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One Hundred & Thirty-Eighth Spring Commencement (2024), Campbell University School Of Law

Commencement Activities

No abstract provided.

When Commanders Decide: Military Prosecutorial Decision-Making In Sexual Assault Cases, Chris Cox

Scholarly Works

Congress enacted legislation that went into effect in 2023, which transferred prosecutorial decision-making for serious cases, including sexual assault, from Commanders to military lawyers. While there is some research on the military’s criminal justice system that supports shifting the decision-making to military lawyers, there is a large body of research that suggests lawyers, too, suffer from similar impediments when handling decision-making for sexual assault cases. In the wake of this new amendment, it is important to continue assessing how the change will impact case processing, by first clearly understanding what was happening when Commanders had complete authority. This article explores …

One Hundred & Thirty-Seventh Spring Commencement (2023)

Commencement Activities

No abstract provided.

Theseus In The Labyrinth: How State Constitutions Can Slay The Procedural Minotaur, Marcus Alexander Gadson

Scholarly Works

Civil procedure is one of the biggest hurdles to access to justice. An array of rules and interpretations of those rules have turned lawsuits into meandering mazes with a procedural minotaur waiting to gobble up meritorious claims. The problem is especially acute for the many Americans without abundant resources or access to a lawyer. Fortunately, there is a ready remedy, albeit one access to justice advocates have ignored: state constitutions. Forty state constitutions, which protect hundreds of millions of Americans, generally guarantee "[t]hat all courts shall be open, and every person, for an injury done him in his person, property …

Cold Cases And Serial Offenders: A Case Study Examining Practical And Legal Issues That Can Make Or Break Prosecutions, Michael C. Kovac

Campbell Law Review

As technological advancements increase the probative value of DNA evidence (by revealing matches between suspects and evidence that could not be made with the use of older technology), cold case prosecutions will likely increase. At the same time, while DNA evidence can often lead to the identification of a guilty suspect, the prosecution of that suspect may be challenging, if not impossible. Some of these crimes were committed before DNA was used—or even considered—as an investigative tool. Oftentimes, rules governing the admissibility of evidence in such cases were drafted by individuals who likely (and quite reasonably) never contemplated the possibility …

Divine Intervention Or Unfair Influence? A Closer Look At Bibles In The Jury Room, Sarah E. Summa

Campbell Law Review

The Fourth Circuit allows jurors to bring Bibles into the jury room and reference them during deliberations. A seemingly innocent action actually denies the accused his right to a fair and impartial jury. When jurors put too much weight on the Bible’s passages about judgment, jurors risk overlooking the evidence and instead making decisions based on isolated verses. By generally allowing a Bible in the deliberation room, the Fourth Circuit opens the door to other religious texts coming into deliberations. Further, the Fourth Circuit blurs the line demarcating external and internal influences, risking the introduction of other external influences that …

A Room Without A View(Point): Must Student-Housing Employees Trade Free Speech For Free Rent?, Frank D. Lomonte, Conner Mitchell

Campbell Law Review

The COVID-19 pandemic exposed the power that public university speech policies have to silence students. Although few people were better suited to provide a candid assessment to the media of student safety in on-campus housing than resident assistants, all too often these student employees were forbidden from speaking openly, or at all. To understand the scope of these prohibitions on speech, researchers using freedom-of-information law obtained employment manuals, policies, and guidelines from a wide cross-section of public universities. This Article analyzes the language used in a sample of these materials and concludes that while these speech policies often - and …

Agriculture On The Move: Proposed Actions To Bolster Local Food Systems, Kathrynn D. Johnston

Campbell Law Review

A movement to consume fewer processed goods and obtain food from local and regional sources has gained popularity in the last two decades. Local food systems offer several benefits; however, they are not wellsupported by the federal government. The USDA has administered a system of federal agricultural subsidies for nearly a century, but that system powerfully supports a limited group, usually the largest industrial farms growing a small number of crops—none of which include fruits and vegetables. Correspondingly, consumers have gradually shifted their diets to incorporate increasing amounts of subsidized crops and those crops’ byproducts to the detriment of overall …

After All This Time: An Analysis Of The Recent Trend To Extend Truth-In-Lending-Style Disclosures To Commercial-Financing Transactions, Kelly W. Cline

