Creating a More Meaningful Detention Statute: Lessons Learned from \u3cem\u3eHedges v. Obama\u3c/em\u3e

In 2004, the Supreme Court affirmed the President‘s power to indefinitely detain members of Al Qaeda and the Taliban. Nearly ten years later, however, the substantive parameters of executive detention remain unclear. Post–9/11 detention law has been largely shaped by the lower federal courts on a case–by–case basis as they evaluate habeas corpus petitions from detainees held at Guantanamo Bay. In 2012, as part of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), Congress attempted, for the first time, to codify a substantive detention standard in section 1021. Instead of providing clarity, however, section 1021 contained ambiguous terms and created more confusion. On January 13, 2012, a group of writers and activists led by Pulitzer Prize winning–journalist Christopher Hedges challenged this detention law in the Southern District of New York. They argued that section 1021 was vague and might allow for detention based on protected First Amendment activities. In Hedges v. Obama, Judge Katherine Forrest held that a key portion of section 1021 was unconstitutional and permanently enjoined it. That injunction has since been stayed, and the case is currently on appeal in the Second Circuit. This Notes argues that congressional legislation is essential to define and limit the executive’s detention authority but that section 1021 of the NDAA failed to achieve this purpose. The Note provides recommendations for how to create a more meaningful detention statute that imposes clear substantive limits on executive authority. A congressional detention statute with clearly articulated definitions and concepts will not only provide guidance to the President, it will also provide the courts with a coherent standard to use when evaluating the legality of specific detentions

The Toxicology Investigators Consortium Case Registry-the 2018 Annual Report

The Toxicology Investigators Consortium (ToxIC) Registry was established by the American College of Medical Toxicology (ACMT) in 2010. The Registry collects data from participating sites with the agreement that all bedside medical toxicology consultation will be entered. The objective of this ninth annual report is to summarize the Registry’s 2018 data and activity with its additional 7043 cases. Cases were identified for inclusion in this report by a query of the ToxIC database for any case entered from 1 January to 31 December 2018. Detailed data was collected from these cases and aggregated to provide information which included demographics, reason for medical toxicology evaluation, agent and agent class, clinical signs and symptoms, treatments and antidotes administered, mortality, and whether life support was withdrawn. A total of 51.5% of cases were female, 48% were male, and 0.6% transgender. Non-opioid analgesics were the most commonly reported agent class, followed by antidepressants and opioids. Acetaminophen was once again the most common agent reported. There were 106 fatalities, comprising 1.5% of all registry cases. Major trends in demographics and exposure characteristics remained similar to past years’ reports. Sub-analyses were conducted to describe exposures in elderly patients, addiction consultation practices, and risk factors for bupropion-induced seizures. The launch of the ToxIC Qualified Clinical Data Registry (TQCDR) is also described. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (10.1007/s13181-019-00736-9) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users