Purpose-Driven Board Leadership During Challenging Times

Choking incidents in nursing homes are distressing events that can have serious consequences for residents. It’s important to understand what leads to these situations and why quick actions are critical. Nursing homes are meant to be safe environments where elderly residents receive the care they need. Yet, choking remains a common concern due to various factors ranging from health conditions to improper monitoring. As individuals age, their ability to swallow sometimes deteriorates, making them more prone to choking. In nursing homes, this issue can be compounded by insufficient staff training and awareness. Recognizing the importance of immediate medical intervention when choking occurs is critical in preventing severe harm or even death. Knowing what steps to take is vital for staff, families, and legal advocates. Understanding Choking Incidents in Nursing Homes Choking incidents in nursing homes typically stem from medical conditions like dysphagia, but other…

The trust between patients and doctors is the cornerstone of quality medical care. When that trust is broken—especially if a doctor ends care abruptly without proper notice—it can put a patient’s health, safety, and legal rights at risk. In Pennsylvania, this type of behavior may be more than unethical. It could be considered medical malpractice in the form of patient abandonment. This article provides an in-depth guide to understanding when a doctor’s behavior crosses the legal line, what the laws in Pennsylvania say, and how patients can protect themselves and pursue justice.   What Is Patient Abandonment? Patient abandonment refers to a situation where a healthcare provider unilaterally terminates the physician-patient relationship without reasonable notice or appropriate steps to ensure continuity of care. The key characteristic is that the termination happens while the patient is still in need of medical attention. When Is It Considered Legal?…

The Senate has approved three Congressional Review Act resolutions initiated in the House of Representatives that overturn Environmental Protection Agency waivers, which had effectively imposed a de facto ban on the future sale of gasoline powered cars in California and 17 states, as well as Washington, DC. Congressional disapproval of California’s electric vehicle mandates is another step toward ending the electric vehicle mandate on all Americans and now awaits President Trump’s signature. Background: California’s Emissions Standards and EPA Waivers Under Section 209 of the Clean Air Act, California has, since 1968, been granted waivers by the EPA to implement vehicle emissions standards more rigorous than federal requirements, citing “compelling and extraordinary circumstances” related to air quality. In December 2024, the Biden administration’s EPA granted such waivers, allowing California to proceed with its Advanced Clean Cars II…

[Claims that Justice Amy Coney Barrett is at the center for the Court are not supported by the data. The truth is more complicated.] In a recent post, Josh Blackman writes that "Justice Barrett is solidifying herself as the swing Justice," citing a recent analysis by Adam Feldman of Legalytics. As someone who follows the Court quite closely, this did not seem right to me. It turns out my skepticism was warranted. The primary point of Feldman's analysis, "The Myth of the Modern Swing Vote," is that there is no Justice Kennedy-style median justice on the current court. Rather, there is a more complex dynamic among the Court's six conservative justices that results in shifting coalitions depending upon the subject-matter and salience of the case at hand. But even with that caveat, and if one solely wishes to focus on which conservative justice's vote is most often in play to form a majority with multiple liberal justices, Feldman's analysis…

As we are already at the mid-point of the year, I thought I would republish the below article of mine from the June 30, 2008  edition of the Pennsylvania Law Weekly:A Mid-Year TuneupTen tips to improve your practice and reduce stressByDaniel E. Cummins, EsquirePennsylvania Law WeeklyJune 30, 2008There is no better time of year than the month of June, when thoughts are beginning to turn to the salty air and sandy beaches at the shore or the cool breezes and lapping lakefronts in the mountains of Pennsylvania, to take a moment to rededicate oneself to the goal of improving one's practice while at the same time reducing any unnecessary stress. The following tips are suggested in this regard.ANTICIPATEBy routinely looking ahead 30 to 45 days on the calendars, conflicts and deadlines will never creep up on you and cause unnecessary stress.In terms of scheduling conflicts, looking ahead and clearing up problems is not only respectful of the schedule of opposing…

