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.
Arbitrating Competition Law Disputes: Disregarding the Fundamentals for a Pro-Arbitration World3/30/2014  By Sandeep Suresh
Sandeep Suresh is a fourth-year law student at the National Law University in Jodhpur, India. The legal correctness of arbitrating competition law disputes has been thought to be beyond debate after a steady line of case laws affirming the question. This trend has to be seen as a move by countries to make their respective jurisdictions arbitration-friendly. Although the case law jurisprudence is positive, there are certain omnipresent fundamentals that have to be taken into consideration. Typically, either the respective domestic law does not impose any restriction on arbitrating competition disputes or the parties have agreed upon the same. However, this post will look at this issue from the perspective of ‘objective arbitrability,’which studies the suitability of settling dispute through private enforcement. For this purpose, a determined analysis of the nature of competition law disputes and arbitration proceedings is necessary.
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 By Natalie Peelish
On Friday, March 14, a federal judge struck down Arkansas’s ban on most abortions beginning 12 weeks into a woman’s pregnancy. U.S. District Judge Susan Webber Wright argued that viability – not a heartbeat – remains the key factor in determining the constitutionality of abortions. Judge Wright cited previous court decisions stating that abortions may not be restricted until after the fetus is capable of viable life outside of the womb – typically at 24 weeks. She wrote that the law, “impermissibly infringes on a woman’s 14th Amendment right to elect to terminate a pregnancy before viability.”[1] The judge maintained that the state presented no evidence that a fetus can live outside the womb at 12 weeks. According to Judge Wright’s decision, only a doctor could determine viability. She did leave in place a portion of the law requiring doctors to check for a fetal heartbeat and notify the pregnant woman. In March 2013, when Arkansas passed this law banning abortion based on fetal heartbeat and not medical viability, it was the toughest ban on abortion to date[2] (North Dakota has since passed a law that is on hold banning abortions after six weeks[3]). Arkansas Governor Mike Beebe vetoed the measure, but was subsequently overruled by the legislature. The ban did include exemptions for rape, incest, the life of the mother, and highly lethal fetal disorders. Nonetheless, the Arkansas ban represents another effort by the anti-abortion coalition to chip away at a woman’s right to choose.  By Irtaza Ali
The issue of physician-assisted suicide has been hotly debated in the United States for decades. Jack Kevorkian, its most ardent supporter, conducted 130 assisted suicides in his lifetime. His belief was that a doctor’s “responsibilities include assisting their patients with death.”[1] This debate was recently rekindled in New Mexico. In the spring of 2012, Aja Riggs, a 49-year old uterine cancer patient, filed a suit in the Second District Court of Albuquerque, New Mexico, in which she demanded that her doctors be allowed to administer her a lethal injection if her pain became intolerable. Riggs became a plaintiff for a case that had been filed by the American Civil Liberties Union of New Mexico and Compassion & Choices, an end-of-life choice advocacy group. These two organizations had filed the case on behalf of New Mexico doctors Katherine Morris and Aroop Mangalik. Riggs was the only patient mentioned in the suit.[2]  By Taryn MacKinney
In late February of 2014, the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled in a controversial free speech case brought against a Northern California school district by the parents of three Caucasian students. The case was not the first of its kind in recent years, and it is unlikely to be the last. On Cinco de Mayo of 2010, school administrators of California’s Live Oak High School asked a group of Caucasian students – donning shirts with prominent American flags – to turn their shirts inside out. The school’s previous Cinco de Mayo celebrations had been fraught with threats of violence, stemming from racial tensions between Hispanic and Caucasian students when the latter wore similarly provocative shirts, chanted pro-American sentiments, and, in 2009, even hung a makeshift American flag from a tree on campus. The flag-donning incident angered several Hispanic students, who accused the teens of blatant racism and exchanged “profanities and threats” with them. Fear of violence and potential gang involvement prompted administrative intervention.  By Takane Shoji
New York, Los Angeles, or Philadelphia — winters on the streets are cold; but this winter, it’s especially cold. Though the number of homeless people across the country has been on the decline, more than 600,000 people are still out on the streets[1]. To put the figure in perspective, the population of Boston is a little over 630,000. The much-needed economic recovery is steadily coming along yet nowhere close to diverting resources for an expansive social welfare. On the contrary, major cities in the US have been taking away what is perhaps the only warmth homeless people have — food service on the streets. Legislations banning the public provision of food services to the homeless have pervaded the country in the past five years and just this past December, another major one — Los Angeles — was to join. Why? States have given a myriad of answers, but here’s one, by the Bloomberg administration in NYC – a city with the largest number of people on the streets. “In conjunction with a mayoral task force and the Health Department, the Department of Homeless Services recently started enforcing new nutritional rules for food served at city shelters. Since DHS can’t assess the nutritional content of donated food, shelters have to turn away good Samaritans.”[2] |
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