The Roundtable
Welcome to the Roundtable, a forum for incisive commentary and analysis
on cases and developments in law and the legal system.
on cases and developments in law and the legal system.
 By Emma Davies
Emma Davies is a freshman in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania In recent months, political discourse has turned its gaze towards the US-Mexico southern border in response to developing plans to build a wall, to the separation of migrant children from their families, to murmurs that caravans of migrants are trying to enter the country and to the supposed influx of illegal immigrants. The judicial system plays an dynamic role in responding to these various concerns, both realized and hypothetical. Particularly, the judicial system of immigration courts acts as a flawed and bogged-down means of addressing the legal rights and limitations of the many actors involved in border crossing [1].
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 By Ishita Chakrabarty
Ishita Chakrabarty is in the fourth year of her undergraduate study (BA LL.B (Hons.)) at Hidayatullah National Law University, India. Back in the year 2007, Iraqi migrant families had been reportedly leaving Egypt en masse because of severe poverty arising from the government’s denial of their right to work [1]. Over the past couple of months, the Trump Administration’s “zero tolerance” refugee policy has drawn a lot of flak from lawmakers inside and outside the country, press and human rights activists [2]. Apart from the fact that refugees cannot be subjected to criminal prosecution and penalties simply because they happened to cross over illegally, the administration’s separation of children from their parents, even on the pretext of procedural necessities, serves an ulterior purpose of deterring migrants from seeking refugee status. Elsewhere in Asia, the slow-moving registration policies towards the Rohingyas staying in makeshift camps, without adequate living conditions, have exacerbated their vulnerabilities [3]. These are all tactics that shroud ‘refoulement’ as mere ‘repatriation’.  By Lydia Kim
Lydia Kim is a junior at the University of Pennsylvania studying Economics and Cognitive Science. Any entertainment industry is highly visible—if not ostentatious —and for South Korea, music has become one of its largest exports as an over $5 billion industry [1]. Largely made up of “idol groups” comprising of young acts that perform as a unit, South Korea (and more recently, the world at large ) looks to Korean pop culture (K-pop) and these glamorous celebrities to set trends, push consumer innovation, and represent sociocultural norms. CedarBough Saeji, an expert in Korean culture at the University of British Columbia, states that for K-pop stars, “their every public moment is a product to be consumed as representative of the nation, representative of ideal behavior, and representative of performative talent." Many large Korean music management companies are also publicly traded stocks, so this close-knit link between the economy and entertainment makes for a symbiotic relationship. As a result, "scandals involving drinking, drugs or even dating not only make waves in the entertainment news section but also the finance news section” [2]. In early March, however, one scandal created ripples beyond the entertainment and finance sections. South Korea doubled over as it became embroiled in one of the largest scandals in quite some time : colloquially, the K-pop Prostitution Investigation.  By Arabang Dingalo Arabang Dingalo is a sophomore at the Wharton School studying Business Economics and Public Policy. In this day and technology age, there are growing concerns from nations worldwide on the possible abuse of citizens’ personal data and privacy, and South Africa is no exception. This growing concern prompted the then president of South Africa, Jacob Zuma, to sign the Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA) into being in 2013 [1] and it has finally come into effect in December 2018. POPIA was greatly molded around Europe’s General Data Privacy Protection (GDPR) Act and despite the GDPR having made extensive adjustments since its conception, POPIA has stayed stagnant and failed to adapt to some critical points of the GDPR changes. One pivotal change is the law surrounding Scientific Research. Article 9(2)(j) of the GDPR allows for processing of genetic data as part of a special category of data if ‘processing is necessary for archiving purposes in the public interest, scientific or historical research purposes or statistical purposes,’ [2]. The POPIA has failed to make this adjustments and there are growing concerns from the South African scientific community about the implication this will have on what is today, the hub of African research. |
