Banning Affirmative Action: Legal Crossroads in Higher Education Admissions
Affirmative action policy in higher education has been the center of extensive debates, drawing in both passionate advocates and critics who significantly influence discussions on college admissions policies. Consider a scenario where two equally-qualified students, distinguished by their racial background, compete for a coveted spot in a prestigious university. While one might assume that this situation leads to a fair evaluation of both individuals, affirmative action introduces a unique dimension by providing an advantage to a student from a marginalized community. This fact sparks controversy, raising questions about whether affirmative action effectively achieves its intended goals of promoting diversity and addressing historical inequalities or if it establishes an admissions standard that unfairly impacts certain students more than it benefits others.
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The First Federal Attack on Amazon’s Monopoly Power: A Conclusive Moment in Assessing Antitrust Efficacy in the Digital Age
On September 26, 2023, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and 17 states filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington against Amazon.com, Inc. accusing the company of violating antitrust law by inhibiting the growth of its third-party sellers and causing inflated prices of consumer goods on and off its platform. In the 172-page complaint filed to initiate the first federal lawsuit against Amazon, plaintiffs asked the court to “put an end to Amazon’s illegal course of conduct, pry loose Amazon’s monopolistic control, deny Amazon the fruits of its unlawful practice, and restore the lost promise of competition.” Compared to previous lawsuits by states and private parties, the FTC’s suit is of particular importance because the Commission has more mandated authority to reign in monopolistic practice in its founding history and statutory language. Amazon's operations clearly constitute a violation of federal antitrust law, and courts must interpret the FTC's lawsuit as a meritorious challenge of exclusionary conduct. If the district court holds Amazon’s anti-competitive business strategies as lawful under Section 5 of the FTC Act, the FTC’s regulatory purpose and authority will be severely undermined—calling into question the effectiveness of existing laws for antitrust enforcement in the age of digital commerce.
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The Epidemic of Due Process Violations for Tuberculosis Patients
Tuberculosis (TB) is the leading infectious disease killer in the world, causing 1.5 million deaths annually, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). In 2022, 8,300 TB cases were reported in the United States, which was a slight increase from the year before. Within public health policy, treatment of TB patients has become subject to both the judgment of medical practitioners and public health officials given the highly contagious and dangerous nature of the disease. Should it be determined that the patient has active, communicable TB, and could potentially pose a danger to public health, public health officials are legally entitled to detain the patient in a quarantine facility, which may last anywhere from a few days to months until treatment is completed. Known as emergency detention, in such cases, public hearings are not required, raising concern about questions of due process and liberty interests, or an individual's right to do anything in accordance with due process.
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The Cemex Doctrine: A Renewed Deterrence Against Unfair Labor Practices
Standing before the Supreme Court in 1969, Associate General Counsel to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) Dominick Manoli would transform national labor relations in a single oral argument. Overturning two decades of labor law precedent, Manoli argued that the NLRB no longer needed to hold employers to a “good faith” standard when dismissing union representation, implying in such sentiment that the position of the NLRB had changed in between the filing of the brief and his oral argument. Manoli ultimately struck down the Board’s long-held position, based on precedent established in Joy Silk Mills v. National Labor Rel. Board (1949). This position—the Joy Silk doctrine—held that an employer was obligated to recognize and bargain with a designate representing a majority of their employees—unless the employer had a “good faith” doubt of that majority, as stated in Section 8(d) of the National Labor Relations Act of 1935 (NLRA). Yet, Manoli’s actions, which resulted in NLRB v. Gissel Packing Co., Inc. (1969), replaced the Joy Silk bargaining orders with Gissel bargaining orders, which can only be applied in much more extreme and restrictive conditions.
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The Rise and Fall of Antitrust: Why Antitrust Revival is a Legal Necessity
It is an absurd truth that the Gilded Age economy of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century (when homes lacked electricity and running water) closely resembles the twenty-first century economy dominated by social media and technology firms. In the Gilded Age, the Trust Movement constructed an economy rife with market concentration and devoid of real competition. As legal scholar Tim Wu writes, “The Trust Movement envisioned an economy with every sector run by a single, almighty monopoly, fashioned out of hundreds of smaller firms, unfettered by competitors or government restraint.” As a result of the increasing market power wielded by a few firms, consumers were harmed substantially, and small businesses could hardly survive. Just in the years 1895 to 1904, at least 2,274 manufacturing firms combined to form 157 corporations, nearly all of which completely dominated their respective industry. Eliminating competition enabled monopolists to charge prices that greatly exceeded those under a free market. Consequently, wealthy businessmen began to earn millions of dollars annually while their workers earned under $2 per day on average. Across the last few decades, antitrust enforcement has greatly declined due to the strategic and legally invalid undermining of antitrust precedent that was first successfully achieved in the late 1970s, which has caused the current U.S. economy to once again resemble the Gilded Age economy.
