Law & Public Policy Blog

Juliana Peluso, JD Anticipated May 2024, Law & Public Policy Scholar  In 1952, former Supreme Court Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist—then a law clerk to Justice Robert H. Jackson—prepared a memorandum titled “A Random Thought on the Segregation Cases” in anticipation of the Court’s deliberation on school segregation in Brown v. Board of Education. In it, then-clerk Rehnquist rejected the federal judiciary’s involvement in “emotionally charged subject matter,” particularly with regard to issues entailing “relations between the individual and the …

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Venk Hariharan, JD Anticipated May 2024 A History of Race-Conscious Admissions in the U.S. Race-conscious admissions policies were first established in the 1970s, in response to a history of racial discrimination and segregation in the United States. Colloquially referred to as ‘affirmative action’, these policies use race as one of several factors in admissions decisions to promote diversity and address the underrepresentation of minority students in higher education. In 1978, in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, the …

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Mary Kate Martin, JD Anticipated May 2024 In recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions, and in arguments before the Court, the case has been made that the Court should be neutral. The petitioners in a pending affirmative action case have argued that colleges should be color blind in their admissions because the Constitution demands colorblindness. Additionally, Justice Kavanaugh’s concurrence in Dobbs argued that overruling Roe v. Wade was necessary to place the Court back in a neutral position. I argue that the …

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Joan Fernandez, JD Anticipated May 2024, Law and Public Policy Scholar The Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), an independent and nonpartisan entity that provides comprehensive information about U.S. immigration enforcement, reports that the average time it takes for an asylum seeker in the United States to have their case heard in immigration court is 1,621 days, or nearly four and a half years. While long, this wait time may initially appear to be reasonable because asylum seekers are allowed to …

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Hanna Pfeiffer, JD Anticipated May 2024, Law and Public Policy Scholar Rankings of the best cities for cycling in America consistently put Philadelphia in the top 20. LawnStarter ranks Philadelphia sixteenth, Bicycling.com has it at fifteenth, People for Bikes at fourteenth (in the 95th percentile!), and Explore Worldwide puts Philadelphia at third. With some implementable changes, Philadelphia could quickly reach first place. Ranking systems use a variety of metrics to assess cities, but the amount of cycling infrastructure, the number …

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Samantha Weber, JD Anticipated May 2024, Law and Public Policy Scholar Philadelphia has a long and sordid history with pollution of all kinds. As a young, bustling city, its streets were so full of garbage that it prompted Benjamin Franklin to add a trash collection system to his prolific list of inventions. Of course, the colonial trash system simply dumped all of the city’s garbage directly into the Delaware River; but at least he tried. Since then, Philadelphia has been …

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Marianne Uy, JD Anticipated May 2024, Law and Public Policy Scholar Philadelphia’s Chinatown is home to 3,000 people. Located in the heart of Center City, Chinatown is a cultural hub that features the food and goods of various Asian countries, including China, Taiwan, Vietnam, Korea, and Japan. The concentration of restaurants, markets, and shops establish Philadelphia’s Chinatown as the second largest on the East Coast. In addition to the rich culture that exists beyond the Chinatown Friendship Gate, the neighborhood …

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Ethan Benoff, JD Anticipated May 2024, Law and Public Policy Scholar Mental health has long been a topic that is under-examined, underfunded, and underrepresented throughout the field of medicine.  The statistics are startling. It is estimated that one in five (52.9 million) Americans will suffer with some form of mental illness during their adult-life; however, only 23.9% of them will be able to access beneficial mental health assistance that leads to improved patient outcomes. In Philadelphia alone, 46% of adults …

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Megan Palmer, JD Anticipated May 2024, Law and Public Policy Scholar Dozens of automakers are locked in a race to create the first fully autonomous or self-driving vehicle (AV). AVs have the potential to decrease traffic and vehicular accidents, while opening the world to those who don’t have access to reliable transportation, including the one in five Americans who have a disability. If AV wants to live up to its promise to revolutionize mobility in the United States, it should …

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Alyssa (Lee) Kennedy, JD Anticipated May 2024, Law and Public Policy Scholar Pharmaceutical Benefit Managers (PBMs) are companies that negotiate agreements with drug manufacturers to lower the price health insurers pay for prescriptions. They also negotiate with pharmacies to create low-cost reimbursement fees that insurers pay pharmacies for dispending prescription drugs at a certain price. By having the ability to negotiate drug prices and set reimbursement fees, PBMs wield tremendous power by acting as “middlemen” who control all the access …

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