2019

A high-stakes legal case involving both deportation and DACA took an unusual turn when Honduran consulate officials refused to issue travel documents for a woman U.S. authorities want to deport as an illegal immigrant. Tania Romero entered the U.S. 20 years ago, and her son is attending Yale as a DACA-protected student. Romero has stage 4 cancer and her son says she could die if deported because she won't receive the care she needs in Honduras. Emory Law adjunct professor and immigration attorney Charles Kuck says the legal stance is remarkable. It's "highly unusual for a consulate to refuse to issue a travel document, especially in the Trump era when he has issued executive orders that seek to punish countries that refuse to accept their nationals. It must be a very grave situation indeed."

U.S. President Donald Trump has made protecting Syria's oil reserves a top priority, and is deploying U.S. troops to the oil fields even as he pulled American forces out of the border area with Turkey, clearing the way for a Turkish military assault earlier this month on the Kurds. Experts quoted by VOA, including International Humanitarian Law Clinic Director Laurie Blank question Trump's focus on the oil fields.

President Donald Trump reiterated his intention to keep some American troops in Syria to control the country's eastern oilfields. Experts, including International Humanitarian Law Clinic Director Laurie Blank, warn the president's comments could promote the view that the U.S. involvement in the Middle East is to extort revenue.

President Donald Trump's suggestion on Sunday that Exxon Mobil or another U.S. oil company operate Syrian oil fields drew rebukes from legal and energy experts, Reuters reports. "International law seeks to protect against exactly this sort of exploitation," said Laurie Blank, director of the International Humanitarian Law Clinic.

While Georgia law is clear that not properly caring for a child can be a criminal offense, the state (along with most others) doesn't have a law that specifies at what age a child can be left unsupervised. "Age-based rules can be arbitrary and give a false sense of confidence regarding a child's safety," Melissa Carter, executive director of the Barton Child Law and Policy Center, told 11 Alive. "An older child might need supervision due to special needs or disabilities, whereas a younger child may have taken babysitting courses that have prepared him or her for greater responsibility."

Professor Deborah Dinner says the LaFleur pregnancy discrimination case decided by the Supreme Court in 1974 "deserves a far more prominent place in our constitutional history and canon." It led to the Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978 which added pregnancy bias to federal employee laws. "The context of these pregnancy-dismissal policies is that they were routine and widespread across the country," Dinner told Education Week. "My default intuition about any teacher who says she was fired for this at the time is that she was correct."

30 years after Ann Hopkins won a Title VII workplace discrimination case at the Supreme Court, the court is again considering whether discrimination laws protect LGBTQ freedom of gender expression, in two cases brought by gay and transgender employees. Associate Professor Deborah Dinner is quoted by the Washington Post: "... discriminating on the basis of somebody's gender identity or on the basis of their sexual orientation, what an employer in fact is doing is discriminating on the basis of a gender stereotype."

The U.S. Supreme Court's decision to hear arguments concerning a Louisiana abortion law could be far-reaching, including an impact on Georgia's "heartbeat" abortion law. The Louisiana law requires doctors who administer abortions to have admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles. That would drastically limit the number of doctors who may do so. "The impact of these regulations of abortion providers can be almost the same as an actual ban on abortion, but since it is only a regulation on abortion providers, not a direct ban on abortion, it doesn't directly raise the issue of Roe v. Wade," said Emory Law Professor Robert Schapiro. The high court previously ruled a similar Texas law was unconstitutional, but the court's makeup has changed since then. "It certainly will be interesting to see how this court with some new justices on it, particularly Justice Kavanaugh and Justice Gorsuch, look at this issue of abortion," Shapiro added.

Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang proposes to give American adults $1,000 per month in basic income to offset job losses from automation. He says we could pay for it with a Euro-style value-added tax, but Emory Law Professor Dorothy Brown tells NewsHour that the proposal raises more questions than answers and could disproportionately affect low-income earners. "The devil's in the details," she said. "A VAT on all goods and services is basically taking money out of the pockets of the people you're trying to put the money in."

