Month: December 2019

Previving with a Sisterhood

Previving with a Sisterhood

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Andrea Downing is living with a BRCA1 mutation, which puts her at a high risk for cancer, the same disease that she saw her mother and grandmother endure. Although at first her diagnosis created a pervading feeling of loneliness, Andrea has found a group on Facebook, the BRCA Sisterhood support group, to share information and break through the isolation. But as much as Andrea praises her own and other patient community groups, she worries that social media hosts, such as Facebook, pose a threat to the safety of these groups and their health data. In this episode, Andrea talks about what it means to be a previvor, how her Sisterhood empowered her, and where she is now in the fight to secure patient community groups.

Bans with Blocher

Bans with Blocher

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Professor Joseph Blocher talks about his recent article, Bans. He argues that, in certain areas of constitutional law, judges are particularly skeptical of laws that can be described as bans. For instance, some courts have held that laws that ban an entire “class of arms” are not subject to the usual means-ends balancing tests, but rather are automatically invalid. But, as Professor Blocher explains, figuring out when a law bans something is harder than it seems. Imagine a law prohibiting the sale of pink guns. Is that a general gun regulation, or a ban on pink guns? Professor Blocher describes three approaches to defining bans (functional, formal, and purposivist), and says, at least in Second Amendment doctrine, a functionalist approach is the best way for courts to resolve these issues.