50 Years After the 25th Amendment: How to Improve Presidential Succession

Pamphlet summarizing the Second Succession Clinic\u27s recommendations

The New South Wales Carers’ Responsibilities Act

Enacted in 2001, the New South Wales Carers’ Responsibilities Act (“CRA”) prohibits discrimination against employees with caregiver responsibilities and provides access to reasonable flexible work arrangements. Under this law, employees have the right to request accommodations for their carer responsibilities, and employers have an affirmative obligation to consider and grant reasonable accommodations that do not impose an unjustifiable hardship. The affirmative accommodation requirement extends to requests for flexible working hours, working from home (telecommuting), part-time work, and job-share arrangements

Gender-Sensitive and Gender-Effective Strategies in Preventing and Countering Violent Extremism

For over two decades, the global community has endeavored to prevent and combat violent extremism. In that time, states and civil society partners have increasingly recognized women’s role in this effort as critical to its success. The effective engagement of women, representing half of the world’s population, is now understood as necessary to a “localized, credible, inclusive, and resonant strateg[y] to build resilience to extremism.” However, gender-sensitive and gender-effective approaches to preventing and countering violent extremism (PCVE) have remained elusive. Women’s involvement in PCVE strategies continue to be largely marginal, often reinforcing harmful stereotypes, and sometimes resulting in negative consequences for gender equality. This is particularly true for women in minority ethnic and religious communities. The failure to effectively address the discriminatory impact of PCVE strategies on women not only hampers the efficacy of PCVE efforts but also impedes state party implementation of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), 2 which requires elimination of discriminatory laws, policies and programming. The failure to maximally engage women in PCVE efforts as leaders, designers, targets and partners also represents a lost opportunity to implement CEDAW Article 4 measures to accelerate women’s equality. The International [Global] Human Rights Clinic at the University of Chicago Law School conducted this study with support from United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. The goal of the study is to contribute to a better understanding of how PCVE strategies and programming can effectively protect and promote women’s human rights and principles of gender equality. The study involved in-country engagements with stakeholders in Tunisia, Kenya and the United States. Through these interviews and an extensive literature review, the report assesses how such initiatives have engaged and impacted women and offers recommendations for improving strategies and interventions going forward. ISBN: 978-1-7334730-5-

Domestic Drones: Technical and Policy Issues

https://digitalcommons.law.uw.edu/techclinic/1003/thumbnail.jp

Autonomous Vehicle Law Report and Recommendations to the ULC Based on Existing State AV Laws, the ULC\u27s Final Report, and Our Own Conclusions about What Constitutes a Complete Law

This report was created by the University of Washington’s Technology Law and Policy Clinic for the Uniform Law Commission (ULC). It was created at the request of Robert Lloyd, Professor of Law at the University of Tennessee and a member of the ULC’s subcommittee for autonomous vehicles. The report aims to do three things: (1) present the existing autonomous vehicle provisions on the books in California, Michigan, Florida, Nevada, and Washington, D.C.; (2) analyze these provisions, address related questions raised in the ULC’s Final Report, and make recommendations to the ULC; and (3) offer draft provision language to illustrate our recommendations. Our analysis sometimes favors select state provisions that we think get it right and sometimes creatively suggests provisions that no state has adopted. Professor Lloyd asked us to be forward-looking and creative in our thinking, particularly as it relates to provisions surrounding the deployment, sale, and consumer-operation of autonomous vehicles (relatively uncharted territory). This report reflects this charge, while attempting to firmly ground itself in the wisdom of existing state provisions and surrounding scholarship. The report starts by addressing definitional provisions, moves to provisions related to the testing and certification of autonomous vehicles, and concludes with provisions covering deployed and salable autonomous vehicles.https://digitalcommons.law.uw.edu/techclinic/1008/thumbnail.jp