"The recent saber rattling against Iran raises the question of whether the president can take the country to war on his own," Asa Griggs Candler Professor of Law Mary L. Dudziak writes for The Hill. Much of the legal counsel a president receives comes from the DOJ's Office of Legal Counsel. "But many Office of Legal Counsel opinions remain secret decades after the fact. Because of this, a body of secret law has become a building block of contemporary presidential power," Dudziak says.

USDA inspection reports were widely used by consumers for people finding pets online, until a few years ago. They were taken off the agency's public website shortly after President Trump took office, ABC News reports in a story about buying pets online. Emory Law Professor Ani Satz says those reports and violations were previously used to remove animals from bad situations. "In the big picture protections for animals are woefully inadequate in this context and by taking these reports away they're taking away the one tool that people who believe in upholding the law have to protect these animals," Satz said.

A federal judge has ordered the Georgia Department of Corrections to amend its policies to allow inmates to grow beards up to 3 inches long, if their religious beliefs forbid shaving, says the Daily Report. The judge said the exemption could be revoked "based on the inmate's behavior and compliance with the revised grooming policy." Emory Law faculty Sarah Shalf and Mark Goldfeder were appointed by an appeals court to represent Muslim inmate Lester Smith.

"Recent news coverage reveals that Democrats in the Senate are split over the path they should take regarding rules governing the confirmation of federal judges," Emory Law Professor Jonathan Nash writes for The Hill. "A path forward might be found by looking backward," he says. Nash points to a Carter administration-era agreement between Senators Jacob Javits and Daniel Patrick Moynihan. "For more than 20 years in the closing decades of the last century, the senators agreed to divide responsibility for recommending nominees to the president for federal district judgeships."

"This month marks the fifth anniversary of the death of Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager who was killed by Darren Wilson, a white police officer who was never brought to justice," Emory Law Professor Dorothy Brown writes for CNN. While some improvements have come from the resulting Justice Department investigation and report, "the work of progress is unfinished in Ferguson and in the rest of the country. No one is coming to save us from racist violence: we have to save each other," she says.

Some state judges now see millions of dollars poured into their campaigns following the change in political contributions allowed by the Citizens United Supreme Court ruling. What gets less attention is how attack ads, often funded by those dollars, influence not only the race, but also sentencing. Judges affected by Citizens United were 7% more likely to hand out harsher sentences after the court decision, Emory Law Professor Joanna Shepherd says on NPR's "Embedded."

"President Trump spoke on Tuesday in Jamestown, Virginia, to commemorate the 400th anniversary of American democracy--the year that Virginia, the first English colony, held its first General Assembly of representatives," Emory Law Professor Dorothy Brown writes for CNN. "But this year marks another anniversary: it marks the 400th year the first enslaved Africans were brought to America--specifically to Jamestown."

An Atlanta Journal-Constitution story says Georgia's two immigration courts, in South Georgia and Atlanta, have the second and third highest average asylum denial rates in the nation at 95 percent and 94 percent, respectively. Fewer than one in 10 applicants were successful from 2013-2018. The story also cites Emory Law student research and quotes adjunct professor and immigration law attorney Charles Kuck.

The Georgia Voice recently interviewed Mary Anne Bobinski, the first female and LGBTQ person to lead Emory Law. She discussed her past experience as a dean and also her connection to Atlanta. "I began researching and writing on HIV/AIDS during law school and, in fact, secured funding from my law school to attend an early conference on HIV counseling and testing led by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention," Bobinski said. She views advancing human rights as an important commitment. "In my own life, I have seen how lawyers, law professors, and community activists played such important roles in advancing legal protections for people with HIV infection and in promoting equality for the LGBTQ community," she said. "Atlanta's history provides so many inspiring examples of this approach."

