Painting the Capitol Pink: The Breast Cancer Research Stamp and the Dangers of Congressional Cause Marketing

Breast cancer awareness campaigns—widespread, largescale efforts focusing on general “awareness” of the breast cancer, rather than the dissemination of information on detection and treatment—are common sights in the American public and private spheres.  From NFL players donning pink socks to crafters selling “I love boobies!” t-shirts online, breast cancer-branded events and products have become an essential marketing tool to reach women, signal corporate virtue in a palatable, nonaggressive manner.  Even the federal government is party to the trend: in 1998, the U.S. Congress authorized the sale of the Breast Cancer Research Stamp (BCRS) by the U.S. Postal Service to raise awareness and research funds for breast cancer.  The BCRS has been available ever since.This Article posits that the BCRS is more an attempt by the federal government to capitalize on the goodwill and consumer engagement generated by breast cancer awareness marketing in the private sector, and less a good-faith attempt to treat, cure, or prevent breast cancer among Americans.  The Article addresses three questions: (1) how does the BCRS reflect a private sector trend of embracing breast cancer cause marketing?; (2) why does Congress continually reauthorize the BCRS, even as other semipostal stamps lapse?; and (3) why has Congress chosen to raise money for breast cancer research through the BCRS?  In answering these questions, I argue that the true legislative motivations behind the BCRS are to generate goodwill amongst voters, promote small-government values, and align with breast cancer awareness causes without compromising other political positions.  I conclude that the BCRS exemplifies how Congress has eschewed expert opinion and instead adopted private sector marketing strategies when passing legislation

The local and the global: Gina Nahai and the taking up of serpents and stereotypes

Region, home and transnational migration are explored in terms of the transcultural complexities that reverberate through Iranian American Gina Nahai's Sunday's Silence. Nahai grapples with stereotypes that attach to the Holiness churches in the east Tennessee region of Appalachia. This essay argues that the novel's politics rest on the intersubjectivity of strangers as bound into a metaphysics of desire. It is through this paradigm that Nahai writes against the reductive association of “minority” literature with discrete “national” models and through which she explores the local and the regional in a culturally complex narrative about the crisis of alterity

IP round-up: Recent decisions from the courts (February 2008)

This Supreme Court decision was an appeal from the Court of Appeal decision in Stichting Lodestar v Austin, Nichols & Co. Inc.. The decision clarifies the approach that the High Court should take on an appeal against a decision of the Commissioner of Trade Marks on registration. The case was about the registration of "WILD GEESE" as a trade mark. The Assistant Commissioner of Trade Marks initially held that Stichting Lodestar could register its "WILD GEESE" trade mark and that the mark was not deceptive or too similar to Austin, Nichols & Co Inc's "WILD TURKEY" trade mark. Austin, Nichols appealed to the High Court, and Gendall J allowed the appeal and refused registration. Stichting Lodestar successfully appealed to the Court of Appeal which granted the applications for registration. Austin, Nichols appealed to the Supreme Court

The Professional Responsibility Case for Valid and Nondiscriminatory Bar Exams

Title VII protects against workplace discrimination in part through the scrutiny of employment tests whose results differ based on race, gender, or ethnicity. Such tests are said to have a disparate impact, and their use is illegal unless their validity can be established. Validity means that the test is job-related and measures what it purports to measure. Further, under Title VII, even a valid employment test with a disparate impact could be struck down if less discriminatory alternatives exist.Licensing tests, including bar exams, have been found to be outside these Title VII protections. But the nondiscrimination values that animate Title VII disparate impact analysis for employers apply just as fundamentally to attorney licensing through principles of professional responsibility and legal ethics.This Article examines the civil rights cases from the 1970s that established bar examiners’ immunity from Title VII. It then analyzes our professional duties of public protection, competence, and nondiscrimination that require valid, nondiscriminatory attorney licensing tests, suggesting that the Title VII framework be borrowed for this purpose. The Article then undertakes that scrutiny, presenting evidence of the disparate impact of bar exams and their unproven validity, and suggesting feasible, less discriminatory modifications and alternatives. In other words, core professional responsibilities require consideration and adoption of valid licensing mechanisms that can reduce any disparate impact in who we permit to enter our profession, and who we exclude

Mythemesis: The Human Way of Knowing and Believing

Although science, philosophy, literature, and religion each have a different way of formulating explanations, they are all telling stories of why and how. The author describes how the human propensity to seek explanation through narrative can he understood as the product of an embodied mind. He offers a hypothesis ( \"mythemesis\" ) to explain the process and goes on to show that it may provide an opportunity to reduce scientific-religious conflict by transcending the dichotomy between first- and third-person modes of experience