During the spring of 2020, the COVID-19 crisis began to unfold in the U.S. Legal scholars exploring the impact of the pandemic on people with disabilities focused much of their attention on triage protocols. These scholars debated the legality and ethics of using patient disability as a basis for rationing ventilators in the face of then-looming ventilator shortages at hospitals.[2] At least initially, stay-at-home orders across the country were successful in “flattening the curve” and reducing the demand for ventilators.[3] However, the pandemic’s widespread disruption Continue reading →

On October 22, 2019, Justice Elena Kagan sat down with Professor Suzette Malveaux, director of the Byron White Center for the Study of Constitutional Law, for the Eighth Annual John Paul Stevens Lecture. (Text of the full lecture can be found here.) What made Justice Kagan’s visit to Colorado Law particularly special was the opportunity for her to honor her predecessor on the bench—the namesake of the lecture series—only three months after the country lost him at the age of ninety-nine. In 2011, Justice John Continue reading →

PROJECT PROTECT FOOD SYSTEMS: The Colorado Food System Workers Rapid Response Team is composed of immigrants, farmers, scholars, activists, unions, and workers across Colorado working to identify, elevate and address the needs of the people who contribute their labor to all parts of the food system. Federal relief directed toward the agriculture sector prioritized the needs of business owners, but largely ignored the specific vulnerabilities and needs of Food System Workers. Inattention to the plight and the health of food system workers is unsurprising but Continue reading →

On April 5, 2020, Michael Tyson, a 53-year old man arrested for a technical parole-violation, became the first reported person on Rikers Island to die from COVID-19.[2] By April 20, over two-thirds of the people incarcerated in Ohio’s Mario Correctional Institution had tested positive for the novel coronavirus, and over twenty percent of Ohio’s 12,919 confirmed cases had been traced to the state’s prison system.[3] By April 30, prisons or jails had been identified as the source of eight out of ten of largest viral Continue reading →

In 2007, following decades of advocacy by indigenous peoples, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (Declaration). This is a standard-setting document supported by the 148 member nations, including the United States, committing to the individual and collective rights of indigenous peoples. These rights include the right to self-determination, equality, property, culture, and economic well-being.[1] John Echohawk, Executive Director of the Native American Rights Fund (NARF), has said that the Declaration affirms many of the rights for which Continue reading →

The Clean Air Act of 1970 produced a revolution in envi­ronmental law. From its unique approach to federalism to its technology forcing provisions, it remains an innovative statute to this day. In light of the growing threat posed by climate change, federal administrators have worked to adapt its text to deal with greenhouse gasses and carbon emissions. Global warming, though, is not the only context in which the Clean Air Act (CAA) can be used in ways not originally intended. Although not meant as an Continue reading →

The Fourth Amendment exclusionary rule is experiencing death by a thousand cuts. Since the Supreme Court created the rule,[1] its opinions have whittled away at the rule’s application with various exceptions and limitations.[2] So it is today that the Court only finds exclusion appropriate where the benefits of suppressing evidence outweigh its costs.[3] That rarely happens, says the Court. After all, what benefit could outweigh the cost of letting the guilty go free? Apparently not the benefit of deterring the violation of an elementary Fourth Continue reading →