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 Lindsey Li
Lindsey Li is a freshman at the University of Pennsylvania and an associate editor of the Penn Undergraduate Law Journal. With hundreds of students flying home for school breaks and the holidays over the next two months, the number of families looking for deals on airline ticket prices continues to grow, as do ticket prices Even discount airlines, such as Frontier, on which this author flew home from Philadelphia to Texas during our school’s Fall Break for only $101 round-trip, and Spirit have inflated prices almost four-fold for the upcoming weeks as students near highly-anticipated Thanksgiving and winter breaks. Enter SkipLagged. The start-up, founded by Aktarer Zaman in 2013 after graduating with a major in computer science from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, aims to “book cheaper flights by taking advantage of ‘hidden city’ fares.” [1] In other words, it utilizes connections so that the flier will never actually take the second leg of the trip. [2] Now, as most frequent fliers know, it is often cheaper to fly, for example, from San Francisco to Houston to New York than it is to take a direct flight from San Francisco to New York. However, what SkipLagged does is present the former option to the flier whose final destination is Houston, provided it is cheaper than a direct flight from San Francisco to Houston.
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 By Lindsey Li
Lindsey Li is a freshman at the University of Pennsylvania and an associate editor of the Penn Undergraduate Law Journal. Virtually unknown five years ago, Uber has quickly become the world’s largest ride-sharing business model company. [1] Though currently expanding at a rate faster than that of Facebook in its sixth year as a private company, Uber is facing several legal issues that may ultimately prevent it from dominating the transportation industry. The first dilemma Uber faces is misidentification and allegedly inaccurate background checks. Highly criticized for its negligent background check policies, Uber has been accused of hiring “registered sex offenders, identity thieves, burglars, a kidnapper, and a convicted murderer.” Additionally, Uber has had a history of criminals posing as Uber drivers; one recent example is that of an anonymous undergraduate at Simmons College who was approached by a “dark vehicle...the man behind the wheel said he was an Uber driver, and told the student to get in.” [2] This is especially problematic for students who attend universities in large cities and may rely on Uber as their main form of transportation between their campuses and the rest of the city. Social consequences such as kidnapping and exploitation arising from these scenarios also leave the culpability factor unclear—would Uber bear the blame for these crimes?  By Lindsey Li
Lindsey Li is a rising freshman at the University of Pennsylvania. Governor Greg Abbott recently provided new venues for Texas’ proud gun owners to carry their weapons in public, approving Mandatory Campus Carry. The new policy requires post-secondary educational institutions to allow firearms on campus. [1] Signing the bill into law on a gun range, Abbott proclaimed Texans’ Second Amendment rights “Stronger and more secure than ever before”. [2] For the past two decades, Texans have had the right to carry concealed handguns in public spaces, and the state is home to some of the nation’s most relaxed gun laws, as license holders are not required to go through metal detectors at the state capitol because it is already assumed they are armed. However, many Texans believe this right should not extend to students. They believe that any such policy should be left to the discretion of each university’s government and student bodies, an “institutional Campus Carry” policy. In contrast, mandatory Campus Carry allows “license holders to carry concealed handguns on public college campuses – but included a caveat that lets college presidents designate gun-free zones”. [3] In a vote that took only an hour, the state House of Representatives passed the “controversial measure 98-to-47”. [4] Advocates of the policy applauded students’ newfound ability to protect themselves, freeing them from any dependence on campus security, and defended the decision, claiming that a “common error made by anti-gun groups…is the failure to logically delineate the differences in the motivations of individuals who would use lethal force to be predators and those that are willing to use lethal force to stop the predation”. [5] However, it remains unclear how the pro-arms group draws the distinction itself.  By Lindsey Li
Lindsey Li is a rising freshman at the University of Pennsylvania. Enacted in 1979, China’s infamous and controversial one-child policy has been both lauded as the most effective population control mandate in modern times and criticized as a stark invasion of privacy and a severe violation of basic freedom. However, with the repercussions of a shrinking workforce and “a structural slowdown in the economy” looming ahead, questions arise as to whether the recent legal modifications to China’s long-standing one-child policy are enough to reverse the damage it has already done. [1] Prior to today’s population control measures, the world’s most populous nation, at just under 1.2 billion people, was experiencing a birthrate “as high as four children per family,” which often led to food shortages and famine. [2] In order to ensure that resources were equally distributed amongst individuals to most efficiently contribute back to society, the Communist Party passed the one-child policy. Using grotesque methods such as “forced abortion” and “massive fine[s],” China’s government ultimately managed to decrease births by about 100 million at the turn of the century. [3] |
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