This is the post-SCOTUS remand of Moody v. NetChoice. To dispose of various motions, the court must construe the statutory term “social media platform.” Florida’s statutory definition: “Social media platform” means any information service, system, Internet search engine, or access software provider that: 1. Provides or enables computer access by multiple users to a computer server, including an Internet platform or a social media site; 2. Operates as a sole proprietorship, partnership, limited liability company, corporation, association, or other legal entity; 3. Does business in the state; and 4. Satisfies at least one of the following thresholds: a. Has annual gross revenues in excess of $100 million, as adjusted in January of each odd-numbered year to reflect any increase in the Consumer Price Index. b. Has at least 100 million monthly individual platform participants globally. To me, this definition essentially means every website doing…

Here: David A. Robertson (Norway House Cree Nation) gives us 52 practical suggestions—one for each week of the year—to support and connect with Indigenous people. 52 Ways to Reconcilelists tasks as simple and enjoyable as making Bannock, to as challenging as taking personal action toward reconciliation. Matthew Fletcher (Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians) has devoted himself to the legal profession, becoming one of the most respected experts in Indian Law. In his spare time he has written and published a collection of fictional short stories, Stick Houses. He draws from his own observations and stories from his family to illustrate the lives of modern Native Americans. We’ll add Matthew Fletcher’s Stick Houses, and David A. Robertson’s 52 Ways to Reconcile to the Native Bookshelf.

A bill being passed through the Italian legislature by Giorgia Meloni’s government resulted in protests on Saturday in Rome. The bill is being criticized for its alleged reduction of human right protections in the criminal justice system. The law strengthens protections for police accused of violence and doles out harsher punishment for protesters. Legal aid, up to €10,000, will be provided to police on duty who are accused of excessive violence. The bill additionally speeds up eviction procedures for illegal squatters and does not allow pregnant women or mothers of young children to avoid jail. Protests resulting in road blockages now have the potential to incur a 2-year jail sentence. The purpose of the bill is to restore “order, security, and legality.” The bill was introduced in 2024 as part of a large scheme of reform begun in 2021. Since its inception, the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights issued a warning about several…

A federal judge on Friday prevented the Trump administration from revoking temporary protected status for 5,000 Venezuelans – halting the invalidation of work permits and other residency documents. San Francisco U.S. District Judge Edward Chen found that Home Security Kristi Noem potentially exceeded her legal authority when trying to invalidate Temporary Protection Status (TPS)-related documents issued under the Biden administration to the Venezuelans. In April of 2024 former Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas announced an 18-month extension of the Temporary Protected Status, a program that grants temporary work authorization to individuals of certain countries deemed unsafe, allowing the current beneficiaries to re-register and maintain work authorizations until March of 2026. Shortly after the second Trump administration took over, however, Secretary Kristi Noem announced the cancellation of the TPS, calling it “against the country’s national…

Join Michael H. Cohen, founding attorney at Cohen Healthcare Law Group, as he discusses the crucial FDA guidelines that functional food and beverage companies must follow. The post Legal Essentials for Functional Food and Beverage Companies: Compliance and Marketing appeared first on Cohen Healthcare Law Group | Healthcare Lawyers | FDA & FTC Law.

As reported by Reuters here:  An attorney defending artificial-intelligence company Anthropic in a copyright lawsuit over music lyrics told a California federal judge on Thursday that her law firm Latham & Watkins was responsible for an incorrect footnote in an expert report caused by an AI "hallucination." Ivana Dukanovic said in a court filing that the expert had relied on a legitimate academic journal article, but Dukanovic created a citation for it using Anthropic's chatbot Claude, which made up a fake title and authors in what the attorney called "an embarrassing and unintentional mistake." Although not about AI hallucinations, Matthew Dahl in this recent paper, shows that LLMs are not very good even at technical conformance with bluebook rules:  Bye-bye, Bluebook? Automating Legal Procedure with Large Language Models Legal practice requires careful adherence to procedural rules. In the United States, few are more complex than…

[And that is the problem.] President Trump continues to shift paradigms and cause people to reconsider long-held beliefs. His latest Truth Social post has launched a thousands takes. I've already focused on Ed Whelan and the Wall Street Journal. Here, I will write about David French's column in the New York Times. David purports to explain why many Republican-appointed judges have ruled against Trump. David is not simply writing based on what he reads in judicial opinions. Rather, he suggests that he has some inside information--or at least personal insights. French writes: I come from the conservative legal movement, I have friends throughout the conservative legal movement (including many Trump-appointed judges), and I think I know the answer, or at least part of it. David is speaking, or least he purports to speak, for judges that Trump appointed during his first term. I've written that Whelan and the Wall Street Journal got the situation 100% backwards.…

On June 5, 2025, the Minerva Center for the Rule of Law under Extreme Conditions, in collaboration with the Clinical Legal Education Center and the Fried-Gal Transitional Justice Program at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, will host webinar on "Transitional Justice for Israel-Palestine in Comparative Perspective." Details are here.     

