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 Ally Margolis
Ally Margolis is a junior in the College of Arts and Sciences studying Political Science and History. In the recent weeks following the release of the documentary “Framing Britney Spears,” the #FreeBritney movement has become mainstream. This movement features examinations of the misogyny and mistreatment that Spears endured as a child and burgeoning star, as well as analyzes her conservatorship, with many believing that she is being unfairly restricted by her father. But with 1.3 million people under these arrangements, what is a conservatorship [1]? And what is it like for non-celebrities?
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 By Nicholas Williams Nicholas Williams is a sophomore in the College of Arts & Sciences from Los Angeles, California who is majoring in History. Now that Donald J. Trump has exited the Oval Office, the full extent of one of his most lasting legacies is clearer: his judicial appointments. In addition to his appointment of three Supreme Court justices, Trump also appointed hundreds of lower-court judges. These judges will continue to sit on the federal bench for decades, far outlasting Trump’s tenure in office.
 Source: Unsplash By Hailie Goldsmith Hailie Goldsmith is a sophomore in the College of Arts and Sciences, majoring in Philosophy, Politics and Economics and minoring in Hispanic Studies. In the age of omnipresent social media platforms, a majority of speech and dialogue now takes place online. For this reason, conflicts discerning which speech falls outside the protection of the First Amendment now frequently occur on an online stage rather than in-person. These conflicts are amplified by the wide-reaching arena compared to the minimal reaches of interpersonal interactions. Because social media can expose millions of people to information in a short period of time, speech can result in real actions and potentially violent consequences.
 By Ally Margolis
Ally Margolis is a junior in the College of Arts and Sciences studying Political Science and History. Former President Trump’s legal challenges to the outcome of the 2020 election were largely if not entirely struck down by courts. In the most recent case, the Supreme Court threw out a case brought by the Texas Attorney General to invalidate election results in various states that President-Elect Biden won. Not one of the Justices offered a public dissent in favor of relief. Justices Alito and Thomas said that they would have let the case be filed but would not have provided any further relief [1]. This decision came just days after the Court denied Pennsylvanian Republicans’ case to throw out all of Pennsylvania’s mail-in votes from the recent election [2]. Again, there were no written dissents to this decision.  By Nicholas Williams
Nicholas Williams is a sophomore in the College of Arts & Sciences from Los Angeles, California who plans on majoring in Political Science and History. On November 25, 2020, the Supreme Court issued a 5-4 decision in the case of Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn, New York v. Cuomo [1]. In the decision, the majority held that New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s executive order that limited attendance at in-person houses of worship due to the COVID-19 pandemic constituted an unconstitutional violation of the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. The case’s outcome could significantly affect both the future of the Supreme Court and government policy amid the COVID-19 pandemic.  By Saranya Das Sharma Saranya Das Sharma is a junior studying English in the College of Arts & Sciences and Operations, Information and Decisions at Wharton. Twelve years ago, the world was in the throes of a similar crisis as the one before us today. Although there was no global pandemic, the recessionary scenes seem eerily familiar: staggering unemployment, government bailouts and an uncertain economic recovery. However there is one key difference- no major bank has become insolvent. A large part of this can be attributed to one of the world’s largest soft law mechanisms- the Basel III Capital Accords, which are a product of the aftermath of the previous crisis.
 By Joseph Squillaro
Joseph M. Squillaro is a member of the Class of 2022 at the University of Pennsylvania studying Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE) with a concentration in cyber policy and internet law. In the past few years when visiting various websites, how many times have you encountered a salient prompt asking for you to accept “cookie” permissions or select which types of data the website is able to retain? I know I personally have seen more than I can count. Yet prior to 2018, you likely would not have seen any such prompt and that was because it simply was not required, at least not in the European Union. That all changed, however, when on May 25th 2018, the European Parliament implemented a sweeping set of cyber reforms collectively known as the European Union General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). The GDPR revolutionized the ways in which tech companies can collect and store your data. From that day forward, companies were required to ask your permission to save information to their servers in the form of the aforementioned cookies. This included details such as your navigation history for personalizing results or your IP address to provide location specific content, among many other examples [1]. This policy, on balance, is a great boon for the liberty for all users of technology: to have control on who stores your data and what kind of information they collect. But a large number of users of technology, including myself, do not reside in the European Union, nor are a citizen of any EU country, yet the prompt and intention of the GDPR still applies. Why is this?  By: Akshita Tiwary
Akshita Tiwary is a 3rd year law student at Government Law College, Mumbai, India. She serves as an Assistant Editor for JURIST, University of Pittsburgh, and is keenly interested in international law, human rights and constitutional law. She may be reached at akshitatiwary@gmail.com. INTRODUCTION On October 22, 2020, a constitutional tribunal in Poland ruled that abortions in case of fetal abnormalities are illegal, as it violates the constitutional right to life of the fetus [1]. This decision has resulted in mass protests across the nation [2]. The ruling effectively tightens abortion laws further in a country which already has one of the strictest abortion regulations in Europe.  by Mina Nur Basmaci
The author is a third-year undergraduate student at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where she is majoring in both English and Religious Studies. She can be reached at minabasmaci@ucsb.edu. The impulse to ask what a survivor of assault was wearing, or to defend police intervention based on somebody’s donning of a hoodie, implies that one’s appearance invites others to treat them in prescribed, stigmatizing ways. These explicit manifestations of respectability politics are made possible through the normalization of more implicit ones, such as those in dress codes and in grooming policies.  Keshav Sharma
Keshav Sharma is a freshman at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada, who plans on majoring in Health Sciences. At the forefront of the enigma of American healthcare lies the contentious debate of the value of private healthcare in serving the welfare of the American people. While the United States continues to boast the highest spending of all OECD countries in the healthcare sector, allocating an average of 16.9% of its annual GDP from 1980 to 2018, which is more than double the OECD average, the health outcomes for Americans persist in a downward spiral. Compared to other OECD members, the United States has the lowest life expectancy at 78.6a, the highest suicide rates at 13.9 deaths/100,0002b, the highest chronic disease burden at 28%2c, and the highest obesity rates at 40%2d. |
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