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The Price of Judicial Politicization: Poland Disqualified from the European Union’s Funding Program
Over the past six months, Polish citizens have grown increasingly concerned about the European Union‘s attempts to counter democratic backsliding in Eastern Europe by withholding funding from their nation. With the post-Covid inflation rate topping 18.4 percent in February (the highest recorded number since December 1996) and the national economy wavering under the burden of the war in neighboring Ukraine, Poland’s hopes for rehabilitation have been resting in the promised 270 billion PLN from the EU’s recovery budget – a stimulus package designed to boost member states. Especially in light of the estimates published in the European Commission’s fall economic forecast prognosing that economic growth in EU countries will decrease in 2023 compared to 3.3% recorded in 2022, this sum holds unparalleled investment potential. Yet with the country failing to restore judiciary independence, it is considered to be in violation of a horizontal principle – a fundamental direction within the bloc’s politics of social and economic development – and has been repeatedly refused the money. In response, the right-wing ruling party – Prawo i Sprawiedliwość (in English, Law and Justice) – has read the situation as “liberal blackmail,” opening a debate on whether the union’s call was justified. Despite looming ethical questions, when examined with application of European Union law, namely Article 6 of the Common Provisions Regulation and Article 47 of the European Union Charter of Fundamental Rights, and within the framework of turbulence in the Polish judicial system, the threat of restraining funding shall be considered a part of legally tenable protocol.
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What’s in the Bag: Real World Rights or New World Rights
Across the globe, the historical practice of trading goods has significantly adapted to the digitalization of common spaces. This has largely increased the efficacy of domestic and foreign trade by opening new forums for communication and increasing the productivity of business by reducing trade costs. Recently, however, upper-level courts have been faced with a series of cases considering the implications of the production and consumption of goods online. In 2021, Mason Rothschild created and sold one hundred digital “METABirkins.” According to Rothschild, these were images of the iconic Hermès “Birkin” covered in digital “fur” rather than leather, as a social commentary against animal cruelty in high fashion manufacturing. Hermès then sued Rothschild for “asserting trademark infringement, dilution, cybersquatting, and unfair competition.” Hermès Int’l v. Rothschild is the first case focused on the interaction between non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and trademark law. The court was introduced to a whole new digital dynamic of trademark infringement and ultimately found that the NFTs linked to digital images of the Hermès “Birkin” were infringing on Hermès’s trademark rights. The New York Law Journal explored this case and described NFTs as “data added to a file that creates a unique signature…very hard to recreate and can be sold in digital form.” The invention of digital spaces designed to facilitate the buying, selling, and trading of products has opened the doors of uncertainty with consideration for the legal intersection of NFTs and trademark law. The case has more significant implications for determining the line exists between artistic expression and trademark infringement for digital assets. Using the criteria for infringement established in Rogers v. Grimaldi, the question of trademark infringement will be highly fact-specific, centered on questions like the strength of the asserted marks, the intention behind the uses, and consumer impressions of the product.
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Preserving Religious Freedom or Upholding Constitutional Principles? Analyzing Kennedy v. Bremerton's Influence on U.S. Law
For centuries now, a separation between church and state has been argued. The place of religion within the U.S. school system has often been debated and precedent has remained unchanged for several decades. In 2022, however, a single U.S. Supreme Court case overturned nearly six decades worth of precedent which established a clear separation between religion and schools. In turn, states like Texas, Alabama, and Florida have taken the court’s rulings to extremes. Several states are now requiring that the Ten Commandments be posted in all public school classrooms. The state of Alabama has attempted to pass legislation that would require all public schools in the state to provide both the equipment and time to students who wish to pray aloud. Under past precedent, these actions would have been a violation of the Establishment Clause. With the abandonment of such precedent, the Establishment Clause’s role in the American school system has become very unclear. The complete upheaval of past precedent has caused a ripple effect in the American school system, further marginalizing students of minority religious groups around the county.
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Starry Skies and Legal Ties: Navigating the Complexities of Space Debris Liability
Among the twinkling stars in the night sky, an invisible threat looms closer to us than we might think. Encircling our planet is a swarm of unregulated debris that not only threatens the future of scientific advancement, but undermines the very laws meant to govern our cosmic neighborhood. Only 27,000 out of over 100 million pieces of space debris – most of which are small meteoroids or discarded remnants of human-made objects – are currently accounted for by the Department of Defense’s Space Surveillance Network sensors. So, what happens when a piece of debris traveling at an average speed of 15,700 miles per hour in low Earth orbit collides with a satellite or spacecraft, and perhaps more importantly, who is responsible for the damage?
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