Last term the newly empowered conservative majority on the Supreme Court demonstrated to all that precedent is not so precedential, even when it had stood for nearly fifty years. They very nearly did it again, but just missed, targeting precedent on religious exemptions and vaccine mandates that has been around for more than twice as long.
Continue Reading Vaccine Mandates and Religion at the Supreme Court
Litigation tourist plaintiffs have been taking it on the chin lately when it comes to personal jurisdiction. Here’s another example. Durham v. LG Chem, Ltd., 2022 WL 274498 (11th Cir. Jan. 31, 2022), is not a drug and device case and not precedential (note: the Fed. Appx. reporter is no more), but is nonetheless
We have tried to be pretty balanced in addressing a number of decisions over the last few months relating to lawsuits brought by the euphemistically labeled “vaccine hesitant” and their brethren who advocate aggressively for entitlement to “alternative” medical treatments like anti-parasitic (veterinary) drugs. We have been restrained in treating these lawsuits as having been
We reported two weeks ago on the poorly conceived and ill-fated attempt by students to enjoin a public university from mandating COVID-19 vaccines. There simply is no fundamental right under the Constitution to refuse vaccination, which has been firmly established for more than 100 years. Now the Seventh Circuit has agreed.
Let’s be candid about
All of us are long-time defenders of prescription medical product manufacturers, and some of us are veterans of the vaccine wars of the 1980s and 1990s involving DPT vaccine and thimerosal. We are big fans of vaccines and the tremendous health benefits they have bestowed on humanity, and are mystified by the alliance between anti-vaccine
The last time we wrote about vaccines, we received a lot of emails. Vaccines are a hot-button issue for some, although we firmly believe they should not be. Vaccines have prevented disease in millions and millions of people and are among the most important public health developments of all time.
When we wrote that
Anyone remember Monty Python’s first movie, before anyone had ever heard of them? Along with the dead parrot and the Lumberjack Song, “And Now For Something Completely Different” featured a formally dressed man, sitting at an unexceptional desk, both of the sort you might find in a British law firm of the era (early
How many of us entered law school dreaming of following the paths of Brandeis, Marshall, etc. in the field of constitutional law? How many of us now can go weeks, or even months, without reading a Supreme Court case? Paying off student loans led many of us to work for law firms where there was
Last week, in Timbs v. Indiana, ___ S. Ct. ___, 2019 WL 691578 (U.S. Feb. 20, 2019), the Court unanimously held that the Excessive Fines Clause of the U.S. Constitution’s Eighth Amendment applies to the states:
Under the Eighth Amendment, “[e]xcessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual
We’ve blogged a number of times about the Dormant Commerce Clause (“DCC”) as an additional basis for bolstering both preemption and Due Process arguments. Here’s another prescription drug-based example.
The state of New York decided to impose a special tax on opioid manufacturers to finance various responses to the so-called “opioid epidemic.” The tax came