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COVID-19 and The Law

COVID-19 and The Law

Law and Policy to Address Basic Needs and Marginalized Populations

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    • Governmental Powers
    • Health Law and COVID-19
    • Housing and Food Law
    • Elections
    • Education and Disinformation
    • Labor, Employment and Duties of Care
    • Money, Finance, and Consumers
    • Prisons and Incarcerated Populations
    • Immigration and Detention Centers/Comparative and International Issues
    • Access to Justice and Legal Innovation
    • New Developments / Reflections
    • What Have We Learned?
  • Student Engagement
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A close up image of an old used baseball, baseball bat, and baseball glove.

COVID-19 and Baseball

April 27, 2021 by Bailey Kennedy, J.D. 2022

The combined effects of the coronavirus and government-imposed shutdowns have cost the US economy an enormous amount of money—perhaps trillions of dollars—and we still aren’t out of the woods yet. But a year into the virus, there still isn’t a clear answer to a very basic question: who is going to pay for all of […]

Close up of a Doctor making a vaccination in the shoulder of patient,.

Vaccines are here, but not for everyone

April 25, 2021 by Bailey Kennedy, J.D. 2022

The race to vaccinate the world against Covid-19 is on. Though Americans may be lamenting that they have to wait a few more weeks to get their dose, the delay may be much longer for most people around the world. Even before approval, three vaccines—AstraZeneca, Moderna, and Pfizer—had been gobbled up by wealthy governments across […]

Azerbaijan, Baku, October 15, 2017: Older woman in a nursing home located in Baku's Bilgah settlement.

Elderly Plaintiffs Caught in the Fray of PREP Act Immunity

March 29, 2021 by Jordan Isern, J.D. 2021

As of February 2, 2021, over one-third of U.S. COVID-19 deaths and five-percent of all U.S. COVID-19 cases are linked nursing homes. Unsurprisingly, over fifty-five negligence and wrongful death claims related to COVID-19 have been filed against assisted living facilities in state courts across the country in recent months. The claims are as repetitive as […]

Mother puts a safety mask on her son's face.

Maintaining Child Welfare During COVID-19

February 25, 2021 by Jordan Isern, J.D. 2021

When the pandemic began, states across the U.S. witnessed between a twenty to seventy percent decline in reported cases of child abuse and neglect. However, this is not good news. In fact, it is downright alarming. Indeed, this decrease in reported cases is not because child abuse and neglect have decreased. Rather, the consensus is […]

Contact Tracing COVID-19 Coronavirus Epidemic

How to Launch a Digital Contact Tracing Application: Key Legal Considerations

February 16, 2021 by Jordan Isern, J.D. 2021

As previously suggested in Digital Contact Tracing: Hope or Hype?, digital contact tracing, if implemented successfully, can help to control the spread of COVID-19. But the government is not a tech company. Therefore, no state has undertaken an effort to independently develop a digital instrument to conduct contact tracing. Instead, the private sector has underpinned […]

London, UK. 5th March 2016. EDITORIAL - Million Women Rise protest march through the streets of central London, making awareness and bringing an end to male violence against women in all it's forms.

Staying-at-Home When the Home is Unsafe: The Impact of COVID-19 on Survivors of Domestic Violence (Part 2)

February 16, 2021 by Jordan Isern, J.D. 2021

This is the second part of a two-part series about the impact of COVID-19 on survivors of domestic violence. Part 1 discussed the surge in domestic violence during the pandemic, new challenges for domestic violence prevention nonprofits, and the federal government’s response. Part 2 will examine the impact of COVID-19 on domestic violence survivors in […]

London, UK. 5th March 2016. EDITORIAL - Million Women Rise protest march through the streets of central London, making awareness and bringing an end to male violence against women in all it's forms.

