Mandatory Reporting - the Legal Case for Change

In this article Peter Garsden (Principal, QualitySolicitors Abney Garsden & President of the Association of Child Abuse Lawyers) examines the issues surrounding a change in the law, what presently exists around the world and brings forward concrete proposals for improving the existing statutory framework. Peter is a practicing solicitor who specialises in representing victims and survivors of child sex abuse. He is also part of the MandateNow campaign which advocates mandatory reporting. His article gives the perspective of the practitioner who works in this field and, by contrasting the approach in the UK with the approach in other jurisdictions, he argues forcefully for mandatory reporting

The Legal Case Against the Global War on Terror

In the first confusing days after the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, President George W. Bush declared a war on terror. Many of us heard this declaration as stirring rhetoric to rally the nation. We understood it as a declaration that the President would direct a strong response against those responsible. We had heard this sort of rhetoric before when the nation faced powerful challenges-from illegal drugs and chronic poverty. Many of us understood President Bush\u27s declaration of war to refer once again to the determined, persistent struggle to overcome a social blight-this time terrorism. We did not understand it as the kind of war Franklin Delano Roosevelt declared after the attack at Pearl Harbor. Indeed, how could we have understood it any other way? When President Bush made his declaration, he did not even know who had carried out the attacks. Our government\u27s actions in the first weeks after September 11 lent further support to this initial understanding. We did not engage our military against known terrorists just anywhere. We waited until facts were known and then we waged a war of self-defense against Afghanistan, beginning October 7, 2001. It was not until November 2001, as the Administration\u27s legal policies regarding detainees started to emerge that we began to detect the rhetoric of war on terror might not be mere rhetoric. Apparently, some Administration lawyers took the President\u27s declaration as the basis to allow the United States to claim certain wartime rights and privileges even outside the conflict in Afghanistan. Academic international lawyers were perhaps slow to take this in, but by 2003, scholarly articles began to emerge countering the Administration\u27s claims to privileges in the absence of actual hostilities. The International Court of Justice (ICJ) in its advisory opinion on the Legal Consequences of the Construction of a Wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territory has further undermined the possibility of declaring war against terrorism per se. By contrast, we find virtually no support from independent scholars or tribunals for the Bush Administration\u27s case for global war. This essay reviews the Administration\u27s case, contrasting the scholarship and jurisprudence against global war. The essay\u27s contribution is to point out that three years after the declaration of global war, the Bush Administration\u27s case has virtually no support in the wider international legal community-the community beyond the Administration\u27s own people. The claim of global war is a radical departure from mainstream legal analysis. Moreover, claiming global war is turning out to have negative unintended consequences, such as enhancing the status of terrorists on the international plane and creating a dangerous legal precedent that other states are following

Unlocking the Genome: The Legal Case Against Genetic Diagnostic Patents

New, innovative genetic diagnostic methods are rapidly changing the way diseases are diagnosed, prevented, and treated. While personalized medicine remains it its early stages, its potential to improve patients’ lives cannot be overstated. As advances in biotechnology offer patients the promise of improved healthcare choices, a heated debate has arisen over the propriety of patents on genetic diagnostics, and whether anyone has the right to own the information that is encoded in a person’s genes. This paper outlines recent litigation surrounding genetic and advanced diagnostic patents and examines whether they constitute patentable subject matter under 35 U.S.C. § 101. Part II recounts the jurisprudence surrounding the boundaries of patentable subject matter. Part III presents a brief background on the science of genetics and the history of gene patents. Part IV traces the ongoing litigation in Association for Molecular Pathology v. United States Patent and Trademark Office, and concludes by arguing that diagnostic genetic patents, as well as other advanced diagnostic method patents, constitute non-patentable subject matter under 35 U.S.C. § 101. Part V lays out policy arguments against the patenting of diagnostic methods

The Legal Case for Equity in Local Climate Action Planning

Over the last half decade, local climate action plans have regularly come to incorporate considerations of racial and socioeconomic equity, recognizing the ways in which low-income communities and communities of color experience earlier and worse consequences from global warming, and these communities are also at risk of being harmed by policies meant to address climate change. Until now, however, the discourse on equity in climate action planning has largely pertained to policy; it acknowledges the disproportionate harm that certain communities experience as a result of climate change and policies to address climate change, and suggests policy tools that can address these disparities. Missing is a discussion of why local governments are compelled or strongly encouraged by law to develop climate plans that aim to address racial and socioeconomic inequity alongside rising GHG emissions. This Article seeks to fill in the missing legal context for why equitable climate action planning is strongly encouraged by three aspects of federal law: the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and recent federal law developments like the Inflation Reduction Act and Justice40. While none of these mandate that local governments consider equity in their climate action planning, they do provide a compelling legal argument for local climate policy that is equitable and racially just. The Article explores all three areas of federal law and suggests ways in which they might interplay with equitable local climate action planning. In addition to delineating new applications for these areas of federal law, the research seeks to provide a legal rationale for local climate policy that is just and equitable that can support local government efforts when their climate action plans face political, fiscal, legal, and other forms of challenge

A stochastic model for financiers

In this work, two models for legal and illegal financiers are presented. The aim of the financiers are different: a bank try to minimize the defalt probabilityof the funded company, while the illegal financier aims to bring the company to bankruptcy and, at the same time, to obtain the maximum level of the firm's guarantee wealth. A couple of stochastic dynamic optimization problems are solved. The illegal case let intervene a numerical analysis of the microeconomic situation of the firm, strating fromreal data and writing new simulation�procedure in Matlab and GAMS. The legal case has been solved in closed-form, by using stochastic control theory.

The Behavior of the French Army During the Dreyfus Affair

Focuses on the how the French army participated in and influenced the Dreyfus affair. There are three main areas in which the French army played a large role: the incident of espionage, the legal case, and lastly, the political ramifications