Equitable infrastructure: Achieving resilient systems and restorative justice through policy and research innovation.

Recent major investments in infrastructure in the United States and globally present a crucial opportunity to embed equity within the heart of resilient infrastructure decision-making. Yet there is a notable absence of frameworks within the engineering and scientific fields for integrating equity into planning, design, and maintenance of infrastructure. Additionally, whole-of-government approaches to infrastructure, including the Justice40 Initiative, mimic elements of process management that support exploitative rather than exploratory innovation.

Black Patients Matter in Neurology: Race, Racism, and Race-Based Neurodisparities.

Black people living in the United States suffer disproportionate morbidity and mortality across a wide range of neurologic conditions. Despite common conceptions to the contrary, "race" is a socially defined construct with little genetic validity. Therefore, racial health inequities in neurology ("neurodisparities") are not a consequence of biologic differences between races.

The End of Liberty.

Theorists treat liberty as a great equalizer. We can't easily distribute equal welfare, but we can purport to distribute equal liberty. In fact, however, nothing about "equal liberty" is meaningfully equal.

Repair Failures Call for New Policies to Tackle Leaky Natural Gas Distribution Systems.

Methane leaks in natural gas systems are low-hanging fruit for near-term, locally driven climate policy. Recent work suggests this emissions source is larger than previously believed and that repairing a small number of high emitters can cost-effectively reduce system-wide leakage. How successful are these repairs on the ground? Here, we assess the effectiveness of repair policies in the Massachusetts distribution system.

Breast cancer medical malpractice litigation in New York: The past 10 years.

Medical error is a leading cause of preventable death in the U.S., with diagnostic errors comprising the majority of errors.

Effects of crude oil on survival and development in embryonated eggs in Rathbun, 1896 (Decapoda, Portunidae).

Blue crabs, Rathbun, 1896, are ubiquitous along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts of the USA. These organisms play an integral role in the ecosystems of the Gulf of Mexico (GOM), where not only are they a keystone species, but are also socioeconomically important. The survival of embryonated eggs is necessary to ensure adequate recruitment into the next generation.

The demise of drug design litigation: death by federal preemption.

For over half a century, courts and commentators have disagreed as to the standards governing liability for drug design cases. In the last several years, the United States Supreme Court decided two cases that will have a profound effect on whether drug design defect cases, in general, are federally preempted. In PLIVA v.

DSM-5 and posttraumatic stress disorder.

The latest iteration of the posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) criteria presented in The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-5) includes specific elaborations of the gatekeeper criteria, a new category of stressor, an expansion in the number of symptoms, addition of a new subtype of PTSD, and an enlarged text discussion that breaks new ground in defining the criteria. We first trace the rationale underlying these changes and their impact on the prevalence of PTSD diagnoses in clinical studies and then present potential implications of the new criteria for forensic assessment methodology and the detection of malingering, interpretations of criminal responsibility and mitigation, evaluation of the reliability of witnesses, the scope of claims in civil and employment cases, and eligibility for disability.

Legislative style and judicial discretion: the case of guardianship law.

The criteria for appointment of a guardian, and the powers that the guardian will be given depend upon how a particular political entity balances respect for the individual's right to autonomy on the one hand, against society's desire to protect those who cannot manage their own affairs, on the other. In recent decades, the balance has tipped from concern about protection to concern about autonomy. This shift, in turn, has resulted in an evolution in the linguistic style of the laws enacted.

Independent judicial research in the Daubert age.

The Supreme Court's Daubert trilogy places judges in the unenviable position of assessing the reliability of often unfamiliar and complex scientific expert testimony. Over the past decade, scholars have therefore explored various ways of helping judges with their new gatekeeping responsibilities. Unfortunately, the two dominant approaches, which focus on doctrinal tests and external assistance mechanisms, have been largely ineffective.

The human rights responsibilities of multinational tobacco companies.

This article explores various strategies which could be used to hold the tobacco industry accountable for human rights violations precipitated by its conduct. First, a brief overview of the international human rights regime and the tobacco related jurisprudence issued by human rights treaty bodies is provided. The article then explains how tobacco control advocates could promote more systematic consideration of governments' tobacco related human rights violations by reconceptualising the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control in the language of rights.

What has a decade of Daubert wrought?

There have been changes within the judicial system that may be attributable to opinions on the admissibility of expert testimony that began with the Supreme Court's 1993 decision in Daubert v Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc. After surveying Daubert and subsequent related Supreme Court opinions, I examine a number of questions. Do the factors courts apply post-Daubert in ruling on the admissibility of expert testimony make scientific sense? Has Daubert had an impact on the willingness of scientists to become expert witnesses? What do we know about Daubert's impact on improving science in the court room? What has been Daubert's effect on access to the courts? Does Daubert further public policy objectives of protecting the public against harm?

Law making for baby making: an interpretive approach to the determination of legal parentage.

This article proposes a new model for analyzing legal issues arising from technological conception and uses it to develop rules to govern the legal parentage of technologically conceived children. Professor Garrison shows that most commentators on technological conception have employed a "top-down" methodology, deriving rules for specific cases from an abstract global principle such as reproductive autonomy, freedom of contract, or anticommodification. Professor Garrison critiques these and several other approaches, showing that they offer little concrete guidance in many cases, risk the introduction of discordant values into the law of parentage, and fail to capture all of the values that have traditionally guided parentage determination.

Protecting the weakest link: a proposal for universal, unblinded pediatric HIV testing, counselling and treatment.

This paper argues that a system of unblinded, universal testing, counseling and treatment for pediatric HIV should be implemented immediately in New York State. First, it argues that New York's health and social services bureaucracies, in conjunction with special interests that do not represent the interests of children, have resisted efforts to have infants tested and treated for HIV. Second, the paper suggests that the campaign against universal infant screening and treatment reflects our society's continuing, calculated decision to ignore the complexity of the HIV/AIDS epidemic.