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Improving Lawyers’ Health by Addressing the Impact of Adverse Childhood Experiences

Karen Oehme *

Nat Stern **

Although the legal profession has recognized the importance of improving attorneys’ mental health, it has largely ignored recent social and scientific research on how adverse childhood experiences (“ACEs”) can harm attorneys’ long-term well-being. This article reviews the science of ACEs and argues that law schools and the legal profession should educate law students and attorneys about the impact of prior trauma on behavioral health. Without such education, law schools and the legal system are missing a crucial opportunity to help lawyers prevent and alleviate the maladaptive coping mechanisms that are associated with ACEs. Until such knowledge is widespread, many lawyers will be plagued by their own trauma histories—to the detriment of individuals, families, communities, and the legal system.

* Director, Institute for Family Violence Studies, and Distinguished University Scholar, Florida State University.

** John and Ashley E. Frost Professor of Law, Florida State University College of Law.

Intellectual Property and Human Rights 2.0

Peter K. Yu *

Written in celebration of the seventieth anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, this article calls for greater methodological engagement to refine existing human rights approaches to intellectual property and to devise new approaches to advance the promotion and protection of human rights in the intellectual property area. This article begins by briefly recapturing the past two decades of scholarship on intellectual property and human rights. It documents the progress scholars have made in this intersectional area. The article then draws on the latest research on human rights methods and methodology to explore whether and how we can take the academic discourse to the next level. It highlights three dominant research methods that have been used in this intersectional area: comparative methods, quantitative assessments, and contextual analyses. The second half of this article identifies the contributions a robust discourse on intellectual property and human rights can make to the future development of the intellectual property regime, the human rights regime, and the interface between these two regimes. Responding to critics and skeptics in the intellectual property field, the article concludes by explaining why human rights discussions in the intellectual property area will provide important benefits to the future development of the intellectual property regime, especially in relation to developing countries.

* Copyright © 2019 Peter K. Yu. Professor of Law, Professor of Communication, and Director, Center for Law and Intellectual Property, Texas A&M University. This article benefited from discussions with the participants of a number of events at which the author explored issues at the intersection of intellectual property and human rights, including the Annual Meeting of the Norwegian Copyright Society in Oslo, Norway, the Third Business and Human Rights Scholars Conference at Santa Clara University School of Law, the “Global Genes, Local Concerns” Symposium at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark, a workshop organized by the International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development in Geneva, Switzerland, the 4th International Intellectual Property Scholars Roundtable at Duke University Law School, the International Law Weekend 2014 at Fordham University School of Law, the Workshop on “Patent Regimes and the Right to Science and Culture” at Yale Law School, and the “Intellectual Property and Human Rights” Conference at American University Washington College of Law. The author is grateful to the participants of these events for their valuable comments and suggestions

Traft, Frankfurter, and the First Presidential For-Cause Removal

Aditya Banzai*

In the fall of 1912—while one of the most consequential presidential campaigns in United States history raged around them — William Howard Taft, Felix Frankfurter, and a handful of officials within the federal government initiated a process to remove two members of the Board of General Appraisers (“Board”) for inefficiency, neglect of duty, and malfeasance in office. The process culminated in President Taft’s for-cause dismissal of the two members, Thaddeus Sharretts and Roy Chamberlain, on the very last day that he served as President, after he received a report recommending their firing from a “committee of inquiry” that included Frankfurter.

* Associate Professor, University of Virginia School of Law. For helpful comments and encouragement, I owe thanks to Divya Bamzai, Emily Blair, Kate Boudouris, John Duffy, John Harrison, Tom Nachbar, Caleb Nelson, Sai Prakash, George Rutherglen, and the editors of the University of Richmond Law Review. All errors are my own. This article is adapted from a talk given at the University of Richmond Law Review Symposium: Defining the Constitution’s President Through Legal & Political Conflict (Oct. 27, 2017).

The #MeToo Movement: An Invitation for Feminist Critique of Rape Crisis Framing

Jamie R. Abrams*

This article invites feminists to leverage the #MeToo Movement as a critical analytical tool to explore the longevity of the enduring rape crisis framing of victim services. Long before the #MeToo Movement, victim services in communities nationwide were framed around a crisis model. For nearly half a century, victims have visited rape crisis centers, called rape crisis hotlines, and mobilized rape crisis response teams to provide services and support. This enduring political and social framing around rape as a crisis is opaque, has prompted a political backlash, and risks distorting hard-fought feminist legal, social, and political battles. It has yielded underreporting, underutilization, and recurring risks of budgetary cuts. Yet, this model and terminology have gone virtually unchanged for nearly half a century.

* Associate Professor of Law at the University of Louisville, Louis D. Brandeis School of Law. LL.M., 2011, Columbia University School of Law; J.D., 2002, American University, Washington College of Law; B.A., Indiana University–Bloomington. Thanks to Aleisha Cowles, Lindsey Dennis, Mikaela Feng, Abigail Lewis, and Jennifer Reynolds for their research support. Thanks to the University of Louisville Brandeis School of Law for a Faculty Development Grant supporting this project. Thanks for the thoughtful feedback and input provided at the Law, Culture, and Humanities Conference (Georgetown University Law Center, Spring 2018) and the Georgetown Legal Practice Scholarship Workshop (Fall 2017).

Rethinking Bail Reform

Wendy R. Calaway* & Jennifer M. Kinsley**

The issue of pretrial detention is part of a larger, national conversation on criminal justice reform. However, no single issue permeates the landscape of criminal justice like the treatment of pretrial defendants. The policies and practices around pretrial detention have contributed to the country’s mass incarceration numbers; created a crisis for local jail management; generated unsustainable budgets; and raised important questions about race, class, and the constitutional implications of incarcerating people because they are too poor to pay a money bond. Legal scholars have written about the issue, highlighting the inequities and constitutional difficulties with such a system. Much of the discussion has surrounded solutions involving the implementation of and reliance on evidence-based practices to determine pretrial detention, rather than solutions involving reliance on money. These evidence-based practices usually take the form of pretrial assessment tools and pretrial supervision systems. Because the politics involved in criminal justice reform often paralyze reform attempts, the method by which these practices are implemented is often litigation. However, due to procedural impediments in federal court and the polit- ical realities of state courts, litigation often results in incomplete remedies that do not fully address, rectify, or prevent the range of harms inflicted by the money bail system.

* Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice, University of Cincinnati Blue Ash College. J.D., University of Cincinnati College of Law.
** Professor of Law, Northern Kentucky University Salmon P. Chase College of Law. J.D., Duke University Law School.

Reconsidering Selective Conscientious Objection

Andrew J. Haile*

In 1971, in the midst of the Vietnam War, the United States Su-preme Court decided that to qualify as a conscientious objector (“CO”) one must oppose all war, and not just a particular war. The Court’s decision in Gillette v. United States turned on its interpretation of section 6(j) of the Military Selective Service Act.2 Section 6(j) provided, in relevant part, that no person shall “be subject to combatant training and service in the armed forces of the United States who, by reason of religious training and belief, is conscientiously opposed to participation in war in any form.” According to the Court, “an objection involving a particular war rather than all war would plainly not be covered by § 6(j).” Consequently, the Court construed the exemption from combatant military service in section 6(j) not to extend to so-called “selective conscientious objectors” (“SCOs”).

* Associate Professor, Elon University School of Law. The author would like to thank Sue Liemer and William A. Eagles for their feedback on drafts of this article. The author also thanks Timaura Barfield for her outstanding work as a research assistant.

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