Practiced Peril: The Flawed Role of Experience in Accidental Death Determinations

Words often carry an intuitive meaning that defies explicit definition. While this vagueness typically poses no issue in our daily lives, it presents distinct challenges within the legal realm where words and their definitions wield the power to influence the course of justice. One abstract concept is notoriously elusive: what is an accident? Despite the apparent simplicity of identifying what is commonly understood implicitly, there are inherent challenges in “giving substance to a concept which is largely intuitive.” The Wickman framework was crafted to navigate these challenges, recognizing that an insured’s background, experience, and skill in a particular activity may shape their perception of risk. However, with this deference comes the potential for imbalance—under Wickman, it’s not the average person’s viewpoint that matters, but rather how the insured, with their unique characteristics, interprets the danger. When applying the framework, a focal point has emerged: the significance of prior successful practice of the ultimately fatal activity. If an insured has previously engaged in the activity and survived, subsequent death from that activity is often deemed accidental because prior survival indicates a subjective belief of continued survival. The existence of prior successful practice weighs heavily on the court’s perspective of the chain of events and, thus, its determination of accidental death. This becomes complicated when analyzing fatal first-time undertakings, i.e. intentional acts not committed by the insured before that which ultimately caused their death, leading to questions about the temporal and experiential aspects of the insured’s actions

Interrogating Haaland v. Brackeen: Family Regulation, Constitutional Power, and Tribal Resilience: The Connecticut Law Review Symposium

In October 2023, the Connecticut Law Review hosted the Symposium “Interrogating Haaland v. Brackeen: Family Regulation, Constitutional Power, and Tribal Resilience.” The symposium was centered on the state of federal Indian law in the wake of the Brackeen decision. This decision was a victory for Indigenous families and Native nations as it left the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) unscathed and affirmed the constitutional relationship between tribal nations and the United States. However, threats to tribal sovereignty continue as a handful of states and interest groups continue to seek ways to challenge tribal authority and federal laws that support it. This Introduction summarizes the arguments of several of the symposium’s contributors and authors in the Connecticut Law Review

The NK cell granule protein NKG7 regulates cytotoxic granule exocytosis and inflammation

Immune-modulating therapies have revolutionized the treatment of chronic diseases, particularly cancer. However, their success is restricted and there is a need to identify new therapeutic targets. Here, we show that natural killer cell granule protein 7 (NKG7) is a regulator of lymphocyte granule exocytosis and downstream inflammation in a broad range of diseases. NKG7 expressed by CD4+\ua0and CD8+\ua0T cells played key roles in promoting inflammation during visceral leishmaniasis and malaria—two important parasitic diseases. Additionally, NKG7 expressed by natural killer cells was critical for controlling cancer initiation, growth and metastasis. NKG7 function in natural killer and CD8+\ua0T cells was linked with their ability to regulate the translocation of CD107a to the cell surface and kill cellular targets, while NKG7 also had a major impact on CD4+\ua0T cell activation following infection. Thus, we report a novel therapeutic target expressed on a range of immune cells with functions in different immune responses