Emory Law Professor Dorothy Brown's op-ed for CNN addresses Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden's comments at a NYC fundraiser. "Biden's remarks Tuesday were a sobering reminder of his checkered legislative history on issues affecting people of color," she writes. "So as he tries to win the Democratic nomination in 2020, Biden should be careful--not cocky, not defiant--about rhetoric that offends people of color. The black vote may be his to lose."

"There is apparently no issue--large or small-involving the rights and advancement of people of color that the president won't weigh in on, with his thumb on the scale," Professor Dorothy Brown writes for CNN. From his family's refusal to rent to blacks in the 70s, his call for the deaths of the Central Park Five, his challenge of Barack Obama's citizenship, and now, the delay of putting Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill, Trump should rightfully be called "our white-supremacist-in-chief," she says, noting, "In 2016, candidate Trump told NBC that stripping his favorite president, the populist and slave owner, Andrew Jackson, from the $20 bill was 'pure political correctness.'"

Professor Dorothy Brown was interviewed on Curbed's "Nice Try," podcast about the 1950s Levittown pursuit of backyard utopia and how postwar suburbia actively kept out African Americans. "These developments typically excluded African Americans, deepening racial inequality and locking millions out of the dream of homeownership, the most infamous being Levittown," the story says, "while William Levitt used explicit racial covenants and other tactics to keep his developments white."

Professor Johnathan Nash recently discussed United States v. Nagarwala, on the Volokh Conspiracy blog. The U.S. Department of Justice brought criminal charges in a case involving alleged female genital mutilation, in violation of a federal statute. A district court dismissed most of the charges, saying Congress exceeded its constitutional powers in enacting the statute. The DOJ later declined to appeal. Now, the U.S. House of Representatives seeks court permission to intervene and seek reversal of the court's judgment on appeal. Nash argues Article III standing barriers facing the House are substantial.

State legislators have fielded calls and questions from residents concerned or confused about Georgia's new anti-abortion law, the AJC reports. HB 481 defines a "natural person" as "any human being including an unborn child." So legal experts need to consider mentions of "natural person" or "human being" in Georgia code to see what the implications might be, Emory Law Associate Professor Fred Smith Jr. says.

A group of constitutional scholars and lawmakers want House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to take President Donald Trump to the Supreme Court over the war in Yemen. Vox quoted Asa Griggs Candler Professor of Law Mary L. Dudziak on why. It's unconstitutional for a president to unilaterally involve the U.S. in war. "Especially since 9/11, Congress has let power accumulate in the executive branch," Dudziak said. "And Congress does that by sitting back and not objecting, which is why Pelosi's role is really important right now."

Earlier this year, Atlanta adopted an ambitious climate change goal: To have all homes, businesses and city operations rely largely on renewable energy by 2035. Also, Atlanta-based Southern Company says it hopes to achieve "low- to-no carbon" emissions by 2050. Individual cities and companies may set goals, but a piecemeal approach to greener practice isn't the most efficient path for a global-scale problem, Mindy Goldstein, director of the Turner Environmental Law Clinic tells WABE. "You're going to, in a perfect world, have global solutions," she said. "That's just not where we are today."

Democratic presidential candidates say they want to narrow the enduring black-white wealth gap in America. But their proposed policies don't use the most direct way possible--by steering benefits to African-Americans, a New York Times columnist writes. The mortgage interest deduction, disproportionately benefits white families, as do tax advantages for the rich, who are more likely to be white. "The first and most efficient approach is targeting relief to the people who were targeted with discrimination," said Emory Law Professor Dorothy Brown.

Emory Law Associate Professor Deborah Dinner gave a detailed legal analysis to 11 Alive on the "heartbeat" abortion law Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp signed into law this week. "The Georgia legislation is flagrantly unconstitutional, violates women's fundamental rights to reproductive liberty and privacy, and represents a major threat to the ongoing struggle for gender equality," Dinner said, when asked for her final assessment. Dinner also broke down specific aspects of the law and its enforcement.

