In a co-authored op-ed, Professor Brook Baker urges the president of South Africa to declare his support for the Solidarity Call to Action on the COVID-19 technology pool, which will be officially launched on 29 May 2020: “We remind President Ramaphosa that there is work to be done at home amending South Africa’s Patents Act, and instituting emergency measures to temporarily suspend patenting of COVID-19 medical products and to provide for automatic or mandatory compulsory licenses on such products should voluntary measures prove unsuccessful.”

How does the patent process work for vaccines in the US, and how does the ongoing global health crisis affect the law? On WGBH’s Morning Edition, Professor Daniel Medwed gives a breakdown of the basic intellectual property law related to developing a vaccine for COVID-19.

Northeastern Law’s Community Business Clinic (CBC) has launched a legal help desk for small businesses in Lynn, Mass. Under the supervision of Professor Jared Nicholson, CBC students will field legal questions, such as those pertaining to reopening under COVID-19 guidelines, financial assistance applications and commercial leases.

Congratulations to Hakeem Muhammad ’20 on being selected as the 2020 recipient of the Massachusetts Bar Association’s Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. Scholarship. Muhammad plans to devote himself to protecting the rights of indigent clients as a soon-to-be public defender with the Committee for Public Counsel Services (CPCS) in Roxbury.

“In these moments of uncertainty we all suddenly feel the need to police our own behavior, but also police other people’s behavior as well,” Professor Aziza Ahmed tells Oregon Public Broadcasting.

“The intervention by the federal government in private tort law of states would be extremely problematic,” Professor Emily Spieler tells The Washington Post. “Tort law is a matter of states.”

Listen back: Professor Daniel Medwed joined WGBH’s Morning Edition to talk about the new charges against the officers in the George Floyd killing and how they could play out in court.

Listen back: On NPR’s All Things Considered, Professor Deborah Ramirez talks about her proposal to make personal liability insurance mandatory for individual police officers.

In an op-ed co-authored for The Boston Globe, Professor Deborah Ramirez and Marcus Wraight ’18 make the case for mandatory individual liability insurance for police

Good privacy engineering is one piece of the puzzle for contact tracing apps, writes Professor Woodrow Hartzog in an op-ed for the LA Times. “Perhaps even more difficult is weighing the long-term consequences of how these tools will be used after the pandemic ends.”