Broadband and Economic Development

Technology is essential for economic growth and job creation. Ensuring Washington has 21st century digital infrastructure, such as high-speed broadband Internet access, fourth-generation (4G) wireless networks, new healthcare information technology and a modernized electrical grid, is critical to the long-term prosperity and competitiveness of our state. The Internet is a global platform for communication, commerce and individual expression, and now promises to support breakthroughs in important national priorities such as healthcare, education and energy. Additionally, the Internet and information technology can be applied to make government more effective, transparent and accessible to all Americans. For Washington, improvement of broadband access will open up ways for our state’s innovators and entrepreneurs to reassert and extend national and global leadership. It will unlock doors of opportunity long closed by geography, income, and race. It can enable education beyond the classroom, healthcare beyond the clinic, and participation beyond the town square. Directed to the Washington State Legislature, Technology and Economic Development Committee and the Uniform Law Commission.https://digitalcommons.law.uw.edu/techclinic/1014/thumbnail.jp

Neglect and Abuse of Unaccompanied Immigrant Children by U.S. Customs and Border Protection

According to the U.S. government, tens of thousands of Central American and Mexican children travel alone to the United States every year to escape violence and poverty in their home countries. U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), a sub-agency of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), detains many of these children when they arrive at U.S. ports of entry or cross the U.S. border. While in CBP custody, immigrant children have reported physical and psychological abuse, unsanitary and inhumane living conditions, isolation from family members, extended periods of detention, and denial of access to legal and medical services. In 2014, legal service providers and immigrants’ rights advocates observed a sharp increase in complaints of abuse and neglect from children in CBP custody. In June 2014, several of these organizations submitted an administrative complaint to two DHS oversight agencies, the Office of Inspector General (OIG) and Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties (CRCL), documenting CBP’s mistreatment of 116 unaccompanied children aged five to seventeen. One quarter of the children reported physical abuse, including sexual assault, the use of stress positions, and beatings by Border Patrol agents. More than half reported verbal abuse, including death threats. More than half also reported denial of necessary medical care—resulting, at times, in hospitalization. Eighty percent reported inadequate food and water. Despite initial promises that DHS would thoroughly investigate these allegations, and notwithstanding an acknowledgment of “recurring problems” in CBP detention facilities, DHS OIG announced in October 2014 that routine inspections of detention facilities would be curtailed. In December 2014, the ACLU’s Border Litigation Project—a joint project of the ACLU affiliates in Arizona and San Diego—filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request seeking records related to abuse of children in CBP custody. When the request was ignored, the ACLU, along with Cooley LLP, filed a FOIA lawsuit in federal court to compel release of the records sought. After many months of additional delays and the imposition of court-ordered deadlines, various DHS subcomponent agencies finally began to produce responsive records. Since 2015, the ACLU has obtained over 30,000 pages of records related to abuse of children in CBP custody. These records document a pattern of intimidation, harassment, physical abuse, refusal of medical services, and improper deportation between 2009 and 2014. These records also reveal the absence of meaningful internal or external agency oversight and accountability. The federal government has failed to provide adequate safeguards and humane detention conditions for children in CBP custody. It has further failed to institute effective accountability mechanisms for government officers who abuse the vulnerable children entrusted to their care. These failures have allowed a culture of impunity to flourish within CBP, subjecting immigrant children to conditions that are too often neglectful at best and sadistic at worst. This report serves as a companion to a subset of the records obtained by the ACLU—specifically, those released by DHS CRCL (“the CRCL documents”)— and highlights the most prevalent types of CBP child abuse documented therein

Growing Washington\u27s Clean Energy Economy

Clean energy technologies have begun to transform the national economy. Growth in this sector is expected to be as high as four-­‐fold, generating more than $2 trillion per year by 2020. Washington State has historically been a leader in the field by pursuing low-­‐carbon energy policies, such as renewable portfolio standards and green building codes. But as competition increases, Washington needs to continue to improve to stay on top. This report presents a package of proposals that address policy and technical barriers to developing Washington State’s clean energy economy.https://digitalcommons.law.uw.edu/techclinic/1013/thumbnail.jp