Student Articles and Papers

What is the Best Way for Manufacturers and Physicians to Apply Sunscreen to Avoid Being Burned by the Final Sunshine Act Regulations?

Abraham Gitterman — Thu, 11 Apr 2013 09:07:58 PDT

This [article] explains the requirements under the Patient Protection and Affordable Health Care Act’s Physician Payment Sunshine Act that all medical product manufacturers report to Health and Human Services (HHS) any payment or transfer of value made to physicians and teaching hospitals. Author Abraham Gitterman ... warns that manufacturers may face adverse consequences of public access to payment data, including fraud and abuse investigations and private litigation actions. He recommends that manufacturers begin training employees to ensure compliance with the statute and reduce the likelihood of further investigations. He further suggests that the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) include contextual information about physician-industry relationships when making payments public in order to minimize harming the reputations of physicians. Gitterman concludes that if CMS’ implementation of the Sunshine Act stigmatizes collaborations between physicians and industry, medical progress will be slowed and patients will be harmed.

Insights in Enforcement, Litigation & Compliance for Pharmaceutical and Medical Device Manufacturers at FDLI's Enforcement, Litigation and Compliance Conference, December 12-13, 2012

Thomas Sullivan et al. — Thu, 11 Apr 2013 08:23:34 PDT

Executives Should Think Twice Before Accepting Pleas 'Related to Fraud': The Expansion of Exclusion Under the Park Doctrine

Abraham Gitterman — Thu, 11 Apr 2013 08:16:57 PDT

Can't You Smell That Smell? Clean Air Act Fixes for Factory Farm Air Pollution

J. Nicholas Hoover — Mon, 08 Apr 2013 06:44:38 PDT

Massive facilities that keep large numbers of livestock have overtaken small, independent farms as the primary source of meat, eggs, and dairy in the United States. These concentrated animal feeding operations ("CAFOs) compare more to industrial manufacturing operations than to traditional farms, and emit huge quantities of air pollutants that are harmful to public health, sickening people and damaging the environment. The Environmental Protection Agency ("EPA") possesses statutorily provided tools under the Clean Air Act that it uses to regular other polluting industries. However, this article - after reviewing the rise of CAFOs, examining the threats they pose, and surveying current regulation - suggests that the EPA's approach to CAFOs is grossly inadequate. The article argues that the agency, under the Clean Air Act, should regulate the emissions of hydrogen sulfide and ammonia, two pollutants for which factory farms are major sources. This approach is incomplete, however. Pollutant-based regulation is both overbroad in that it will regulate other sources of these pollutants and underbroad because CAFO air pollution includes more than just these pollutants. The EPA should therefore additionally or alternatively rely on a more thorough and flexible pollution source-specific tool, the New Source Performance Standards ("NSPS"). NSPS are analogous to the rigorous source-specific approach used to regulate CAFO water pollution under the Clean Water Act, and will provide a comprehensive antidote to the ills of modern, industrial animal agriculture.

Lessons from a Plague

Max D. Siegel — Mon, 08 Apr 2013 06:19:55 PDT

This Article argues that we ought to examine this country’s early AIDS crisis for lessons on addressing HIV in the twenty-first century and to improve the ongoing social movement of sexual minorities in the United States. In the 1980s and early 1990s, AIDS focused sexual minorities’ advocacy efforts as both liberationists working to deregulate sexuality and integrationists seeking entrance to heterosexual privilege recognized that their agendas needed to account for this new crisis. Over time, a liberationist response to AIDS emerged and dominated the social movement because sexual minorities needed to publicly defend their differences in order to stay alive. Decades later, without the horrific, unifying force of the early AIDS crisis, elites at the helm of the social movement have taken an integrationist turn. Movement elites now favor integrationist objectives like marriage, neglecting the pressing needs of their marginalized movement counterparts. By honoring key lessons from the early AIDS crisis and using the machinery of the modern integrationist movement to advance more liberationist goals, sexual minorities have the power and the responsibility to propel society toward greater justice for all.

The Duty to Rescue in Genomic Research

Michael Ulrich — Fri, 01 Mar 2013 05:13:38 PST

A Monetary Misunderstanding: Smith v. Gilmore and Baltimore's Place in Turn of the 19th Century Globalization

John P. Gates — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 05:24:43 PST

As the young United States entered the 19^th century, the City of Baltimore had become a major center of America’s international commerce. Baltimore had quickly risen from a relatively small town on the Chesapeake Bay to the home of the country's third busiest trading port and one of its fastest growing cities in less than two decades.