Staying-at-Home When the Home is Unsafe: The Impact of COVID-19 on Survivors of Domestic Violence (Part 1)

February 16, 2021 by Jordan Isern, J.D. 2021

While stay-at-home orders are meant to protect Americans, they can also prove deadly for those facing domestic violence. Under these orders, survivors of domestic violence find themselves confined with their abusers, stripped of support resources, and overlooked by the federal and state governments. This article is the first part of a two-part series about the […]

Close up of a Doctor making a vaccination in the shoulder of patient,.

Protecting Public Health Will Require a Culture Shift Alongside Legal Change

December 7, 2020 by Daniel Polonsky

Dr. Anthony Fauci has noted that Australia had the fewest number of flu cases “in memory” during its winter flu season this year. He explained, “The theory is that all the precautions they took to contain the pandemic ‘averted a flu season.’” Australia had slightly more than 21,000 flu cases and only thirty-six deaths during […]

Country church in New England.

Stay-at-Home Orders and Religious Freedom: How Courts Balance the Free Exercise Clause and State Emergency Powers

December 3, 2020 by Beshoy Shokralla

In the wake of the initial impact of COVID-19, state governments rushed to respond to breakouts. The resulting executive orders led to widespread shutdowns that attempted to balance the reduction of contact between people and the institutions needed to sustain the population     . While at first many accepted the necessary shutdowns, it didn’t take long […]

Tornado in Wray, Colorado in May of 2016. Was rated an EF2.

Contracts in the Age of COVID-19: A Look At Force Majeure Clauses

November 19, 2020 by Chris Zheng, J.D. 2022

As businesses continue to confront the harsh economic realities of the ongoing Coronavirus pandemic, many are looking for legal solutions to cut costs and stay afloat. Even as consumer spending has increased over the past few months, evidence of recovery is mixed at best. As such, many businesses and consumers have been revisiting contracts to […]

U.S. elections 2020. Coronavirus epidemic. Protective medical mask background.

Election Litigation in the Era of COVID-19

October 30, 2020 by Dessie Otachliska

The 2020 Presidential election promises to be unlike any in history. The country is still in the midst of a global pandemic, which has already claimed the lives of more than 220,000 people nationwide and created the worst economic recession in recent history. As of October 25, 2020, forty-six states still have some COVID-related restrictions […]

Bogota, capital of Colombia.

A Critical Analysis of the International Response to COVID-19: Reflections from Colombia

October 29, 2020 by Hayley Evans, J.D. 2019

In the face of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, questions of resource allocation, information access, aseptisation, and biopolitics that were once reserved for the poor and remote are made plausible realities for the Western, postmodern city-dweller. In response, spheres of society have put forth various monodisciplinary “solutions” to stem the spread of COVID-19 and the ensuing economic […]

Horse Fence Snakes its Way Over the Hill in rural Kentucky

COVID-19 in Rural America and the Indian Nations: Refocusing Development to Support At-Risk Communities

October 22, 2020 by Chris Zheng, J.D. 2022

For many, the COVID-19 pandemic is likely to conjure scenes of once-bustling urban centers grinding to a halt. However, for the one in five Americans that live in rural communities, the reality of the pandemic has been markedly different from that of its metropolitan neighbors. The combination of insufficient resources and a particularly vulnerable population […]

Sign that says "No Job, No Rent."

Pandemic Property: What Covid-19 Taught Us about Housing Law

October 19, 2020 by Joseph William Singer, Bussey Professor of Law at Harvard Law School

The Covid-19 pandemic has brought to light longstanding problems in housing law. This sudden emergency has exposed systemic deficiencies in our property law system. Those flaws have long left human beings vulnerable to deprivation and hardship, but now they leave millions more people susceptible to imminent catastrophic decline in their economic wellbeing. Worse still, these […]

Contact Tracing COVID-19 Coronavirus Epidemic

Digital Contact Tracing: Hope or Hype?  

October 15, 2020 by Seth Rubinstein, J.D. 2022

In prior pandemics, manual contact tracing has been key to slow the spread. Contact tracing entails conducting interviews with infected patients to identify with whom they might have been in contact, so those individuals could be notified and quarantined. Smartphones make it technically possible to digitally trace contacts made with someone infected with coronavirus. Much […]

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