Tag: Dedman School of Law

SMU student to share innovative texting app at SXSW Red Bull Launch Institute

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date March 9, 2018

Users earn rewards with the “Just Drive” app designed to prevent distracted driving.

Neha Husein gripped her steering wheel as her car jolted forward, hit from behind on one of Dallas’ busiest and most dangerous freeways. Shaken, but not injured, the high school senior surveyed the significant damage to her car. The cause of the crash? The driver behind her was texting while driving.

The 2014 collision was the SMU junior’s inspiration to develop a solution to stop drivers from texting while driving, a practice that killed 455 Texans and played a role in 109,660 crashes in Texas in 2016. Her smart-phone app, “Just Drive,” awards points to drivers who lock their phones while driving. Those points can then be redeemed for coupons or free food, drinks or merchandise.

Husein is one of six college entrepreneurs selected to participate March 10 in the Red Bull Launch Institute at Austin’s South by Southwest Interactive Festival. She will meet with industry leaders and other entrepreneurs to further develop and amplify her project. The institute is scheduled from 3 to 6:30 p.m. at Palazzo Lavaca, 1614 Lavaca St., Austin.

She’s not being judgmental. Everyone has texted while driving, Husein says.

“We are used to multitasking, and sitting in traffic gets boring,” she says.

But the marketing and human rights major believes positive reinforcement can change behavior. Rewards are motivating to millennials like Husein. According to the Texas Department of Transportation, drivers age 16 to 34 are most likely to text while driving, but Husein is betting the app will appeal to all ages.

“Expecting incentives is a generational thing, but it’s a human thing too,” she says. “People enjoy rewards.”

Husein first presented “Just Drive” at SMU’s October 2017 Big Ideas pitch contest. She won $1,000 for her 90-second pitch and used it to create a wireframe app mock-up. The Big Ideas pitch contest is part of SMU’s Engaged Learning program, a campus wide initiative designed to enhance student learning by connecting a personal passion to academic learning and turning it into a personal project. Faculty mentorship is a key part of the Engaged Learning program.

Husein’s mentor, SMU law professor Keith Robinson, is a specialist in patent, intellectual property and technology law and co-directs the Tsai Center for Law, Science and Innovation in SMU’s Dedman School of Law. He also teaches a class to law students on designing legal apps.

“I like people who show initiative and are willing to bet on themselves,” says Robinson, who meets weekly with Husein to discuss intellectual property issues and trademark application. “Neha has developed an app for a relatable problem, one that can save lives.”

Husein is a Carrollton, Texas, native who grew up with an entrepreneur mindset. She remembers manning a toy cash register alongside her father at his convenience store. He was on hand in February 2018 to see his daughter present her business plan at the second stage of SMU’s Big Ideas competition – and win $5,000 in start-up funds.

“Just Drive is a perfect combination of my interests in human rights and marketing,” Husein says. “It combines business with a philanthropic cause.”

She plans to launch the “Just Drive” app in September, 2018. — Nancy George, SMU

Tags Dedman College, Dedman School of Law, Keith Robinson, Neha Husein

Culture, Society & Family Researcher news SMU In The News Student researchers

SMU law research: Dallas County gun-surrender program yields few results, needs improvement

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date May 26, 2017

Each year, potentially thousands of domestic abusers in Dallas County should surrender firearms. Only 60 guns have been surrendered in two years.

Under Texas and Federal law, individuals convicted of domestic abuse are required to surrender any firearms they possess — but it rarely happens.

A team of SMU law students who spent the past year studying Dallas County’s gun-surrender efforts say the program can be improved and presented recommendations during the Twelfth Annual Conference on Crimes Against Women on May 24, 2017 at the downtown Dallas Sheraton hotel.

“It is estimated that between 7,000 and 8,000 cases of domestic violence go through the courts each year in Dallas County, and yet only 60 guns have been turned in over the past two years,” says SMU Law professor Natalie Nanasi, director of the Judge Elmo B. Hunter Legal Center for Victims of Crimes Against Women. Nanasi advised law students Laura Choi, Rachel Elkin and Monica Harasim in assembling the report.

“We spent the past year looking at other programs around the country, like El Paso, Los Angeles and Portland, Ore. and developed recommendations on how to improve what’s being done in Dallas County,” Harasim says.

Proposed solutions include best-practice training for judges, the creation of a centralized office to coordinate efforts and increasing funding. The students compiled their recommendations in Taking Aim at Violence: A Report on the Dallas County Gun Surrender Program.

