The New Breast Cancer Screening Recommendations, Women of Color and Where We Get Our Research

The new rules on breast cancer screening put out by the United States Preventive Taskforce caught my attention as I was driving home Monday because I should have had my mammogram screening eight months ago. I have been purposely avoiding it. So the news that mammograms are no longer needed for most women until age 50 and that self-breast exams are not effective came, at first, as a relief. Mammograms cause me a lot of anxiety. Twice, I have had breast cancer scares that required additional screening. The first when I was 36 and pregnant.

Reducing Mercury Emissions From Coal-Fired Power Plants: Yes We Can (And Could Have, Years Ago)

Three recent developments in the saga of efforts to regulate mercury emissions from coal-fired utilities are significant. Early last week, Michigan became the twenty-third state to require coal-fired utilities within its jurisdiction to reduce their mercury emissions. Michigan’s regulation requires these sources to cut mercury emissions by 90% by 2015. Then, on Thursday, the EPA reached a settlement with environmental groups who had sued the agency for failing to act to regulate mercury emissions. In the agreement (see NYTimes also), the EPA pledged to set standards for mercury and a number of other toxics by late 2011.

Mr. Obama, please keep the only remaining Uighur in Guantanamo, at least until January

Apparently, there are only a few Uighur remaining in Guantanamo.  The Obama administration has managed to resettle all the others in different countries.  A monumental constitutional decision depends on the administration’s decision to keep the remaining Uighur in Guantanamo.   The Supreme Court has just granted certiorari in Kiyemba v. Obama.  The jurisprudence of “aliens” will be greatly served if the administration does not attempt to render the issue moot by relocating the petitioner to another country.  They want to be admitted to the United States territory.  For that to happen, however, the Supreme Court needs to determine whether the Constitution comes between him and the US soil.

EPA Touts Remedy That Leaves Fish Off LA Coast Contaminated with DDT and PCBs for Years

With some fanfare, the EPA announced last week that it has selected a cleanup strategy for the Palos Verdes Shelf (PVS) Superfund Site off the coast of southern California – an area that has been termed “ the world’s largest DDT dump.” The EPA touts its plan as “a major milestone” that puts the site “on the road to remediation.” Nowhere, however, does EPA mention that this road is longer and more tortuous than it could or should have been. As I elaborated in an earlier entry, EPA’s selected remedy (its “preferred alternative”) provides for capping a much smaller area of contaminated sediment than another alternative EPA considered but rejected. Its selected remedy also delays the dates by which cleanup levels for DDTs and PCBs will be attained relative to the alternative – putting off until further in the future the time by which fish from the waters off the Palos Verdes peninsula will be safe to eat.

International Justice Update

With this posting I hope to start a periodic series reflecting on developments in the area of international justice, particularly as it relates to Africa.  As some of you may know, I am currently living in Nairobi, and thus am immersing myself into things East African.  So the first development I want to raise is that there is a movement among countries in East Africa (Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi) to create a regional criminal court.   This is interesting on a number of levels.  

Enslaved by a Metaphor

by Perry S. Bechky, Visiting Assistant Professor at Seattle University School of Law

Last month, in Movsesian v. Victoria Versicherung AG, a divided panel of the Ninth Circuit struck down a California law that “extends the statute of limitations until 2010 for claims arising out of life insurance policies issued to ‘Armenian Genocide victim[s].’”  The majority reasoned that California’s use of the G word is preempted by the federal government’s “policy” not to use that word when describing the Ottoman slaughter of Armenians circa World War I. 

Korematsu Center Files Amicus Brief in Washington Medical Malpractice Case

The Fred T. Korematsu Center for Law and Equality, joined by the Asian Bar Association of Washington (ABAW), the South Asian Bar Association of Washington (SABAW), and Washington Women Lawyers (WWL), filed its first amicus brief in Turner v. Stime. It was filed on September 11, 2009, and was accepted by Division III of the Washington Court of Appeals earlier this week.

What Would a Good Conversation About Picking Judges Look Like?: Reflections Inspired by the State Judicial Independence Conference

Earlier this week, I was privileged to participate as a panelist at an important and inspiring conference held here at Seattle University.  Before a standing room audience of over 400 people, thirty judges, professors, lawyers, journalists, and politicians used a variety of formats to poke and prod each other into a sophisticated and nuanced discussion of the threats to judicial integrity and public confidence in the judiciary posed by the rise of big-money state judicial election campaigns.  The conference was inspired by and keynoted by retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, who has made the elimination of elected state judiciaries one of the central causes of her retirement years.

Heebie-Jeebies and the Google Books settlement

Several years ago, Google started an ambitious project: a project to scan basically all the books in the world.  I’m not sure how many books there are in the world–I think it’s something like eleventy-million–but I love this project. When I was preparing to teach Post v. Jones in my 1L contracts class, I looked up the market price of whale oil in 1846 in Alexander Starbuck’s masterpiece “A History of the American Whale Fishery.” I’m still carrying around eight calculus textbooks from various dodgy math endeavors because I can’t bear to get rid of a book.  The thought of a library containing every book ever printed makes my cold, black heart warm up to room temperature.

Gender Segregated Sports?

I want to pick up on the topic of Professor Dean Spade’s recent post, but I want to come at it from a slightly different direction.    I think I see greater value in segregating athletes by sex than does Professor Spade.   But I also agree with him the difficulty of sex-sorting people.   This leaves me in quite the quandary.

To bring you up to speed, this exchange has been sparked by the controversy around Caster Semenya.   Semenya, an 18 year-old, won the women’s 800 meter race at the recent world track and field championships.  Not only did Semenya win her race, she won it decisively.   And that, perhaps is what got her into trouble.   Disappointed competitors have since asserted that Semenya is not a woman and this controversy has followed.

But I want to begin by considering sex-segregation in a different context.   I want to think about kids playing soccer in high school.