Former Whistleblowers: Why the False Claims Act\u27s Anti-Retaliation Provision Should Protect Former Employees

Since the Civil War, the False Claims Act has served as a tool to combat fraud perpetrated against the government. Early fraud by government contractors during the Civil War was quaint: contractors selling the same horse twice or filling a Union Army contract for sugar with sand. Today, the government recovers billions of dollars annually through actions under the FCA. Essential to the FCA’s functioning are “relators,” private citizens who serve as whistleblowers incentivized to report fraud by receipt of a percentage of whatever amount the government recovers in damages. The government relies on relators to blow the whistle on fraud—over two-thirds of FCA recoveries since 1986 come from cases brought by relators as whistleblowers. So important are these relators that in 1986 Congress amended the FCA and included an anti-retaliation provision to provide relief for employees who experience retaliation from their employers for reporting fraud. This Note discusses a recent circuit split over whether the anti-retaliation provision of the FCA protects former employees against post-termination retaliation by their employers, arguing that the anti-retaliation provision extends to retaliation against former employees. In arguing in favor of a more inclusive definition of “employee” in the FCA’s anti-retaliation provision, this Note explores the history and purpose of the FCA, the legislative history of the FCA’s anti-retaliation provision, and the arguments for and against the inclusion of former employees under the provision’s protections. Finally, this Note calls for Supreme Court intervention or congressional action to clarify that the FCA’s anti-retaliation provision protects former employees from post-termination retaliation

Share, Own, Access

Millennials are losing interest in ownership. They prefer to access property as needed on a casual, short-term basis. Prompted by the sharing economy, online platforms, and ethical consumerism, access presents a radical alternative to established property forms. This type of property use is popular among younger, technology-savvy generations

Sacral socio-ecological community: theories of contemporary social catholicism and engaged Buddhism in complementary practice

This dissertation provides a substantive study of the faith-based Mondragón Cooperative Movement in Spain and the Indra’s Net Life Community in Korea, analyzing and critically comparing the ethical values of Catholic Social Teaching and Socially Engaged Asian Buddhism. By evaluating the extent of their success in dealing with socioecological concerns, the importance of religio-ethical values and principles to the disciplines of social and environmental ethics is stressed, offering a new, religiously sensitive approach to ecological wellbeing. As this dissertation argues, the thought and work of Mondragón and Indra’s Net offer important resources for conceptualizing ecological ethics and social justice in and among human communities. This comparison considers two questions: First, what alternative economic system might engage, in context, socioecological religious values and be implemented as an alternative to neoclassical economics? Second, what socioecological ethical principles provide effective intellectual resources to critically assess today’s global economic and ecological crises, and suggest a way to resolve them? These questions are addressed by a study of the ethical and social implications of modern economic systems, as compared to a worker-owned cooperative movement and a socially engaged Asian Buddhist liberation movement, both of which offer an alternative to current economic configurations. Inspired by the communitarian personalist thought of Mondragón’s priest-founder, José María Arizmendiarrieta, and the ecological thought of the Venerable Tobŏp, based on Huayan Buddhism’s philosophy of "interdependent co-arising" (pratītyasamupāda), these grassroots socio-ecological movements provide relevant, religion-based social and ecological teachings that present concrete proposals for economic and social practice. Social Catholicism and socially engaged Buddhism, as evidenced by these two movements, apply a dynamic social-spiritual ideology consonant with their traditions' developing social-ecological consciousness, thereby striving to promote the wellbeing of Earth, humanity, and all life

Toronto the Green: Pollution Probe and the Rise of the Canadian Environmental Movement

This dissertation utilizes the first fifteen years of Pollution Probe’s history (1969-1984) as a prism for examining the origins and development of environmental activism in Canada. The organization was pivotal in the evolution of environmentalist discourse and activism in Toronto, both through its own activities and its role in institution-building. Rooted in Toronto, Pollution Probe provides insight into the early history of the Canadian environmental movement, demonstrating the many ways that this movement differed from the one that took shape in the United States. As will be demonstrated, Pollution Probe was representative of the first wave of Canadian environmental non-governmental organizations [ENGOs] that were formed in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Unlike their American contemporaries, which evolved over a period of decades out of existing conservation organizations, Canadian ENGOs such as Pollution Probe appeared on the scene almost instantaneously. Furthermore, the Canadian organizations tended to be highly localized, in contrast to the larger, national ENGOs found in the United States. While the early Canadian ENGOs originally excelled by virtue of their focus on local pollution problems, the shift to more abstract, underlying problems was met with varying success. Ultimately, they were ill-equipped to address the larger, transnational issues that came to dominate the environmental agenda in the 1980s and 1990s