Policy Papers

Policy Papers 2012 – 2018

The following lists the topics of the policy papers written by the members of the 2012 – 2018 classes of Law & Public Policy Scholars.

Civil Rights

  • Combating Campus Sexual Assault
  • Coming Out Against Conversion Therapy: Legal Responses to theSolution Without a Problem
  • Common Cause: Linking LGBT Liberation & Reproductive Justice toAchieve Global Human Rights
  • Disparate Impact and theFair Housing Act
  • Gender Identity Discrimination and Executive Power
  • Health Disparities and the LGBTQ Community
  • Moving from an Enforcement Model to a Compliance Model Under theFair Housing Act
  • Title IX: Reforming the Disciplinary Process for Sexual Offenders on CollegeCampuses    
  • WhiteSupremacy as Terrorism: Matching the Resources to the Reality
  • Can I See Some ID?: The Importance of Self-Attestation for Transgender, Gender Non-Conforming, and Non-Binary People

Congressional Reform

  • Much to Do About Nothing: How Congressional Inaction Split the Nation and Killed the 2016 Election

Criminal Justice

  • Can You Hear Me Now?Prosecutorial Use of Cell Site Data in Modern Criminal Prosecution
  • Criminalization of Mental Illness Punishment Profiteers: Mass Incarceration, PrisonPrivatization, and Our Growing Corrections Economy
  • Defining the “ReasonableDegree” of Scientific Certainty
  • Human Trafficking in theUS: Reforming the Trafficking Victims’ Protection Act to Prevent theRevictimization of Foreign Nationals
  • Juvenile Criminal Transfer Laws
  • Legal FinancialObligations and its Effects on Recidivism for Incarcerated Persons
  • Policing in the 21stCentury: The Urgent Need for Reform
  • Proposed Amendments to the Trafficking VictimsProtection Act: Strengthening Sanctions and Enhancing Victim Resources
  • RecidivismReduction: Closing the Revolving Prison Door Through Sentencing Reform,Increased Judicial Discretion in Sentencing and Parole, and Merit-Based PrisonProgramming
  • SexualAbuse in Confinement
  • Trafficking VictimsProtection Act: Rethinking Enforcement
  • Transgender InmateHousing Reform
  • Where is the BrotherlyLove? Combatting Gun Violence in Philadelphia
  • The Least We Can Do: Ending Staff Abuse in Juvenile Confinement Facilities Evolving Standards of Decency: Juvenile Justice Reform Informed by Developmental Neurobiology and Psychology

Education

  • Ban-the-Box: Dismantling Collateral Consequences inHigher Education
  • Data Protection andPrivacy in the Classroom
  • Pennies forProgress: A Fiscal Approach to Education Reform
  • A Plan for Easing theBurden of Student Debt for College Dropouts
  • Hall Passes and GymClasses: Strategic Education Access for Transgender and Gender Non-ConformingStudents
  • Too Cruel for School: Necessary School Discipline Reform

Energy and Environment

  • Artic Marine Shipping and Increased Maritime Traffic
  • A Climate Change Superfund
  • EPA Regulation of Perchlorate Content in Drinking Waterunder the Safe Drinking Water Act
  • Incentivizing Distributed Generation: a Call for Reauthorizing theSolar Investment Tax Credit and Implementing a New Production Tax Credit forNet-metering Customers
  • ISDS and Sustainable Development: Transforming the TPP Provisionthat Everyone Loves to Hate into a Tool for Unlocking Green Foreign DirectInvestment
  • Live Again: EnvironmentalJustice Considerations on the Impacts of Goods Movement and Hazardous WasteTransportation in U.S. Communities
  • Microgrids: A Utilitarian Solution to a UtilityProblem
  • An Overview of Sustainability in 21stCentury Agriculture
  • The Oil Pollution Act and the Clean Waters Act
  • Twoif by Sea: The Solution to Marine Pollution Requires More Problem-Solving
  • What We Talk About When We Talk About Energy: Upgrading America’s Energy Infrastructure to Combat Global Climate Change

Financial Regulation

  • ACommitment to Openness: An Analysis of CFIUS Regulation in the 21st Century
  • Deflatingthe Student Loan Bubble
  • Encouraging Density byAdapting FHA Insurance Policies to Encourage Condo Ownership
  • FinancialRegulation: Dodd-Frank and Beyond
  • Financial Regulation,the Volcker Rule and an Appropriate Governmental Response to Financial Risk
  • How Public-PrivatePartnerships Can Solve the American Transportation Infrastructure Crisis
  • Government Bake Salesand Welfare Sponsorships: Public-Private Partnerships in the Modern Economy
  • The JOBS Act and SEC Rulemaking
  • Simple Economics and Why Social Security is RunningDry
  • Strike Zone: Revisiting Baseball’s Antitrust Exemption
  • Regulating High FrequencyTrading in the Securities Marketplace
  • Reviving Postal Banking: Utility Finance for the Contemporary American    Citizen

Food Law

  • Food Equity: Where You Live is What You Eat
  • Pennsylvania’s Children:  An Examination of the Law Guiding Nutrition in Child Care Facilities and the Barriers to Setting Healthier Standards

Health Policy

  • Creating a Coherent Regulatory Framework forLaboratory-Developed Tests
  • Crisisof Conscience: Religious Exemptions in Healthcare
  • A Doctor in Every Home: A Call for Uniform TelemedicineRegulations
  • Having Your Cake and Eating It Too: Why Medicaid Cuts Must be Madefor the Sake of the Program
  • EHR Systems: So Close, Yet So Far
  • How to Avoid a Market Failure in the Case of an HIV Vaccine
  • Mass Shootings, Domestic Violence, and Toxic Masculinity
  • Medicaid and the Opioid Crisis
  • The Opioid Epidemic Among Older Americans
  • Perinatal Hospice
  • Preventing thePrescription Opioid Abuse Process Before It Starts – A Call for IncorporatingFederal Prescription Opioid Prescribing Guidelines into State Policies
  • 20-Week Abortion Bans and The Viability Standard
  • Reauthorizing the Ryan White Care Act for an HIV/AIDS FreeGeneration
  • Stark Law & Anti-Kickback Statute: Policy Options for Reform