The case of Smith v. Gilmor (M.D. 1816), a lawsuit between two prominent Baltimore merchants, was emblematic of the early days of globalization and the confusion this clash of cultures caused in the world of international trade. The controversy in this case is placed over the backdrop of how the merchants and sailors of Baltimore helped to expand America’s economic influence across the globe during the early years of the nation despite the overwhelming power of the old European trading monopolies.

Stewart v. McIntosh, 4 H. & J. 233 (1816)

Rhett Donnelly — Fri, 18 Jan 2013 13:23:03 PST

Stewart v. M’Intosh was argued during the time period of the Jay Treaty, the Quasi-War, the Haitian Revolution, and the War of 1812. The facts begin at the end of the 18^th century and extend into the early 19^th century. The arguments and ruling were based on trade restrictions between United States citizens and territories under French control. The plaintiffs focused their arguments on the specific language of the Congressional acts, which outlawed trade with French territories but did not directly mention the regions at issue, while the defendants looked at the implications of the acts and the context of the struggles between the United States and France to shape their arguments. Though the case only includes the notes and final verdict, a close examination of the intricacies of the arguments and historical context that shaped the world during this time help explain the mindset and political agenda of the justices of the Court of Appeals. The defendants were successful in showing that the plaintiffs attempted to circumvent Congressional acts by trading with territories specifically outlawed by legislation in order to profit, as they donned Danish flags to fly above their ships in order to disguise themselves and engage in forbidden trade. The political influences of the justices sitting on the Court of Appeals, though, may explain how this controversial decision was reached.

Fulton v. Lewis: the Case of an Immigrant Slave's Petition for Freedom During the War of 1812

Silvio Morales — Tue, 15 Jan 2013 08:26:27 PST

In 1815 the Maryland Court of Appeals did something that by the early 1800’s had become uncommon. The court granted a slave his freedom in the case of Fulton v. Lewis, 3H. & J. 564 (1815) The slave was John Lewis, a native of the island of Saint Domingo, present-day Haiti, who was imported into Maryland after the Maryland General Assembly enacted a law prohibiting the importation of slaves into Maryland.

To understand why Lewis was granted his freedom this essay explores the case by placing it in its historical context, and by reviewing certain Maryland laws regarding slavery prior to and during the War of 1812.

This essay will address the facts of the case and the events that led to Lewis’s importation and sale to David Fulton, while discussing the main characters involved. Second, in an attempt to fully appreciate the significance of the Court of Appeals ruling this paper will briefly discuss the social, legal and political history of Maryland between 1790 and 1815. Third, it will address the trial proceedings and the subsequent appeal to determine why Lewis was successful in obtaining his freedom when other African Americans were being denied freedom. Finally, it will examine an alternate theory as to the identity of Lewis than the one presented in the court records.

Surviving Castle Rock: the Human Rights of Domestic Violence

Max D. Siegel — Tue, 08 Jan 2013 05:23:18 PST

In 2005, the Supreme Court of the United States decided Town of Castle Rock v. Gonzales and held that Jessica Gonzales did not have a constitutional right to police enforcement of a restraining order. The decision highlighted the Court’s reluctance to recognize citizens’ affirmative rights, fortifying a deeply ingrained conceptualization of the Constitution of the United States as a “Negative Constitution” that creates a government with restraints on its actions and extremely limited obligations to its citizens. In August 2011, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights released a report publicizing its finding that by failing to take affirmative measures to address domestic violence, the United States had violated the human rights of Jessica Gonzalez as well as human rights belonging to abuse survivors across the country. This Article builds on the Commission’s report by pinpointing the extent and cause of these human rights violations and the systematic oppression of American women and minority populations that cannot incite necessary change through the exercise of financial and political power. This Article focuses on solutions stemming from modern American jurisprudence and present opportunities to curb the economic, reputational, and expressive fallout of domestic violence in the United States.