“Statistics show that the presence of a firearm in a domestic violence situation increases the likelihood of death by 500 percent,” Elkin says. “We hope that this report can be a tool for Dallas County leaders to use to expand and improve the Gun Surrender Program.”

The students presented their findings alongside Dallas County Criminal Court Judge Roberto Cañas, who first attempted to tackle the gun-surrender problem in Dallas County in 2015 by soliciting a grant and launching a program responsible for collecting the 60 guns over two years.

Before that, there were no organized efforts to collect guns from domestic abusers.

“Initial estimates suggested that Judge Cañas’ program would collect approximately 800 guns per year, but those estimates assumed that all judges in Dallas County would participate in the program equally, (which didn’t turn out to be the case),” says Choi. “There’s no question that the program sends an important message just by existing. The fact that the program is here and is collecting weapons speaks volumes to Dallas County’s commitment to survivor safety.”

The research and report were covered by the Dallas Morning News in the article Dallas County plan to disarm domestic abusers seizes just 60 guns in 2 years — a fraction of goal, and by Fox 4 News in their TV report Study: Dallas County gun confiscation program from domestic violence offenders falls short — Kenny Ryan, SMU

Tags Dedman School of Law, Judge Elmo B. Hunter Legal Center for Victims of Crimes Against Women, Laura Choi, Monica Harasim, Natalie Nanasi, Rachel Elkin

Culture, Society & Family Health & Medicine Researcher news SMU In The News

LiveScience: Should You Trust Health Apps on Your Phone?

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date July 28, 2014

“The FDA is woefully understaffed and under-resourced to oversee these things, particularly given the number of the thousands of apps that are [most likely] under FDA’s jurisdiction,” — Nathan Cortez

LiveScience covered the research of SMU health law expert Nathan Cortez, an associate professor of law at Southern Methodist University’s Dedman School of Law.

In a report published in The New England Journal of Medicine, Cortez and his co-authors note that smart phones and mobile devices are on the cusp of revolutionizing health care, armed with mobile health apps capable of providing everything from cardiac measurements to sonograms.

LiveScience reporter Bahar Gholipour interviewed Cortez for the July 25 article, “Should you trust health apps on your phone?”

Read the full story.

EXCERPT:

By Bahar Gholipour
LiveScience
Personal health is becoming increasingly mobile, and there are now thousands of apps aiming to address everything from lifestyle issues to chronic diseases. But can you trust these apps, the same way you trust your prescribed drugs and medical devices?

Medical devices are generally regulated by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and although the FDA reviews some apps, experts say the agency’s power and efforts aren’t nearly enough to cover the 97,000 and counting health apps out there that are transforming consumer health.

“The FDA is woefully understaffed and under-resourced to oversee these things, particularly given the number of the thousands of apps that are [most likely] under FDA’s jurisdiction,” said health law expert Nathan Cortez, an associate professor of law at Southern Methodist University Dedman School of Law in Dallas, Texas.

In an editorial published in The New England Journal of Medicine on Thursday (July 24), Cortez and his colleagues argued that health and medical apps hold the promise of improving health, reducing medical errors, avoiding costly interventions, and broadening access to care. But to reach their potential, these products have to be safe and effective, they said.

A large number of health apps, such as those that help you track your exercise or the calories in your meals, likely don’t pose a concerning risk to consumers. But in more ambitious apps, such as an app to manage insulin doses for diabetic patients, any mistake, bug or misinformation could simultaneously affect thousands of patients, and emerging evidence reveals many products do not work as claimed, or the products make mistakes.

“Early studies evaluating whether these apps work or not tend to paint a pretty dim picture of them. The results aren’t that promising,” Cortez told Live Science.

Which apps need to be regulated?
In September 2013, the FDA gave its position on what types of products and technologies would fall under its jurisdiction. Currently, the agency has a pre-market review process for some apps, meaning that the app developer submits information to the agency to get the FDA’s blessing, Cortez said. The agency also sometimes takes enforcement actions by issuing a public reprimand to a company if its products violate FDA’s rules and regulations.

Read the full story.

SMU is a nationally ranked private university in Dallas founded 100 years ago. Today, SMU enrolls nearly 11,000 students who benefit from the academic opportunities and international reach of seven degree-granting schools. For more information see www.smu.edu.