Immigration

  • TheArizona Immigration Act: Designing a Federal Response to the Issues
  • The Benefits & Burdens of ProsecutorialDiscretion: How to Fully Effectuate the Exercise of Prosecutorial Discretion ina Broken Immigration System
  • Bridging the Gap: Policy Proposals for LGBTQI+Inclusive Asylum Practices
  • The Economic Benefits of Expanding RefugeeProtection to Include Those Displaced by Climate Change and Lack of Access toEssential National Resources
  • The Immigration and Nationality Act: Revising the“Adjustment to Status” Rules for Visas
  • Immigration Reform: Encouraging Legal Immigration
  • Latin American and Caribbean Migration Crises Prevention
  • A Market-Based Approach to Temporary Work Visas
  • A Need for a More Balanced Immigration Enforcement:Moving Away from Mass Detention Policies
  • A Presidential Proclamation to Ban All Muslims: TheImportance of the Establishment Clause
  • Women and Detention: Reproductive Rights Violationsin Immigration Detention Centers
  • Sanctuary Cities: How the A Political Statement hasUndermined Federalism
  • Unaccompanied Minors and Interior Security:Supporting Vulnerable Children to Prevent Gang Violence and Recruitment
  • The Nuance in Normal: Towards a Better Understandingof LGBT Asylum Claims
  • Representation, Adjudication, and Expansion: ABipartisan Approach to the Immigration Court Backlog
  • Unaccompanied Minors and Interior Security: Supporting Vulnerable Children to Prevent Gang Violence and Recruitment

Inequality

  • Access to Education for Homeless Children
  • A Domestic Marshall Plan for Jobs? Or a MoreMeasured Approach? Suggestions for the Future of American Labor Policy
  • The GrowingEpidemic of Violence Against Trans Women of Color
  • Making a Bad Situation Worse: How Pigouvian TaxPolicies Can Do More Harm Than Good
  • Reform of the Earned Income Tax Credit
  • The Right to Counsel in Eviction Proceedings: AMoral, Social, and Economic Imperative
  • Universal Basic Income
  • Universal Housing Vouchers

International and ForeignPolicy

  • Countering Violent Terrorist Extremism in the 21st Century
  • Debauching the Dollar: the Impact of CurrencyManipulation on the United States Economy and Policy Recommendations toMitigate its Impact
  • Developing an Effective Response to ForeignPropaganda
  • Foreign Cultural Exchange on Trial: Closing the GapBetween the Immunity from Seizure Act and the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act
  • Global Water Conflict:  EncouragingInternational Grassroots Support for the UN Convention on the Law of theNon-Navigational Uses of International Watercourses
  • The Intersectionof Domestic Violence and International Child Abduction
  • TheWar Against Boko Haram: the U.S. Role in Countering the Spread of Terrorism inAfrica        
  • U.S. Recognition of the Armenian Genocide
  • World Trade Organization Dispute Settlement System

Judicial Administration

  • Philadelphia Discovery Court

Labor and Employment

  • FamilyLeave and Low-Income Workers
  • PaidLike a Girl: A Focus on Wage Disparity Between the Sexes in Athletics
  • RethinkingLabor Law: Protecting a ‘Right to Organize’ under Title VII of the Civil RightsAct
  • Revisiting the FMLA: Promoting Work/Life Balance forAll Workers
  • A Domestic Marshall Plan for Jobs? Or a MoreMeasured Approach? Suggestions for the Future of American Labor Policy
  • Child Labor Laws in Agriculture: A Look at Tobacco Farming

Military and Veterans’ Affairs

  • SexualAssault in the Military
  • Veterans’Claims and Medical Malpractice Awards
  • TheWar at Home: Combating Domestic Violence in Military Families

Technology

  • Connected Cities: A Comparison of Citywide Efforts to Increase Broadband Adoption and Broadband Speeds 
  • Consumer Data Protection
  • TheDigital Divide:  Free Speech, the FreeFlow of Ideas, and Democracy
  • How Are We Supposed to Regulate the Internet?: TheMeans and Rationales of the Forms of the United States’ Two Potential Regulatory Regimes
  • In Support of a Modified Marketplace Fairness Act
  • An Internet User’s Bill of Rights
  • The Legal Landscape for Artificial Intelligence
  • National Security and Metadata
  • Net Neutrality: The GreatDistraction
  • Protecting the Coin of the Realm: Liability and theMarket for Personal Data
  • Re-examining the ShermanAct after the E-Books Litigation
  • The Regulation of 3D Printing
  • Saving TRIPS to SaveLives: Why the United States Should Abandon Policies that Destroy theFlexibilities Enshrined in TRIPS
  • TheUSA Freedom Act
  • Broadbandfor All: Expanding Broadband to Rural Areas Through an Infrastructure Bill
  • HowPrivate is “Private”? The EPCA In the Era of Social Media and the Third-PartyDoctrine

Voting Rights and Campaign Finance

  • Give Me Liberty or Give Me Burdensome Regulation:Reforming Campaign Finance Laws to Promote Freedom and Liberty in Federal Elections
  • Felon Disenfranchisement
  • State Voter ID Laws: TheNeed for Federal Regulation
  • Voter Protection and Disenfranchisement