Author: Jessica Roberts Martin

Unlike the majority of workers, domestic workers — such as housekeepers and paid caregivers of children and the elderly — remain invisible, laboring in the private setting of the home. This situation can lead to exploitative labor conditions. The International Labour Organization (ILO), a U.N. agency that promotes opportunities for workers to obtain decent and productive work, recently agreed to a Convention on Decent Work for Domestic Workers, establishing international standards to improve working conditions for as many as 100 million domestic workers worldwide, the majority of whom are women and young girls. “Although delegates from the United States played a leading role in rallying support for the convention and advocating strong protections on behalf of domestic workers, it will take a Herculean effort to achieve decent work for domestic workers in the United States,” says Peggie Smith, JD, employment law expert and professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis. “At present, none of the major pieces of federal labor legislation in the United States comply with the standards in the convention.”

HBO’s Big Love and TLC’s reality-TV offering Sister Wives have thrust polygamy into popular culture in the United States. Estimates are that somewhere between 50,000-100,000 families in this country are currently risking criminal prosecution by practicing plural marriage. Proponents and detractors of polygamy use same-sex marriage to support their arguments, but that’s just a distraction, says Adrienne Davis, JD, an expert on gender relations and the William M. Van Cleve Professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis. “While the gay analogy may make for splashy punditry and good television, it distracts us from the main legal issue — polygamy challenges the regulations inherent in the conventional two-person marriage,” Davis says. “Putting aside whether you think polygamy is ‘right’ or ‘wrong,’ it is important to look at whether U.S. law is up to regulating marital multiplicity.” She proposes some default rules that might accommodate polygamy, while ensuring against some of its historic and ongoing abuses.

According to the United Nations, nearly 10 million people in Africa are experiencing  one of the worst droughts in 60 years. Drought conditions are now leading to famine. Michael Galvin, a second-year student at the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis, is in the east African countryside as part of a team testing the effectiveness of KickStart, a social enterprise selling low-cost technologies such as irrigation pumps to help alleviate poverty. Galvin is blogging about the farmers and families he and team members are visiting through stories, video and photos (http://kickstartblog.wordpress.com/ ). His entries give a powerful look at how the drought is impacting lives.

Washington University in St. Louis School of Law is offering a Washington, D.C., area intellectual property field placement opportunity for students pursuing a career focused on the preparation, filing and prosecution of patent applications. Students in the externship will work at the law firm of Oliff & Berridge in Alexandria, Va., for one semester. “Our students will be expected to perform as a first-year associate,” says David Deal, JD, director of WULAW’s Intellectual Property & Technology Law Program and co-director of the Intellectual Property and Nonprofit Organizations Legal Clinic at WULAW. This program is designed to immerse WULAW students in a law firm environment and facilitate the transition from law students to competent and productive practitioners.

Washington University in St. Louis School of Law students Kailey Burger, Deona DeClue and Joseph Franklin are featured in TIME magazine’s online Fourth of July coverage focusing on the U.S. Constitution. Visit time.com. Reporters filmed people across the United States reading the Bill of Rights. Burger, DeClue and Franklin read the Fifth, Sixth and Seventh Amendments, which focus on due process, speedy trials and civil trials by jury. The students were filmed in St. Louis’ historic Old Courthouse, site of the Dred Scott case. 

How do students learn the skills necessary to work with those who are different from them? How do they come to understand the global ramifications of local actions? How does higher education effectively train this generation for the global workforce? The answers to these questions can be found through international volunteer service, which is increasingly seen at a broad range of institutions of higher education in a multitude of forms. “While it is not new to higher education, international service pedagogy is at the threshold of a new era,” she says. “We have both the opportunity and responsibility in higher education to support and critically assess the international service performed by our students,” says Amanda Moore McBride, PhD, associate professor and research director at the Center for Social Development (CSD) at the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis.

AARP’s ambiguous statements about Social Security benefit cuts have led to a public roasting of the organization for caving into public pressure, says Merton C. Bernstein, LLB, a nationally recognized expert on Social Security and the Walter D. Coles Professor Emeritus at Washington University in St. Louis School of Law. “Whatever stance AARP has taken, it does not provide ‘cover’ for the Obama Administration to agree to cut benefits now, soon or in the future. If AARP does not vigorously and clearly repudiate what some see as willingness to accept benefit cuts, AARP will be the loser.”

Luis Zayas’ commitment to U.S. Latinas and their struggle with suicide started in the 1970s when he encountered the pain and suffering that the teenage girls and their parents were experiencing during his work in emergency rooms and mental health-care clinics. “Latinas have the highest rate of suicide attempt among teens in comparison to white girls or African-American girls,” says Zayas, PhD, the Shanti K. Khinduka Distinguished Professor of Social Work at the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis. Zayas brings compelling personal stories and nearly 40 years of research to his new book, Latinas Attempting Suicide: When Cultures, Families and Daughters Collide, published by Oxford University Press.

Ozioma (localhealthdata.org) is a new online tool from the Health Communication Research Laboratory (HCRL) at Washington University in St. Louis designed to increase the amount of locally relevant health information in communities through media. Ozioma, which launches June 8, allows users to search for health data from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (for example, National Cancer Institute and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) and more than 60 other reliable sources — all in one place.

The Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis recently launched a formal alliance with Fudan University, one of the leading universities in China. As part of this growing relationship, Fudan and the Brown School will hold a summer institute in Shanghai to develop policy and management skills for the first generation of social work leaders, NGO leaders and government officials.