SMU Dedman School of Law was founded in 1925 and enjoys a national and international reputation of distinction, with graduates who have distinguished themselves as global leaders in law, business and government, and as prominent members of the judiciary.

SMU has an uplink facility located on campus for live TV, radio, or online interviews. To speak with an SMU expert or book an SMU guest in the studio, call SMU News & Communications at 214-768-7650.

Tags Dedman School of Law, Nathan Cortez

Culture, Society & Family Health & Medicine Technology

Booming mobile-health app market needs robust FDA oversight to ensure consumer safety, confidence

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date July 28, 2014

Health Law Experts in July 24 The New England Journal of Medicine say consumers will be spending a lot of money on these products, and venture capital is flying into the industry.

Smart phones and mobile devices are on the cusp of revolutionizing health care, armed with mobile health apps capable of providing everything from cardiac measurements to sonograms.

While tremendous potential exists to broaden access to medical treatment and control costs with mHealth apps, as they’re called, several health law experts say in a just-published report in The New England Journal of Medicine that more oversight is needed by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to ensure consumer confidence and safety.

Out of some 100,000 mHealth apps on the market, only about 100 have been cleared by the FDA. Opponents to tighter regulation see the FDA as a deterrent to innovation — and profits.

“Consumers will be spending a lot of money on these products, and venture capital is flying into the industry,” says the article’s lead author, SMU Dedman School of Law Associate Dean of Research Nathan Cortez, adding that by 2017 mHealth apps are expected to earn $26 billion — up from $2.4 billion in 2013.

The FDA needs “additional funding and in-house technical expertise to oversee the ongoing flood of mHealth products,” the authors note. An under-regulated mobile health industry could create “a Wild West” market, says Cortez, who has conducted extensive research into FDA regulation of mobile health technologies.

“Most consumers take mobile health app claims at face value, and think that because they’re available through a trusted retailer like the iTunes Store, they must have been reviewed by the FDA, which isn’t usually the case,” Cortez says.

Some apps make promises they can’t fulfill, and others make errors that could harm patients
Cortez, who also serves as an associate professor in SMU’s Dedman School of Law, co-wrote the article with Harvard Law School Professor I. Glenn Cohen, faculty director of the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology & Bioethics, and author of Human Subjects Research Regulation: Perspectives on the Future (MIT Press, 2014) and Aaron S. Kesselheim, associate professor of medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital/Harvard Medical School.

“Although the vast majority of mHealth products are very low-risk, some apps make promises they can’t fulfill, and others make errors that could harm patients,” Cortez notes, pointing out that life-threatening technical mistakes are not only possible – they also have occurred.

One of several examples cited in the study includes Sanofi Aventis’ 2012 recall of a diabetes app that miscalculated insulin dosages.

Several Congressional bills have been proposed to strengthen FDA jurisdiction over mHealth products, with one proposing the creation of a new Office of Wireless Health Technology within the administration, the article notes. Meanwhile, more restrictive bills also have been introduced to keep the FDA from regulating “clinical software” or “applying a complex regulatory framework [that] could inhibit future growth and innovation in this promising market.”

“The conventional wisdom is that FDA regulation will stifle innovation, and that’s a very short-term way to think about this,” Cortez says. “Most Silicon Valley firms aren’t used to much federal regulation, and Internet technologies have been subject to very little federal oversight.”

If dangerous errors and disproven product benefits are allowed to proliferate, “some very useful products will be undermined by widespread consumer distrust,” Cortez contends.

“We’re trying to push lawmakers to empower the FDA, not hamstring it,” he says. “Clarity will help the industry create products more helpful than harmful.” — Denise Gee

Follow SMUResearch.com on twitter at @smuresearch.

Tags Dedman School of Law, Nathan Cortez

Culture, Society & Family Researcher news

Lawtalk research looks at popular legal expressions, identifies their historical origins

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date December 21, 2011
1 Comment on Lawtalk research looks at popular legal expressions, identifies their historical origins

Elizabeth Thornburg never imagined that she would be turning to Dr. Seuss, Shakespeare and vaudeville for legal research. But those sources proved invaluable when she joined forces with another law professor, a law librarian and a legal lexicographer for the book “Lawtalk: The Unknown Stories Behind Familiar Legal Expressions” (Yale University Press, 2011).

