CGI U announces 2013 speakers; new CGI University Network to fund student commitments
President Bill Clinton and Chelsea Clinton announced the program and featured participants for the sixth annual meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative University (CGI U) to be held at Washington University in St. Louis April 5-7. In addition to President Clinton and Chelsea Clinton, Stephen Colbert, Nobel Prize winner Muhammad Yunus and WUSTL’s Michael Sherraden are among the featured speakers.
SCOTUS oral arguments reflect indifference to constitutional grounding of Voting Rights Act
The Supreme Court appears very likely to strike down the most important provision of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, says Gregory P. Magarian, JD, constitution law expert and professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis. “This was an unusually revealing oral argument, because two justices asked questions that reflected both fundamental misunderstanding of the law and disturbing indifference to the constitutional grounding of the Voting Rights Act,” he says.
Conflict of interest rules must extend to government contractors, says ethics expert
The American Bar Association’s House of Delegates
recently adopted a resolution recommending that the federal government
expand its protections against conflicts of interest among government
contractors. The resolution was based in part on a report Kathleen
Clark, JD, ethics expert and professor of law at Washington University in
St. Louis, wrote for the Administrative Conference of the United States
(ACUS).“In recent decades, the federal government has greatly
expanded its use of contractors to perform services, and spends hundreds
of billions on services every year,” Clark writes. “While an extensive array of ethics statutes and rules regulate government employees to ensure that they make decisions in the interest of the government rather than a private interest, only a few of these restrictions apply to contractor personnel.”
Restitution system for exploitative images of children highly problematic
Lawyers recently have gained attention by seeking restitution from individuals convicted of viewing or downloading exploitative photos of children. “This ‘pay-per-view’ system further commodifies victims,” says Cortney Lollar, JD, clinical faculty at Washington University in St. Louis. She says that two key changes are in order: move from the current restitution system to the creation of a child pornography crime victims’ compensation fund, and devote more resources to preventing child sexual abuse.
Law struggling to catch up with use of drone technology, says privacy expert
Charlottesville, Va. recently became the first town
in the U.S. to pass an anti-drone resolution, calling for a restriction
on the use of the unmanned surveillance vehicles. “For drones, I
think the problem is that they do have some legitimate law enforcement
purposes, but they raise massive problems of invasion of privacy and
government surveillance that we need to think through before we deploy
drones in vast numbers in our skies,” says Neil Richards, professor of
law at Washington University in St. Louis.
New opt-out proposal a ‘live and let live solution’ for contraception mandate
The Obama administration has proposed letting
religiously affiliated non-profit businesses and institutions opt-out of
the contraceptive mandate of the Affordable Care Act. “The Obama
administration has bent over backward to accommodate the concerns of
some religiously affiliated businesses,” says Elizabeth Sepper, JD,
health law expert and professor of law at Washington University In St.
Louis.
Public Interest Law and Policy Speakers Series continues Feb. 7
The
Public Interest Law and Policy Speakers Series continues Thursday,
Feb. 7, with Arlie Hochschild, professor emerita of sociology at the
University of California at Berkeley, on “The Outsourced Self: Intimate
Life in Market Times ” at noon in the
Bryan Cave Moot Courtroom (Anheuser-Busch Hall, Room 310).
Work, Families and Public Policy series begins Feb. 4
Faculty and graduate students with an interest in labor, households, health care, law and
social welfare are invited to take part in a series of Monday brown-bag
luncheon seminars to be held biweekly on the Danforth Campus at
Washington University in St. Louis beginning Monday, Feb. 4. In its 17th year, the Work, Families and Public
Policy series features one-hour presentations on research interests of
faculty from local and national universities. Presentations will be from noon-1 p.m. in Seigle Hall, Room 348.
Q&A: Hillary Sale
Hillary Sale, the Walter D. Coles Professor of Law and professor of management, on governance and diversity in the board room.
Time to mandate flu vaccines for healthcare workers, says health law expert
The widespread flu reports are a harsh reminder of
the importance of influenza vaccines. This is particularly true for
healthcare workers, says Elizabeth Sepper, JD, health law expert and
professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis. “One-third of healthcare providers fail to protect themselves, their
patients, and the public from influenza.” Sepper says that it is time for a national flu vaccine mandate for healthcare workers.
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