Abigail Disney has called out the Walt Disney Co. for paying its CEO Bob Iger an "insane" $65.6 million, more than 1,424 times the median salary of a Disney employee. "A CEO-to-median pay ratio of 1,424 to 1 is certainly shocking--but such numbers are a shiny decoy," Assistant Professor George S. Georgiev writes for the Los Angeles Times. The op-ed discusses a controversial provision of the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act that requires publicly traded companies to report median employee pay and calculate the CEO pay ratio.

Elon Musk has agreed to new social media restrictions in a deal with the Securities and Exchange Commission that provides clarity on what the Tesla chief can tweet without prior approval of a lawyer. "The new deal marks the SEC's second attempt at crafting communications rules to check Mr. Musk," who eschews the cautious social media approach employed by most CEOs, the Financial Times reports. The new terms are "much more watertight," Emory Law Assistant Professor George Georgiev said. "The original deal that they struck wasn't very workable."

Will Georgia's proposed 'heartbeat' abortion law be the one to return the issue of reproductive rights to the Supreme Court? Emory Law Professor Robert Schapiro doubts it. Georgia currently bans abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy. The new law would do so once a doctor detects a heartbeat--which is usually at about six weeks, and often before most women know they are pregnant, the AJC reports. "I think if the court is going to revisit Roe v. Wade, it would do so more incrementally, with laws that limit but do not fundamentally undo the right to abortion," said Professor Robert Schapiro.

Emory Law Professor Robert Schapiro was quoted by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution after the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to consider a metro-Atlanta case on whether gay, lesbian and transgender workers are protected under federal anti-discrimination laws. "Certainly on any issue relating to the LGBT community, the absence of Justice Kennedy is potentially quite significant," he said. "These cases will give insight into how this new configuration of the Supreme Court addresses issues relating to gay and lesbian rights."

On April 2, President Donald Trump announced he intends to nominate Steven Grimberg 98L for U.S. District Court judge, to serve in Atlanta. Grimberg is a former U.S. attorney known for prosecuting white-collar and cyber crimes, who served with the Department of Justice for more than 12 years. In 2018, he joined Nardello & Co., where he is managing director, head of the Atlanta office, and general counsel of the Americas.

"President Donald Trump is expected to order U.S. colleges to protect free speech on their campuses or risk losing federal funding," California radio station KPCC 89.3 reports. Associate Professor Alexander Volokh was a guest on the show to discuss the issue. He is chair of the Emory University's Committee for Open Expression, an on-campus free speech organization.

For the second time this term, the U.S. Supreme Court has asked for the solicitor general's views on a case involving Section 101 patent eligibility. The high court's decisions in the past few years have led to the rejection of thousands of patents, mostly in software but also in biopharma. "I think two CVSGs suggests that the court is concerned about the way the doctrine is developing at the Federal Circuit and the broader impact" that its decisions have had, particularly Mayo Collaborative v. Prometheus Laboratories and CLS Bank v. Alice, Asa Griggs Candler Professor of Law Timothy Holbrook told the National Law Journal.

"The collapse of talks between President Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jung Un in Hanoi means that Pyongyang's nuclear program will continue--and so, too, will the still unresolved Korean War, now nearly 70 years old," Asa Griggs Candler Professor of Law Mary Dudziak writes in an opinion article for the Washington Post. "The war, which ended with a truce but not a peace treaty, is famously forgotten in the United States, but it is invoked as legal authority every time a president sends U.S. troops overseas without congressional authorization."

The ERA only needs one more state for ratification. Will Georgia be it? A bipartisan group of women in the state senate are mobilizing around a resolution calling on the state to ratify the ERA, which would amend the U.S. Constitution to guarantee equal rights regardless of sex, Rewire News reports. "We need the ERA to protect women's rights because it would provide explicit basis in the text of the Constitution for the recognition of women's equality," said Emory Law Associate Professor Deborah Dinner, clarifying that these rights currently only exist in state and federal laws, and under a broad interpretation of the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment.

