In Defense of Paid Family Leave

In this article I defend state provision of paid family leave. Such a program would allow workers to take compensated time off work to care for a newborn infant or ill family member. I normatively ground my claim in the argument that paid leave would allow women, who have historically performed a disproportionate share of family caregiving labor, to participate more fully in the paid workforce. This enhancement in labor force participation, I argue, would in turn increase women\u27s independence and capacity to determine the conditions of their lives. In taking this position, I distinguish myself from those who would make family care subsidies available equally to caregivers who do and do not participate in the paid workforce, as well as from those who would shun workplace accommodations in favor of more commodified provision of care, external to the family. Ultimately, I argue, workers have a non-fungible demand for personal time away from work to engage in family caregiving, and absent accommodation of this kind, some women will limit, truncate, or eliminate participation in paid market labor. At the same time, I caution against overly generous leave provision; too generous a program threatens to undermine women\u27s development of human capital and attachment to the workforce. Moreover, the state should spread at least some of the costs of the program beyond those workers (women in their childbearing years) most likely to take leave

Can Joe the Plumber Support Redistribution? Law, Social Preferences, and Sustainable Policy Design

How does one win popular support for laws designed specifically to redistribute economic wealth? One can hardly gainsay that this is a – perhaps the – defining issue for domestic policy in the age of President Obama. Even as the recent financial crisis has exposed the need for a reliable social safety net, attempts to respond through the political and legislative arenas have triggered increasingly hostile responses among conservatives, populists, Massachusetts voters, and incipient tea partiers. The puzzle of how to attract and preserve public support for law reform aimed at redistribution – of both income and risk – is of no small significance at this critical juncture of unsettled public sentiment and a motivated (though perhaps increasingly reticent) presidential administration. If this is an issue for the moment, however, it is also an issue for the ages. Public debates have always been particularly contentious when they involve redistributional social policy. The questions of how to spread social risks and who should receive state largesse have, to cite just a few recent examples, fueled controversies over whether national health care reform ought to incorporate means testing, that is, targeted transfers based on low income or means, as well as sharp disagreements over expansions of Medicaid, the federal program that supplies health insurance to low-income Americans, and the Children\u27s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), the federal program that subsidizes health insurance for the children of low-income families. In recent years, a number of scholars from law and the social sciences have advocated expanding social insurance and other aspects of the social safety net, with particular attention to the needs of low-income citizens. Much academic work offers compelling normative arguments for intervention, paired with proposals for law reform. Nevertheless, the strikingly slow progress of redistributional law re-form during Obama\u27s early years in office suggests that advocates of such initiatives failed to attend to more practical questions of how redistributional policies can garner and retain robust public support, particularly when perceived to redirect resources away from politically- engaged individuals who fear they will emerge economically worse off (embodied canonically by Joe the Plumber in the 2008 election). This Article aims to help provide those pragmatic insights. In particular, it analyzes and compares law reforms that purport to redistribute by targeting benefits at poor individuals through an income or means test, with those that rely more heavily on universally allocated benefits, not conditioned on poverty. I argue that, notwithstanding its more muted effects in the short run, universalist policies may be more effective at achieving redistribution in the long run due to greater political durability, and – more intriguingly – by catalyzing social toleration for redistribution. I support this argument by drawing on the growing body of research in psychology and economics suggesting that people have a mixture of self-regarding and otherregarding impulses, and that some forms of social organization are more likely than others to elicit pro-social behavior. Universalist programs, I argue, plausibly increase political support for redistribution by tapping social norms of reciprocity, generating group identity effects based on a sense of common vulnerability, and serving as a policy frame that de-emphasizes the salience of low-income people as an undeserving out-group. I use a case study of recent social insurance legislation as a springboard for developing an empirical research agenda that will help evaluate the strength of this thesis. I further speculate on whether universal welfare institutions may lead to a kind of social learning that fosters toleration for redistribution in a deeper way over time

The International Code of Marketing of Breast-Milk Substitutes: Survey of Legislation and Other Measures Adopted (1981-1991)

Since the adoption of the International Code of Marketing of Breast·milk Substitutes in 1981, Member States of the World Health Organization have responded in varying degree and manner in giving effect to it. WHO has prepared a comprehensive summary, organized on a country-by-country basis, of government action in this regard (document WHO /MCH/NVT /90.1). The present paper complements chis summary, and increases its usefulness, by focusing on the Code\u27s individual articles and describing how each has been given expression through national legislation or other measures. Their adoption is one aspect of the wider efforts Member States are making to address the health and nutritional problems of infants and young children, and the related aspects of the health and social status of women and families

Toward the Feminization of Collective Bargaining Law

Canadian collective bargaining law is flawed because it fails to address the concerns of a substantial segment of the work force and overlooks women as a rich source of insight into the dynamics of the bargaining environment. The author begins by exploring the problems inherent in the classical contractualist model, arguing that current collective bargaining law reflects these weaknesses and echoes a morality and ideology which are stereotypically masculine. By analyzing the legal and practical structures of collective bargaining, the author illustrates the ways in which the morality of the workplace is manifested differently between men and women. The author then examines the ideological difference between public and private work, discussing how this distinction situates women as subordinate to men and its effects on the unionized workplace. Moving to an analysis of dispute resolution, certification, unfair labour practices and bargaining unit determination, the final part of the article is devoted to suggestions for structural change in collective bargaining law. The author proposes ways in which feminist insight can be used to replace the current oppositional structure of collective bargaining with more cooperative mechanisms for resolving disputes

