, is gathering user reading history. This is a violation of what legal scholars call “intellectual privacy”—a right foundational to our First Amendment free speech rights. And because of the perpetrator, this surveillance has the potential to cause far-reaching harms. Not only does it injure the individual reader or citizen, it injures society. News consumption helps each of us engage in the democratic process. It is, in fact, practically a prerequisite to our participation. Moreover, for an institution whose success is dependent on its readers’ trust, one that checks abuses of power, this surveillance seems like a special brand of betrayal. Rather than an attack on journalists or journalism, this Essay is an attack on a particular press business model. It is also a call to grapple with it before the press faces greater public backlash. Originally given as the keynote for the Washburn Law Journal’s symposium, The Future of Cyber Speech, Media, and Privacy, this Essay argues for transforming and diversifying press business models and offers up other suggestions for minimizing the use of news as surveillance.