The University of Florida went to court to defend patent rights for a machine that compiles patient vital statistics and displays them. Its arguments included asserting sovereign immunity. The latter defense was weak, as was the claim that the invention deserved a patent, Asa Griggs Candler Professor of Law Timothy Holbrook told Bloomberg. "The ruling on patentability `shows that taking something by hand and automating it with a computer is not going to be patent-eligible unless there is some technological advance in the process of automating it,' Holbrook said. 'An unsurprising outcome.'"

Asa Griggs Candler Professor of Law Robert Schapiro spoke with WABE about President Trump's recent declaration of a national emergency in order to secure funds to build a border wall. The Constitution states the power of the purse is the province of Congress, not the president, Schapiro said. However, Congress itself created the emergency exception that allows the president to reallocate money in a true crisis, such as 9/11.

"The CEO pay ratio rule that was implemented as part of the Dodd-Frank Act mandates that companies disclose the ratio between CEO pay and median employee pay, and while the ostensible purpose was to shine light on compensation-related governance issues, two law professors have concluded that, given the vagueness of the rule's requirements, it serves as little more than 'click bait' to incite emotions," the article reads, citing the study co-authored by Emory Law Assistant Professor George S. Georgiev. "Trusted Professional" is the newspaper of the N.Y. State Society of CPAs.

"Opponents of the CEO pay ratio rule have a new ally: a comprehensive academic analysis that methodically constructs a case for the rule's worthlessness," CFO magazine says of a recent paper co-authored by Emory Law Assistant Professor George S. Georgiev. The paper, the first academic analysis of the pay ratio rule following the first round of reporting, has a chance of influencing changes to the rule, Georgiev said. "I think our proposal is fairly reasonable, so that's what we're hoping for," he says. "You can't stop journalists from looking for a headline, but you can put the numbers in context."

Laurie Blank, director of the International Humanitarian Law Clinic, recently spoke on the evolution of warfare and predictions about what's next. "From the increasing development of autonomous weapons systems to the expansion of the traditional battlefield to cyber and outer space, the evolution of warfare invites ethical and legal questions about what the future holds," says the Lawfare blog. The panel discussion was held in November 2018, moderated by former Air Force and Army general counsel Chuck Blanchard.

Research by Emory Law Assistant Professor George S. Georgiev was featured in a Bloomberg opinion article on alternative data and the relevance of a new SEC disclosure requirement: CEO pay ratios, or the difference between the CEO's pay and its median employee. Columnist Matt Levine quotes Georgiev's co-authored article: "We suggest that the pay ratio disclosure rule represents a unique approach to disclosure, which we term disclosure-as-soundbite. This approach is characterized by (1) high public salience--the pay ratio is superficially intuitive and resonates with the public to an extent much greater than other disclosure, and (2) low informational integrity--the pay ratio is a relative outlier in terms of certain baseline characteristics of disclosure, meaning that the information is lacking in accuracy, difficult to interpret, and incomplete."

Emory Law professor Dorothy Brown discussed the history of the U.S. marginal tax rate with with NPR's Scott Simon on "Weekend Edition." There was outrage this week at the suggestion of a 70 percent tax rate, but Brown says "Marginal tax rates went as high as 94 percent in the mid-'40s. It was also 91 percent as late as 1963. We had a 70 percent marginal tax rate as late as 1980. And currently, our marginal tax rate is 37 percent. So we've had very high marginal tax rates for many, many years."

Emory Law Professor and CSLR Senior Fellow Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na'im, author of "Islam and the Secular State," is interviewed by UNESCO on how concept, content and context affect meaningful changes in human rights, and also, his "The Future of Sharia," project.

Super Bowl LIII will bring a lot of money to Atlanta-area business on its coattails. However, "The NFL has a history of smacking non-sponsor companies that it believes infringe on the lucrative trademark of its biggest show," says an Atlanta Journal-Constitution story. Non-affiliated companies who use Super Bowl images and label themselves "official," might be in trouble. Some use of the words "Super Bowl" are clear-cut violations, some depend on which company or organization is using them, said Asa Griggs Candler Professor of Law Tim Holbrook.