Campbell Law Review

The Truth in Lending Act of 1968 (TILA) was designed to protect consumers by implementing uniform disclosures for consumer financing transactions and by creating substantive consumer protections. While TILA has been amended over the past fifty years to reflect modern needs, it has always remained a consumer financing law. Over the past few years, however, states have challenged that notion by passing laws which require TILA-inspired disclosures for certain commercial-financing trans-actions. And at the federal level, a bill was introduced in the United States House of Representatives (House Bill) that would expand TILA to commercial-financing transactions falling below a certain …

Restoring Balance To The Federal Tax-Exemption Regime’S Treatment Of Hospitals: Let Their Actions Speak Louder Than Their Charters, Nicholas Archibald

Campbell Law Review

The tax-exemption system for American hospitals was created both to optimize care for those who cannot afford it and to encourage good deeds by hospitals. But despite well-intentioned attempts by the IRS to implement these lofty policy goals, for-profit hospitals today pay taxes despite at times providing more public benefit than their nonprofit brethren while nonprofit hospitals are incentivized to seek profit rather than provide free care. This rise of this state of affairs coincides with changes by the IRS to the standards required to obtain the exemption. Originally, the nonprofit system operated on a quid pro quo model, where …

Trafficking-In And Harvesting Tax Benefits May Be Subject To Restrictions And Limitations, Ray A. Knight, Dr. Lee G. Knight

Campbell Law Review

Trafficking in and harvesting preexisting or manufactured tax losses and credits may be both beneficial and lucrative, but it may be subject to restrictions and limitations. Internal Revenue Code (“IRC”) Section 269 generally provides that acquisition of control of a corporation to gain the benefit of a deduction, credit, or other allowance is prohibited. Does the Section 269 prohibition present a concrete barrier or is it just a smoke screen? This article examines the business purpose and economic substance doctrines to explain ways to circumvent Section 269. Then, this article analyzes IRC Section 382 to describe its impact and limitations …

A Government Of The People, By The People, For The People? Revisiting Term Limits For Congress And U.S. Term Limits V. Thornton, Carey J. King

Campbell Law Review

Term limits for government officials in this country have a long but inconsistent history. On both the federal level and state levels, proponents of term limits date back to colonial times and maintained an active presence in politics during the first years of the American Republic. The push for federal term limits faded for over a century but reemerged with the ratification of the Twenty-Second Amendment in 1951 and the movement for State-imposed term limits on Congress in the 1990s. While the constitutionality of presidential term limits was decided forty-three years earlier by amendment, the question of whether the States …

No-Knock Warrants: Protective Or Predatory For North Carolinians?, Micah Mooring

Campbell Law Review

Much ink has been spilled on arguments for restraining law enforcement’s use of no-knock warrants. In 2020, the issue was thrust into the national spotlight with the tragic death of Breonna Taylor at the hands of the Louisville Metro Police Department. While national attention focused on the federal response, Oregon, Florida, Virginia, and other states sprang into action by critically reexamining the justifications offered for the use of no-knock warrants and, in some cases, finding these justifications wanting. The Comment suggests that the justification of safety that no-knock warrants share with their predecessor, the venerable knock-and-announce rule, is not borne …

A Called Third Strike: Professional Baseball’S Antitrust Exemption In A Post-Dobbs World, Matthew B. Couch

Campbell Law Review

Professional baseball has long enjoyed exemption from federal antitrust law due to a trio of Supreme Court cases. The last of these cases, Flood v. Kuhn, upheld the exemption on the basis of stare decisis, yet rejected the constitutional foundation on which it rested. This Comment argues that in the wake of the recent Supreme Court case, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the Roberts Court has provided a clear analytical framework for analyzing constitutional stare decisis that should apply to Flood. Applying the Dobbs framework, this Comment then shows how Flood fails every factor favoring continued …

One Hundred & Thirty-Sixth Spring Commencement (2022)

Commencement Activities

No abstract provided.