A jury charge in Texas serves a specific purpose: to instruct the jury on the law applicable to the case being tried. Article 36.14 of the Texas Code of Criminal Procedure outlines the procedure and requirements for a proper jury charge. It is a critical stage in the trial process that informs the jury not only about the legal standards it must use in determining the defendant’s guilt or innocence but also about the jury’s prerogative to find a lesser-included offense or accept an affirmative defense if the facts and law permit such findings. Article 36.14 and its application, as defined by the State’s jurisprudence, has carved out several basic prerequisites for a proper jury charge: It must include all the elements for the offense being tried, such as the definition of the offense (e.g., murder), the required mental state to commit the offense, and the required theories of liability (e.g., acting as principal or accomplice). The jury charge must be in…

 Pix credit here On the basis of Resolution 26/9 (2014), the Human Rights Council established an open-ended intergovernmental working group on transnational corporations and other business enterprises with respect to human rights. The mandate for the OEIGWG, buttressed by a cohesive and like minded group of supporters, was to elaborate an "international legally binding instrument to regulate, in international human rights law, the activities of transnational corporations and other business enterprises." This, the  OEIGWG has sought to do with great vigor, aided by a closely self-referencing group of supporters who have managed to maintain the sort of committed solidarity that may be necessary in this age to put forward a compulsory version of their vision for the rest of us. To that end, they have singlemindedly labored for more than a decade to produce a draft of something that appeals to them and their supporters. Pix credit hereThey have come…

Rephael Stern, Harvard Law School; Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, has published The Lost English Roots of Notice-and-Comment Rulemaking at 134 Yale L.J. 1955 (2025). Notice-and-comment rulemaking is arguably the most important procedure in the modern administrative state. Influential accounts even frame it as the 1946 Administrative Procedure Act's "most important idea." But its historical origins are obscure. Scholars have variously suggested that it grew out of the constitutionally sanctioned practice of congressional petitioning, organically developed from the practices of nineteenth-century agencies, or was influenced by German conceptions of administrative rulemaking. These histories, however, are incomplete. Using original archival research, this Article demonstrates that notice-and-comment rulemaking was the product of a series of American transplantations of English rulemaking procedures that developed in the late nineteenth and early…

Amnesty International decried an Italian government order Saturday, claiming its elevated sanctions against activists, prisoners and migrants constitute a potential grant of arbitrary law enforcement power. The new measures, called “draconian” by the organization, create new offenses for prisoners and migrants at detention centers for not cooperating with or passively resisting police orders. According to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, parts of the measure may contradict fundamental pillars of criminal justice. The decree law contains, according to the Special Rapporteurs of the United Nations, several instances of vaguely worded provisions that expand the concept of terrorism beyond current international definitions. Human rights experts believe this may cause the bill to stand on uneasy legal footing and violate well known standards in international human rights law. The new provisions would also limit “passive resistance” in…

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) urged El Salvador Friday to repeal its newly enacted “foreign agents” law, calling it a direct threat to press freedom and civil society. The law, approved on May 20 by the Legislative Assembly dominated by President Nayib Bukele’s party, requires organizations and individuals receiving international funding to register with the Ministry of Interior and imposes a 30 percent tax on such funds. It also grants the government sweeping authority to monitor, fine, or shut down those who fail to comply. Journalists and legal experts have expressed concern that the law’s vague and broad language allows authorities to arbitrarily classify anyone receiving foreign support as a foreign agent. This could impact freelance reporters, trainers, and nonprofit workers, who risk being labeled as hostile actors simply for engaging in international partnerships. The measure has drawn sharp comparisons to authoritarian regimes,…