ASULJADMIN

Christopher K. Odinet. The promise of financial technology (“fintech”) and artificial intelligence (“AI”) in broadening access to financial products and services continues to capture the imagination of policymakers, Wall Street, and the public. This has been particularly true in the realm of fintech credit where platform companies increasingly provide online loans to consumers, students, and small businesses by harnessing AI underwriting and alternative data. In 2019 alone, fintech lenders represented nearly 50% of total non-credit card, unsecured consumer loan balances in the United States. One of the most prevalent ways fintech credit firms operate is by securitizing the online loans they help originate. In doing so, fintech lenders are able to access the capital markets and further the spread of borrowed capital and credit risk. Against this backdrop of increasing…

Edward J. McCaffery. The American political system, decades into the twenty-first century, seems badly broken. Money lies everywhere at the root of its worst evils. By almost any reasonable account, there is too much money in American politics. The 2016 presidential and congressional election cycle saw an astonishing $6.5 billion in campaign contributions. Looking at individual donors, Sheldon Adelson, the casino magnate from Nevada, gave $82.5 million along with his wife Miriam; the hedge fund manager and environmentalist Tom Steyer topped all donors with $90 million. Things did not stop there; money-in-politics things never seem to stop anywhere. Adelson donated at least $100 million in the 2018 midterm elections, while Steyer has pledged to spend $100 million on his own personal presidential campaign in 2020. Topping them all, Michael Bloomberg, the billionaire former Mayor of…

Michele E. Gilman. Algorithmic profiling technologies are impeding the economic security of low-income people in the United States. Based on their digital profiles, low- income people are targeted for predatory marketing campaigns and financial products. At the same time, algorithmic decision-making can result in their exclusion from mainstream employment, housing, financial, health care, and educational opportunities. Government agencies are turning to algorithms to apportion social services, yet these algorithms lack transparency, leaving thousands of people adrift without state support and not knowing why. Marginalized communities are also subject to disproportionately high levels of surveillance, including facial recognition technology and the use of predictive policing software. Full Article.

Richard Delgado & Jean Stefancic. We describe a new consensual theory of borders and immigration that reverses Peter Schuck’s and Rogers Smith’s notion of citizenship by consent and posits that borders are legitimate—and make sense—only if they are products of consent on the part of both countries on opposite sides of them. Our approach, in turn, leads to differential borders that address the many sovereignty and federalist problems inherent in border design by a close examination of the policies that different borders—for example, the one between California and Mexico—need to serve in light of the populations living nearby. We build on our work on border laws as examples of Jacques Derrida’s originary violence. We assert that laws that exhibit a high degree of originary violence lead, almost ineluctably, to actual…

Sarah Pook.Full ArticleI. IntroductionIt starts with a fever. A splitting headache. Vomiting, fatigue, an earache—then the secondary symptoms begin. Vision loss. Stiff neck. Lethargy, confusion, inability to walk, an aversion to light. Hallucinations. Doctors scramble to make a diagnosis, attempting treatment for bacterial meningitis, viral encephalitis, herpes, or other rare diseases, but nothing works.[1] Finally, a coma. Death follows within three days.[2]Diagnosis is usually done post-mortem: the culprit is primary amebic meningoencephalitis, or PAM.[3] The disease is identified via a cerebrospinal fluid tap under a microscope. Peering in, you can see free living amoeba swimming around in the spinal fluid.[4]The name of the amoeba that causes this invasive and rapidly fatal disease is Naegleria fowleri (“N. fowleri”).[5] Under the microscope, it looks innocuous, but in reality, it’s a cold-blooded killer…

Ashley N. Gomez. On January 30, 2017, Sidd Bikkannavar arrived at the George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston, Texas from a trip to Chile. He had taken a few weeks off from work to go on a personal trip to pursue his hobby of racing solar-powered cars. He is a natural-born U.S. citizen, an employee of a federal agency—NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory—and a “seasoned international traveler.” After U.S. Custom and Border Protection (“CBP”) processed Sidd’s passport, a CBP officer detained him and brought him into a separate room within the airport. There, the CBP officer questioned him about where he came from, where he lived, and where he worked.6 The CBP officers questioned Sidd on information they already possessed through his membership in CBP’s “Global Entry” program—an expedited clearance program…

Mark C. Weber. This Essay seeks to demonstrate that federal disability discrimination law conflicts with and thus supervenes the Trump Administration’s new regulations changing the standards for excluding immigrants from the United States on the basis of their likelihood of becoming a public charge. The new regulations use an explicit disability-related discriminatory criterion that is not required by the statutory admission standards and will have an unjustified negative impact on immigrants who have disabling conditions. The Essay draws the comparison to Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, Inc., a 2014 case in which the Supreme Court invalidated a federal regulation on the ground that it conflicted not with its enabling legislation but with an unrelated federal statute, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. Full Article

Alexander Volokh. North Carolina State Board of Dental Examiners v. FTC (N.C. Dental) has worked a potential revolution in antitrust law. A revolution because it makes clear that state regulatory agencies dominated by active market participants are not entitled to immunity from federal antitrust liability unless they are actively supervised by the State. But still only a potential revolution, because much depends on what counts as “active state supervision.” The story of N.C. Dental is, in large part, the story of how federal courts have tried to define “the State” (for purposes of state-action immunity). N.C. Dental has rejected a labeling approach, a balancing approach, and a sovereignty approach in favor of a financial disinterestedness approach. I argue that this approach isn’t obvious from an abstract political-philosophy standpoint but is…

Michael J. Saks, Adela Grando, Chase Millea, & Anita Murcko. Health Information Exchanges (HIEs) are centralized repositories of patients’ health records. The records come from most or all of the providers and health-care organizations within a given region or locale. Used mainly for clinical care, patients’ records can generally be accessed by any of the patients’ health-care providers, care coordinators, or payors, enabling them to see comprehensive and up-to-date health information pertaining to the patient. Patients’ records and HIEs are heavily regulated by federal and state law both to achieve effective flow of information and ensure the privacy and security of the data. That same data could be a remarkable resource for medical researchers to use to improve health and health care. But the data sit unused by researchers. Why?…