Bostock: A Clean Cut Into The Gordian Knot Of Causation, Melissa Essary

Scholarly Works

Regardless of merit, most individual employment discrimination claims die a fast death at summary judgment. Judges apply the fine mesh net created by McDonnell Douglas v. Green, and most cases are caught in its trap. This dated, obfuscatory Supreme Court case creates a complex and flawed binary approach to causation: either discrimination or an innocent reason caused an adverse employment action. For decades, all three levels of the federal judiciary have wrestled with McDonnell Douglas, creating snarls and knots in construing causation. Because of this causal confusion, the ideal of equal opportunity in employment is on life-support.

Judges …

Federal Pleadings Standards In State Court, Marcus Gadson

Scholarly Works

Most state courts cannot follow both their state constitutions and federal pleading standards. Even if they could, policy considerations unique to states compel state courts to reject federal pleading standards. This is because federal courts have changed pleading standards to allow judges to make factual determinations on a motion to dismiss and to require more factual detail in complaints. While scholars have vigorously debated whether these changes are wise, just, and permissible under the federal rules and the Constitution, they have ignored the even more important questions of whether state courts can and should adopt those pleading standards. The oversight …

Difficult And Novel Issues Explored By The Students Who Represented The University Of Bucharest In The 2021-2022 Edition Of The Willem C. Vis International Commercial Arbitration Moot, Raluca Papadima

Other Publications

This article provides an overview of the Willem C. Vis International Commercial Arbitration Moot in general and of the novel and difficult legal issues raised by the 2021-2022 moot problem. The procedural issue revolved around determining the law applicable to an arbitration agreement where, as it is generally the case, the parties did not specifically select it, and with the additional twist of the existence/validity of the entire contract (including the arbitration agreement) being challenged by one of the parties. The relevant considerations are addressed in an article titled "Midnight problems: finding the law applicable to the arbitration agreement", co-authored …

How Hard Is Soft Eu Company Law?, Raluca Papadima

Scholarly Works

This article analyzes the soft law applicable to companies within the European Union (EU) in order to extract tendencies, including by comparing US and EU soft law instruments. It concludes that soft law is like wine: many enjoy it, and it gets better as it ages. Soft law is a very popular and successful girl nowadays, for legitimate reasons, but one that brings about a series of concerns as well. After an overview of the main soft law instruments related to corporate governance and financial markets, and their sources, this article extracts a number of trends.

Vaccine Passports And The Right To Exclude: How The Court’S Holding In Cedar Point Nursery V. Hassid Could Light Fire To The Debate On The Constitutionality Of Vaccine Passport Requirements And Bans, John A. Kuzora

Campbell Law Review

The COVID-19 pandemic gave America its biggest health crisis in the last one hundred years. In efforts to resolve this crisis, several state governments have issued various types of public health measures. Three of these measures are Vaccine Mandates, Vaccine Passport Requirements, and Vaccine Passport Bans. This Comment explores the legality of these three public health measures through the unique lens of the Fifth Amendment Takings Clause. Specifically, this Comment focuses on how both Vaccine Passport Requirements and Bans infringe on property owners’ rights to include and exclude unvaccinated patrons. This, in turn, results in a physical taking under the …

On-Campus Or Off-Campus? - That Is Still The Question: Mahanoy Area Sch. Dist. V. B.L. And The Supreme Court’S New Digital Frontier, Kristopher L. Caudle

Campbell Law Review

This Article examines the contours of the “on-campus” versus “off-campus” distinction embedded in the Supreme Court’s opinion in Mahoney School District v. B.L. This Article argues that B.L., and the Court’s broader Tinker doctrine, fail to adequately address modern student speech issues, especially student speech arising in extracurricular programs and activities. This Article proposes a two-part legal framework for future courts to analyze student speech issues in an increasingly digital post-pandemic world.

