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The Atlantic – ICLE Academic Affiliate Bernard Black was quoted by The Atlantic in a story about the lingering risks of COVID-19 for older Americans. You can read full piece here.

“There is substantial risk, even if you’ve gotten all the vaccines,” Bernard Black, a law professor at Northwestern University who studies health policy, told me.

… A study recently published in the journal Vaccines showed that for vaccinated adults ages 60 and over, the risk of dying from COVID versus other natural causes jumped from 11 percent to 34 percent within a year of completing their primary shot series. A booster dose brings the risk back down, but other research shows that it wears off too. A booster is a basic precaution, but “not one that everyone is taking,” Black, a co-author of the study, told me.

…”One way to think about it is that this is a new risk that’s out there” alongside other natural causes of death, such as diabetes and heart failure, Black said. But it’s a risk older Americans can’t ignore, especially as the country has dropped all COVID precautions. Since Christmas Eve, I have felt uneasy about how readily I normalized putting so little effort into protecting my nonagenarian loved ones, despite knowing what might happen if they got sick. For older people, who must contend with the peril of attending similar gatherings, “there’s sort of no good choice,” Black said. “The world has changed.”

CNS News – ICLE Academic Affiliate Stan Liebowitz was cited by CNS News in a story about the role that teachers union played in school lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic. You can read full piece here.

As a landmark 2018 paper coauthored by economists Stan Liebowitz and Matthew Kelly (the latter was a research fellow at the time) found, union legal privileges, political clout, and other closely related factors have a “substantial and statistically negative relationship with student achievement.”

Law360 – ICLE Director of Competition Policy Dirk Auer was quoted by Law360 in a story about ICLE’s white paper on “doomsday mergers.” You can read full piece here.

“When we hear critics saying this merger is going to be disastrous and antitrust is not up to the task, that just doesn’t pan out,” Auer told Law360 in an interview.

The paper puts ICLE in the middle of the policy debate between defenders of traditional merger review rooted in how deals will affect consumer prices and advocates of a more expansive and aggressive approach often described as neo-Brandeisians. In addressing the last two mergers, the paper also speaks to current enforcement actions.

BeInCrypto – ICLE Academic Affiliate Thibault Schrepel was quoted by BeInCrypto in a story about passage of the EU’s Data Act. You can read full piece here.

The EU “kill switch” presents a challenge to this fundamental immutability, which many experts have found concerning. Thibault Schrepel, Associate Professor of Law and Technology at VU Amsterdam University, believes this has the potential to undermine the technology itself. “Article 30, as currently drafted, goes a step too far in addressing the issues raised by immutability,” he said in a March 14 tweet.

“Instead of enacting ‘practical immutability’ (where immutability remains the principle and alterability the exception), it makes alterability the principle. In doing so, it endangers smart contracts to an extent that no one can predict,” Schrepel continued. He also shared concerns that the definition (“smart contracts for data sharing”) used in the Article was not specific enough.

Cayman Compass – ICLE Senior Scholar Julian Morris was quoted by the Cayman Compass in a story about the impact that the global minimum tax could have on business in the Cayman Islands. You can read full piece here.

Julian Morris, a Cayman Islands-based economist who was also a guest on Thursday’s panel discussion at the Kimpton Seafire Resort, suggested this would effectively defeat the object of the measure – which is intended to repatriate wealth to the US and European countries.

Morris suggested this reaction from competitor jurisdictions would play into Cayman’s hands.

“Cayman will remain a pure tax-neutral jurisdiction and therefore could become even more attractive as a domicile,” he suggested.

The Powell Tribune – ICLE Academic Affiliate George Mocsary was quoted by The Powell Tribune in a story about the University of Wyoming’s new firearms research center, of which he is co-founder. You can read full piece here.

For center co-founder and director George Mocsary, whose parents escaped communism in Eastern Europe, it’s all about freedom.

“My father was a political prisoner for 16 years for helping student leaders speak and for helping them escape from behind the Iron Curtain,” Mocsary said.

His father spent six of those years imprisoned in solitary confinement. His mother escaped from communist Hungary on Christmas Eve, making a run for it in the middle of the night through a minefield. They ended up in New York, where Mocsary was born. He has championed freedom for most of his life.

“Tyranny is a lot harder to perpetrate against an armed population,” he said in a Tuesday interview.

Yet, Mocsary didn’t set out to be a legal scholar. First he earned a degree in engineering; then an MBA. The juris doctorate didn’t come until later in his career, but it’s in the legal field that he’s become a nationally recognized expert. He’s now a UW law professor and the co-founder of the university’s new Firearms Research Center.

Mocsary’s work has been cited by Supreme Court Justice Samuel A. Alito, the Illinois Supreme Court, and other federal courts. He is frequently quoted about firearms law in newspapers and periodicals.

Bitcoinik – ICLE Academic Affiliate Thibault Schrepel was quoted by Bitcoinik in a story about what the EU Data Act will mean for decentralized finance. You can read full piece here.

Professor Thibault Schrepel of the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam also shared his personal opinion on this new EU law and said that if it will happen then surely it will be tough for the Defi protocol users to understand who controls the platform.

Cryptopolitan – ICLE Academic Affiliate Thibault Schrepel was quoted by Cryptopolitan in a story about what the EU Data Act will mean for so-called “smart contracts.” You can read full piece here.

Professor Thibault Schrepel of the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam expressed his concerns in a tweet about the Act, which he believes “endangers smart contracts to the extent that no one can predict.” Furthermore, he highlighted potential sources of legal uncertainty in the Act, particularly concerning who has the authority to stop or interrupt a smart contract.

Yahoo Life – ICLE Academic Affiliate Thibault Schrepel was quoted by Yahoo Life in a story about what the EU Data Act will mean for so-called “smart contracts.” You can read full piece here.

The relevant portion of the Data Act, Article 30, “endangers smart contracts that no one can predict” according to Thibault Schrepel, a blockchain law expert and co-director of the Amsterdam Law & Technology Institute at VU Amsterdam. In a March 14 tweet, he said that the immutability of smart contracts is key, adding:

That said, he noted that better defining the terms of the act would be an improvement, as its focus is on data sharing specifically.