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.

Copyright's Cultural Turn

Abstract: How ironic that the scholarship on the area of law most directly regulating the culture industries has long resisted learning from scholarship on culture! Rather than turning to cultural studies, anthropology, geography, literary theory, science and technology studies, and media studies, over the last few decades, copyright scholars have relied largely on economics for methodology. In this review essay, we argue that Julie Cohen’s new book, Configuring the Networked Self: Law, Code, and the Play of Everyday Practice, is part of a cultural turn in intellectual property scholarship. Cohen’s book marks an important expansion of the tools available to analyze intellectual property. In this paper, we contextualize her book through comparison with the reigning law and economics approach. We go further to highlight some aspects of a cultural analysis of copyright. We identify two central insights of the cultural turn in copyright: the relationship between cultural products and the self, and the relationship between culture and human development, which we characterize as the relationship between goods and a good life. Under Martha Nussbaum’s and Amartya Sen’s capabilities approach, which Cohen embraces, intellectual property policy would be evaluated under a new metric, not simply increased products (in the form of patents, copyrighted works, or trademarked goods), or its contribution to the gross domestic product, but rather its role in enhancing human capabilities. A cultural approach to copyright would measure law’s success by its ability to better the lives of real people.

The Trouble with Identity and Progressive Origins in Defending Labour Law

Abstract: Debate about labour regulation is not new. What is new is the urgency with which labour law reform is promoted as an important fix to economic woes. In recent years, calls for reform resound in poor and rich countries alike. The economic crisis in the United States and in Europe has intensified these debates, making labour regulation a prime target for reform. In several US states public sector unions have been under attack, depicted as a privileged class that drains public funds with high wages, cosy benefits, and retirement privileges that no other workers enjoy. Several European countries have introduced austerity measures that target labour regulation and other foundations of the welfare state as sources of economic waste that they can no longer afford. Moreover, it is argued that “rigid” labour regulation hampers job creation, which can be strengthened through a program of labour flexibilisation.

Living, Aging, and Dying in Healthy and Just Societies: Life Lessons From my Father

Abstract: My father passed away at 102 years old. He lived, aged, and died well. But that is rare in the United States and globally. The World Health Organization defines palliative care “throughout the life course” as improving quality of life for patients and families and relieving pain and suffering, while paying special attention to physical, psychosocial, and spiritual functioning. That’s the global vision, but then there’s the reality. Palliative care, in practice, has been little more than pain relief at life’s end — and in much of the world, not even that. We need to reimagine palliation, embracing a communal or relational ethics of caring for the whole person, embedded in families and communities. What would healthy living, aging, and dying in a just society look like?

Law, Medicine, and Public Health Preparedness: The Case of Ebola

Abstract: The Ebola crisis overseas has come ashore to the United States, resulting in a series of effective public health responses and some high-visibility errors. Although the U.S. has had only one imported case from West Africa as of October 27, 2014, several missteps in handling the case in Dallas, Texas, led to the release of an Ebola patient after initial presentation to a hospital emergency room, potential exposures of dozens of people, and the subsequent infection of two nurses. One of the nurses with symptoms was permitted to fly on commercial airliners, placing hundreds of additional Americans at some risk of infection, albeit minimal. Media coverage of the domestic “Ebola outbreak" has fueled public concerns and the naming of America’s first “Ebola Czar,” Ron Klain. The nation’s preparedness capabilities are under question.