Influenced Or Influencer? Oira's 12,866 Meetings In Review, Lia Cattaneo

Campbell Law Review

Despite attempts to improve the transparency of its operations, the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (“OIRA”) has often been maligned as a “black box” subject to improper influence by outside groups, particularly industry. Contributing to this perspective are “12,866 Meetings”: meetings between OIRA, outside parties, and some-times agencies that are governed by disclosure requirements in Executive Order 12,866, as well as strong norms within OIRA. Through an examination of empirical studies and theoretical mechanisms of influence, this Article provides a comprehensive assessment of 12,866 Meetings and their role in the regulatory development process. I argue that there is little …

Codes And Model Laws: A Eu-Us Comparison Of Their Role In Shaping Company Law, Raluca Papadima

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Compelling Code, Nicole Ligon

Scholarly Works

Does the First Amendment protect computer code from being compelled by the government? As society becomes more reliant on coded deviceslike pacemakers, insulin pumps, and even some baby bassinets-courts will need to grapple with this question. In considering compulsions related to code, this Article concludes that intermediate scrutiny is almost always the appropriate standard of review. Rather than expressing a particular viewpoint, code generally constitutes a functional and neutral script. Given that a machine's interpretation of code generally results in an objective action, not a subjective belief, the government need only show in most instances that the compulsion furthers a …

Censorship Of Sexual Assault Survivors In The Educational Context, Nicole Ligon

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

How Do You Value A Victim? Victim Impact Statements In Military Sexual Assault Trials, Chris Cox

Scholarly Works

This Article examines a timely and important issue — the use of Victim Impact Statements (VIS) in criminal trials and, more specifically, in military courts-martial. The right for victims of offenses to provide VIS has existed in the United States for approximately three decades. However, the military’s implementation of similar rights for victims has languished, with the advent of the right for a victim to provide a VIS having been implemented only within the last decade. Relying on legal precedent in the form of appellate case decisions and qualitative assessments of trial court records, this article explores the current state …

Accomplishing Equity Under Amateurism: The Name, Image, And Likeness Stipend, Dylan Bobbitt

Campbell Law Review

There are approximately 160,000 student-athletes participating in NCAA-sanctioned sports. In order to preserve their status as amateurs, the NCAA has historically prohibited student-athletes from earning certain forms of compensation during college. Demand for college sports has grown exponentially over the last fifty years, and it has become a billion-dollar industry. Despite large revenues, student-athletes still face industry-wide limits on compensation. Considering recent precedent and the NCAA’s Interim Name, Image, and Likeness Policy of 2021, this Comment proposes a rule change permitting a college to provide student-athletes a stipend for its use of their name, image, and likeness in sports broadcasts. …

Consumer Data Privacy: A Federal Standard May Be The Cure For Business Compliance, Taylor M. Lammonds

Campbell Law Review

The discussion around personal privacy has only become more important in our modern, digitized world. In Europe, world leaders recognized the need for legal mechanisms to preserve personal data privacy in the wake of the Facebook Cambridge Analytica data scandal. Following suit in the United States, California and other States have passed their own legislation with similar laudable goals. However, the broad and sweeping effects of these laws means that businesses must shift resources from profitable uses into costly compliance regimes that, in some cases, are inconsistent with each other. This Comment discusses the burdens that these laws place on …

A Ripple-Turned-Tidal Wave: Sec V. Ripple Labs As An Inflection Point In The Regulatory Approach To Innovation In Complex Systems, Christian Smith-Bishop

Campbell Law Review

This Comment makes both an observation and an argument about the SEC v. Ripple Labs, Inc. litigation. First, this Comment observes that the facts of the case constitute a challenge to the lack of clarity surrounding the current regulatory regime governing blockchains and initial coin offerings (ICOs). Second, this Comment argues that the Ripple case provides regulators an opportunity to, if they choose, use complexity theory to address technological innovation—such as blockchain—as an emergent phenomenon in a complex system rather than as a binary policy choice to be either encouraged or discouraged.

Ripple, the U.S. company behind one of the …

Redefining “Misinformation,” “Disinformation,” And “Fake News”: Using Social Science Research To Form An Interdisciplinary Model Of Online Limited Forums On Social Media Platforms, Audrey C. Normandin

Campbell Law Review

“Misinformation,” “disinformation,” and “fake news” have spread division and contention through online social media platforms, resulting in adverse effects to various areas of science, politics, and public health. This Comment takes a deeper look into the underlying motivations and beliefs behind this phenomenon by presenting a cohesive summarization of the empirical evidence gained from social science research. These terms are reclassified as “conflicting information” to deemphasize the considerations of fact or fiction and emphasize the empirical data showing these terms are social signifiers connotating “in-group” and “out-group” divisions. After developing this backdrop of social science research, the current legal proposals …