Written by SMU Dedman School of Law professor Thornburg, along with James E. Clapp, Marc Galanter and Fred Shapiro, Lawtalk explores the origins and uses of 77 popular law-related expressions, including some of Thornburg’s favorites:

Blue laws: Government regulation of behavior intended to enforce moral values. “The name was popularized by a Connecticut Anglican priest with an ax to grind,” Thornburg says.

CSI effect: The impact that the television show CSI: Crime Scene Investigation might have on real juries in real criminal cases. “CSI and similar shows depict trace evidence being analyzed by earnest, attractive, well-dressed technicians. The results are portrayed as fast, cheap, objective, and completely reliable. This incomplete fictional portrait worries both prosecution and defense lawyers … ”

Lawyers, guns & money: A catchphrase denoting the “incentive to fight with all the tools available” adopted from the Warren Zevon song by the same name.

Kangaroo court: Surprisingly, this phrase didn’t jump from Australia to the U.S. It surfaced during the frontier days of Texas. At least three different kinds of “courts” went by this name: Those run by the ranchmen to enforce rules of the cattle business; those run by cowboys to enforce their own protocols (as in cleaning up the “smutty” language around the campfires); and those used to haze newcomers and everyone else.

Thin blue line: An image in which the “police, clad in blue, form a shield between the law-abiding populace and the criminal elements and forces of evil” is actually related to British army “red coats.”

Green card: The card — representing a noncitizen’s right to live and work in the United States indefinitely — isn’t actually green. (Well, not any more.) And it’s a great example of “Spanglish,” or the way words switch back and forth between languages, Thornburg says. “The earliest reference to ‘green card’ was in a 1962 story in the ‘Los Angeles Times’ by reporter Ruben Salazar, who did a four-part series about Mexican seasonal farm workers.” In quoting the workers, Salazar used the Spanish term “tarjeta verde” and translated it as “green card” throughout the series and in many subsequent articles. It quickly spread, becoming common in English in 1964, “ironically, just as the card stopped being green,” Thornburg says.

But then, something even more interesting began to happen: The language swap went back the other way. Two years ago Thornburg noticed an immigration advice column in the Dallas-based Spanish-language newspaper “Al Día.” Instead of talking about a ‘tarjeta verde,’ the newspaper referred to it as a “green card” — in English. As “Al Dia” copy chief Jorge Chávez explained, “We believe at this point ‘green card’ is a term understood by all our readers. Most Spanish speakers use ‘green card’ in their everyday lingo, and not ‘tarjeta verde.’ ”

Thornburg enjoys the insights that come from studying what language can tell us about the law. “Law pervades U.S. society, and the words and metaphors we use to talk about law give powerful clues about our values and what’s important to Americans as a people,” she says. “Tracing where legal language comes from can also highlight the impact of history, good and bad, on today’s law.”

Thornburg, who joined SMU in 1984, teaches and writes in the area of civil procedure and the intersection of law and culture. Drawing on her experience with civil rights and commercial litigation, her scholarship focuses on the procedural fairness of the litigation process, especially at the pleadings, discovery and jury charge stages. The Norwalk, Conn., native also writes and speaks in the areas of comparative procedure, complex litigation and online dispute resolution.

“I think people will enjoy this book,” she says. “While based on solid scholarship, it’s written to be fun to read. Linguists will love all the new discoveries about the origins of legal terms. Lawyers will love discovering the richness of our verbal universe. Historians will love observing the seamlessness of legal and non-legal history.” — Denise Gee

For more information about “Lawtalk,” click here.

SMU has an uplink facility on campus for live TV, radio or online interviews. To speak with an SMU expert or to book them in the SMU studio, call SMU News & Communications at 214-768-7650 or UT Dallas Office of Media Relations at 972-883-4321.

Tags Dedman School of Law, Elizabeth G. Thornburg

Posts navigation

1 2 Older Posts

Users earn rewards with the “Just Drive” app designed to prevent distracted driving.

Each year, potentially thousands of domestic abusers in Dallas County should surrender firearms. Only 60 guns have been surrendered in two years.

“The FDA is woefully understaffed and under-resourced to oversee these things, particularly given the number of the thousands of apps that are [most likely] under FDA’s jurisdiction,” — Nathan Cortez

Book a live interview

Related links

More SMU Research news

Health Law Experts in July 24 The New England Journal of Medicine say consumers will be spending a lot of money on these products, and venture capital is flying into the industry.

Book a live interview

Related links

More SMU Research news

Book a live interview

Related links

More SMU Research news