The Future of Family

Max D. Siegel — Tue, 08 Jan 2013 05:15:20 PST

The State organizes society into families, implicating and often ignoring various liberty and equality interests while fortifying a “traditional” family structure comprised of one man, one woman, and their mutually and exclusively conceived offspring. This structure has historically benefited the heterosexual elite within the United States, but modern advancements for sexual minorities suggest a new standard for State recognition of family. Queer liberation will erase the traditional family by rewriting its legal and social dimensions, resulting in laws and policies that track more closely with familial bonds outside a heteronormative, man-woman binary. This Article explores the ramifications of enhanced queer liberty beyond the lives of sexual minorities and establishes how these civil rights advancements stand to dismantle exclusionary notions of family. As an example, and in light of the rapid growth of familial creation in the context of donated embryos, ova, and sperm, this Article argues that queer liberation benefits donor-conceived family communities, which are familial groups that have connected on the basis of donated reproductive materials but which persist with various unmet legal needs. Finally, by highlighting dignity as the historical and contemporary link between the Equal Protection Clause and the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, this Article asserts that liberty as dignity connects rights across society, including donor-conceived family communities, and, by moving all communities away from the traditional family, a queer redefinition of family stands to unleash personal agency in the legal construction of all citizens’ familial lives.

Opting Out of the Procedural Morass: a Solution to the Class Arbitration Problem

Emanwel Josef Turnbull — Mon, 07 Jan 2013 08:14:16 PST

American class actions are internationally regarded as a procedural form to avoid and widely criticized in the United States. They have been narrowed and restricted by U.S. statutes and case law. Plaintiffs' lawyers in consumer class actions are portrayed as greedy and fraudulent, while businesses are increasingly acting to avoid class actions through mandatory pre-dispute arbitration clauses. Even class arbitration is criticized as leading to a “procedural morass.”

This Article proposes that parties and arbitral fora opt out of the American procedural morass (and the attendant long-running disputes about American class actions) by adopting an English procedural rule for aggregation. This Article performs the necessary investigation into the legal contexts of England and America and adjusts the transplant rule to best fit its new home.

The proposed arbitral rule is simpler and more flexible, and therefore more suitable, than the existing arbitral rules adapted from Federal Rule of Civil Procedure. Perhaps more importantly, this new rule does not carry the cultural baggage of the American class action. Where consumers and businesses are vehemently opposed, this new approach to aggregation can bring compromise and co-operation. If adopted, this rule can relieve the consumer-business tensions and breathe new life into the arbitral forum as a setting in which many consumers can obtain a fair hearing of a dispute, even if they need to do so together.

Abandoning Women to Their Rights: What Happens When Feminist Jurisprudence Ignores Birthing Rights

Rebecca A. Spence — Mon, 07 Jan 2013 07:55:04 PST

The goals of the Article are twofold. First, this Article will demonstrate that while birthing rights issues have been familiar areas of concern for feminist scholarship on women's rights to privacy and equality, neglecting to integrate this work into the law school classroom fails to promote effective legal advocacy for pregnant women. The violation of women's rights during childbirth is a more common problem than reported legal opinions indicate, and few lawyers are prepared to protect clients prospectively or to vindicate women's rights post-childbirth.

Cross-Border Bankruptcy and the Cooperative Solution

Leah Barteld — Thu, 08 Nov 2012 08:51:34 PST

Cross-border bankruptcy continues to be an important topic within bankruptcy regimes worldwide. As more corporations find themselves interacting in a market without the confines of geographic borders, countries need to adapt their regulatory schemes to be able to properly handle an orderly liquidation or reorganization without an adverse impact on the economy. This paper discuses the challenges of a cross-border bankruptcy regime that would be effective and proposes a cooperative solution for increasing coordination among insolvency proceedings. As a result of increasing cooperation among jurisdiction in light of the recent and ongoing financial crisis, reform within the bankruptcy regimes around the world is foreseeable.

Mediation over Prosecution: the Right Approach to Increasing School Attendance in Baltimore City

Franklin Branch — Thu, 13 Sep 2012 12:53:33 PDT

Legislating after Janice M.: the Constitutionality of Recognizing de Facto Parenthood in Maryland

Rachel Simmonsen — Mon, 16 Jul 2012 05:10:09 PDT

Researchers Without Borders?: Limiting Obligations of Ancillary Care Through the Rescue Model

Michael R. Ulrich — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 07:58:48 PDT

With the expansion of clinical research in developing countries, there is a need to explain obligations that researchers have to their subjects beyond those required by the study protocol. This paper outlines a model founded on the duty to rescue that provides ethical clarification of the obligations of ancillary care.

Follow the Leader?: Maryland's Response to the New Federal Stem Cell Guidelines

Michael R. Ulrich — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 07:53:58 PDT

The Virtues of Common Law Theories and Disclosure Requirements in the Market for Fine Art

Brian D. Tobin — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 05:03:46 PST

Cage-Free, Free-Range, Organic? Why Animal Welfare Depends on a New Government Labeling Scheme

Tabitha N. Mitchell — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 08:00:39 PDT