The Rappaport Center for Law and Public Policy at Boston College Law School collects papers of affiliated members, including white papers by select Rappaport Fellows who were awarded the Center's research grant. Fellows' research papers focus on a question of law and public policy related to their Fellowship work in a state or local government office.

Rappaport Center for Law and Public Policy Papers

Two months after the first cases of COVID-19 were detected in Wuhan, China, state governments faced the threat of an unprecedented public health emergency caused by an unknown pathogen, and uncertainty about the efficacy of containment measures. After the WHO announced that COVID-19 had become a pandemic, the Trump Administration declared a National Emergency and issued a travel ban on March 13, 2020. Subsequently, counties in New York and Washington began issuing stay-at-home orders, followed by California’s state wide order. Deriving authority from state emergency management and public health statutes, governors have relied heavily on executive orders and emergency declarations to contain the spread of the virus. As the pandemic persists, both private parties and state legislators have become increasingly hostile to the prolonged use and renewal of general emergency powers. The long-term nature of many of these executive orders has led to controversies about the extent to which governors can act unilaterally to mandate public health measures and restrict personal freedoms, and legal challenges have been inundating the courts for over a year.
This paper focuses specifically on challenges to the exercise of executive power (1) where state constitutions do not specify the scope of executive powers or define legislative checks during a public health emergency; (2) where state disaster management statutes do not indicate whether a “disaster” includes a public health emergency or pandemic; and (3) where state governors face politicized resistance to their emergency authority and attacks from their own legislators. In looking at the implications of these challenges, this paper does not suggest that judicial review of executive power should be limited or suspended during a public health emergency. Nor does it suggest that amending statutory frameworks for emergency response is an inherent threat to executive authority. Instead, it explores opportunities to strengthen current constitutional and statutory frameworks and prevent the over-politicization of future public health response.

Examining Executive Authority During Public Health Emergencies: Challenges to COVID-19 Executive Orders & Implications for Future Public Health Policy

There are two rights an educational entity must weigh in response to a public request for information: the public’s right to know, and the right to privacy of both students and education agency employees. For public records requests, educational entities must ground their approach not only in the federal and state laws that shape public right to public agency information, but also in an understanding of what is known as derivative disclosure: how the context of a provided record can lead to inference of a student or employee’s identity alongside other information about them that should have been protected from disclosure under federal and state law, or that goes beyond the intent of the educational entity when sharing that record.
In Massachusetts, there is no single consistent standard for how to effectively apply all relevant law in order to protect privacy rights and prevent derivative disclosures without compromising the ability of an educational entity to respond to a public records requests in a timely manner. Determination of what information may be appropriately disclosed is necessarily fact-based, and this contextual requirement does not allow for a single, universally applicable rule for balancing transparency with the risk of derivative disclosure. There is still the opportunity, however, for greater standardization of the review process.
This research paper aims to articulate the governing law surrounding student privacy protections and public record requests, and to identify where the friction points between the two agency obligations develop. This paper will look to how educational entities use contract law as an added layer of protection for student and employee information when partnering with third parties as a potential model and path forward for standardizing decision making around information sharing and protection against derivative disclosure of protected personal information.

The Balance Between Transparency, Efficiency, and Privacy Protection: Keeping student and school employee information safe without limiting the public's right to know

Amidst a global pandemic, President Donald Trump removed five inspectors general within the federal government, including the inspector general in charge of overseeing the coronavirus response efforts in health agencies and the inspector general directly involved with the whistleblower complaint that led to Trump’s impeachment. The President’s unprecedented actions against government oversight officials calls attention to an otherwise little-noticed institution and signals a growing need for accountability in government on all levels.
Independence is critical to the success of an inspector general in the performance of their statutory duties. Those duties are compromised, however, when the authority that oversees the inspector general removes them from office due to political or self-serving motivations. In light of President Trump's unprecedented actions, changes to the institutional structure of federal inspectors general should look to the states, such as Massachusetts, where the inspector general is more insulated from politics and may not be removed unilaterally. In Part I, the history, general structure, and key characteristics of federal inspectors general are examined. Part II explores the history and structure of the Massachusetts Office of the Inspector General, as well as key characteristics. Finally, Part III discusses the importance of institutional independence to inspectors general in the context of President Trump's removals and argues potential reforms to prevent future actions on the federal level.

Rappaport Center for Law and Public Policy Papers

Items in this collection

Examining Executive Authority During Public Health Emergencies: Challenges to COVID-19 Executive Orders & Implications for Future Public Health Policy

The Balance Between Transparency, Efficiency, and Privacy Protection: Keeping student and school employee information safe without limiting the public's right to know

Inspectors General and the Importance of Independence

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The Balance Between Transparency, Efficiency, and Privacy Protection: Keeping student and school employee information safe without limiting the public's right to know

Inspectors General and the Importance of Independence

Items in this collection