Richard Gardner: Scholar, Statesman, Columbian

I am honored to pay tribute to Richard Gardner, who was truly one of Columbia Law School\u27s greatest global citizens. He demonstrated so many of the qualities that make Columbia Law School unique, especially the influence that Columbia Law School has on the world. He was a brilliant statesman, international lawyer, and beloved professor. Over seven decades, he was a mentor to generations of students who are now leaders in law, foreign policy, and international affairs. Upon his retirement in 2012, the Law School hosted a two-day conference in his honor. Entitled The Challenges We Face, the conference featured panels on pressing issues for the international community, including trade, finance, human rights, and challenges to the transatlantic alliance. Dick was honored by addresses from Zbigniew Brzezinski, the National Security Adviser to President Jimmy Carter, and Paul Volker, former Federal Reserve Chairman. More than 100 notable alumni came to Morningside Heights to salute him

Choice of Law and Employee Restrictive Covenants: An American Perspective

Employees are increasingly mobile across state lines. This is partly the result of technological change facilitating individual movement and communication, but also a result of corresponding changes in corporate organization to establish offices and interests in multiple jurisdictions. With these developments, there has been a rise in litigation surrounding the enforcement of employee covenants not to compete when the parties or issues involved have connections to multiple jurisdictions. The emerging body of law intrigues and confounds lawyers and commentators because of its complexity and unpredictability. This essay is an effort to describe recent legal developments in the United States, situating them within the background doctrines of conflict of laws and parallel litigation that govern such disputes. Our aim is to provide a useful comparison with the other essays in this volume dealing with developments in other countries on the same subject. A covenant not to compete (also referred to as a restrictive covenant or non-compete agreement or NCA) is an agreement that an employee will not compete against the employer, or go to work for a competitor, for some specified period after termination of employment. The contract typically also specifies a geographic region, and may specify a trade or profession in which competition is prohibited. Although such restrictions are presumptively unenforceable at common law on public policy grounds, courts in most states will grant an exception if the employer can demonstrate that the covenant in question safeguards a legitimate interest and is reasonable in its scope. The most commonly recognized legitimate interest is the protection of trade secrets. Depending on the state, courts may also recognize other legitimate interests such as customer relationships and goodwill, confidential information not rising to the level of a trade secret, and the services of employees with unique or extraordinary talents (although ordinary training is not usually protectable). The other limitation on enforceability is that the covenant must be reasonable. A broad set of public policy concerns informs the reasonableness test: courts are concerned with protecting employees from hardship, often citing inequality of bargaining power as a basis for giving special scrutiny to non-compete agreements. Courts also articulate a general resistance to restraints on trade. There is a strong imperative that the restriction be no greater in terms of duration, geographic scope, and limitation on vocational activities than is reasonably necessary to protect the interests of the employer

Trade Secrets and Mutual Investments

This paper employs an optimal contracting framework to study the question of how courts should adjudicate disputes over valuable trade secrets (such as customer lists). We focus principally on contexts where trade secrets are formed endogenously, through specific, non-contractible investments that could potentially come from either employers or employees (or both). Within such contexts, we argue, an optimal trade secret law diverges in many important respects from existing doctrine. In particular, an optimal doctrine would (1) expressly consider the parties\u27 relative skills at making value enhancing investments rather than the mere existence of a valuable informational asset; (2) tend to favor weak entitlements (such as fractional property rights and/or liability rules) rather than undivided property rules; and (3) frequently have a dynamic structure that progressively favors employees during the lifetime of the disputed asset. Moreover, we argue, the considerations implicit in such a doctrine are relatively simple and need not impose prohibitive administrative costs on either the parties or on courts

Does Labour Law Need Philosophical Foundations? (Introduction)

This is the introductory chapter of the book Philosophical Foundations of Labour Law (Collins, Lester, Mantouvalou eds, OUP, 2018). It argues that labour law needs philosophical foundations and explains that careful reflection about underlying moral and political principles and values can serve to provide firm foundations and a clear sense of direction for labour law. At a time when many appear to doubt the value of labour laws and workers’ rights at all, the chapter suggests that it is necessary to reassert that the values and principles that provide the foundations for a system of labour law are not those of a narrow special interest group, but rather embrace interpretations of key values such as freedom, autonomy, dignity, equal respect, democracy, and social justice

Mechanisms of HIV Transcriptional Regulation and Their Contribution to Latency

Long-lived latent HIV-infected cells lead to the rebound of virus replication following antiretroviral treatment interruption and present a major barrier to eliminating HIV infection. These latent reservoirs, which include quiescent memory T cells and tissue-resident macrophages, represent a subset of cells with decreased or inactive proviral transcription. HIV proviral transcription is regulated at multiple levels including transcription initiation, polymerase recruitment, transcription elongation, and chromatin organization. How these biochemical processes are coordinated and their potential role in repressing HIV transcription along with establishing and maintaining latency are reviewed

Interleukin 2-inducible T cell kinase (ITK) facilitates efficient egress of HIV-1 by coordinating Gag distribution and actin organization

AbstractInterleukin 2-inducible T cell kinase (ITK) influences T cell signaling by coordinating actin polymerization and polarization as well as recruitment of kinases and adapter proteins. ITK regulates multiple steps of HIV-1 replication, including virion assembly and release. Fluorescent microscopy was used to examine the functional interactions between ITK and HIV-1 Gag during viral particle release. ITK and Gag colocalized at the plasma membrane and were concentrated at sites of F-actin accumulation and membrane lipid rafts in HIV-1 infected T cells. There was polarized staining of ITK, Gag, and actin towards sites of T cell conjugates. Small molecule inhibitors of ITK disrupted F-actin capping, perturbed Gag-ITK colocalization, inhibited virus like particle release, and reduced HIV replication in primary human CD4+ T cells. These data provide insight as to how ITK influences HIV-1 replication and suggest that targeting host factors that regulate HIV-1 egress provides an innovative strategy for controlling HIV infection