Law Commons^™

Accessing Justice With Zoom: Experiences And Outcomes In Online Civil Courts, Victor D. Quintanilla, Kurt Hugenberg, Ryan Hutchings, Nedim Yel

Articles by Maurer Faculty

The global COVID-19 pandemic brought significant change to our civil justice system, particularly in the rapid shift from in-person to remote court proceedings. Courts across the country, facing the unprecedented challenge of a global health emergency, embraced rapid innovation and the adoption of remote proceeding platforms, such as Zoom and Webex. State courts did so across case types, including within high-volume civil dockets containing evictions, debt collections, small claims, and family law cases, where millions of self-represented and unrepresented litigants encounter the U.S. civil justice system each year. Amid the pandemic, voices converged to encourage these justice innovations, including the …

The Saudi Judge's Discretion In Liquidated Damage Clauses: An Applied Analytical Study In Light Of Islamic Sharia Law, Salman Mufleh R. Al-Kahtani

Maurer Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation studies the treatment by Saudi judges under Islamic Sharia law of liquidated damages clauses in contracts, a critical part of modern commercial transactions.

After introducing the basic and secondary sources of Islamic law and discussing the current treatment of the liquidated damages clause by Saudi judges according to general Islamic rules and the four jurisprudence schools, this dissertation demonstrates that Saudi judges have broad discretion in applying jurisprudence rules, particularly Hanbali jurisprudence, the applicable jurisprudence in the Saudi courts.

Numerous interpretations of the same jurisprudential rule exist, resulting in multiple judicial rulings for the same jurisprudential rule. Among …

The Oslo Accords: A Modern-Day Story Of Occupation Told Through Violations Of The Right To Freedom Of Privacy, Catherine Demetrovich

Indiana Law Journal

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict began in the early 1900s when the disputed land, what is now the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, fell under British rule. After the Six- Day War in 1967, Israel took control of the West Bank, Golan Heights, and the Gaza Strip. Since then, tensions between Israel and Palestine have continued to grow. This Note explores a modern-day occupation question: Israel’s control over Palestine’s information and communication technology (ICT) sector. Along with privacy and human rights violations, Israel’s control is in direct violation of the Oslo Accords— guaranteeing Palestinians limited self-governance in Gaza and the West …

Constitutional Court Landscape Post - Arab Spring: A Survey Of Design, Dane Kirchoff-Foster

Indiana Journal of Constitutional Design

This is a case study seeking to survey the landscape of constitutional courts in the MENA region after the Arab Spring. To accomplish this, the case study identifies the traditional functions of constitutional courts, then analyzes the design features present in post-Arab Spring constitutional courts to determine how and to what extent these design features help – or hinder – each court in fulfilling its traditional functions. Analysis of design features will focus on (1) which (and how many) constitutional matters the court is empowered to decide (court jurisdiction), (2) the processes by which a court is presented a …

A Case For Reforming The Anti-Money Laundering Regulatory Regime: How Financial Institutions’ Criminal Reporting Duties Have Created An Unfunded Private Police Force, Christopher Wilkes

Indiana Law Journal

Part I of this Note provides background information outlining the relevant BSA/AML laws that establish financial institutions’ affirmative duties to report financial crimes. Part II analyzes the contours of other laws that create mandatory criminal reporting obligations, including their extent, their underlying justifications, and how stringently government agencies enforce them. Part III demonstrates how financial institutions’ reporting duties are uniquely stringent and punitive compared to those imposed elsewhere in the law, and it questions the justifications of this policy. Lastly, Part IV of this Note argues that the BSA/AML regulatory regime could be reformed to reduce the costs and duties …

Opioid Policing, Barbara Fedders

Indiana Law Journal

This Article identifies and explores a new, local law enforcement approach to alleged drug offenders. Initially limited to a few police departments, but now expanding rapidly across the country, this innovation takes one of two primary forms. The first is a diversion program through which officers refer alleged offenders to community-based social services rather than initiate criminal proceedings. The second form offers legal amnesty as well as priority access to drug detoxification programs to users who voluntarily relinquish illicit drugs. Because the upsurge in addiction to —and death from—opioids has spurred this innovation, I refer to it as “opioid policing.” …

Indiana Civil Legal Needs Study And Legal Aid System Scan, Victor D. Quintanilla, Rachel Thelin

Books & Book Chapters by Maurer Faculty

In 2017, the Indiana Coalition for Court Access entered into a partnership with Indiana University to conduct a statewide legal needs study. The IU Center for Law, Society & Culture and the IU Public Policy Institute submit this final report to the CCA. We designed this comprehensive study of legal needs to provide a relevant, reliable source of information with which the CCA, policymakers, and legal aid providers can make strategic decisions about where, when, and how to allocate resources for the effective, efficient delivery of civil legal services. We also designed this project to generate data and information that …

A Legal Fempire?: Women In Complex Civil Litigation, Brooke D. Coleman

Indiana Law Journal

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg made headlines when she said that she would be satisfied with the number of women on the Supreme Court “when there are nine.” But why should that answer have been so remarkable? After all, there were nine men on the Court for nearly all of its history. Yet, Justice Ginsburg’s statement was met with amusement—or from some quarters—disdain. What answer would have been considered more appropriate coming from a groundbreaking feminist litigator? Would four have been an acceptable answer? Would five have been presumptuous? This episode reflects our cramped view of how much representation women can …

Self-Help, Reimagined, J. David Griener, Dalie Jimenez, Lois Lupica

Indiana Law Journal

We will never have enough lawyers to serve the civil legal needs of all low- and moderate-income (LMI) individuals who must navigate civil legal problems. A significant part of the access-to-justice toolkit must include self-help materials. That much is not new; indeed, the legal aid community has been actively developing pro se guides and forms for decades. But the community has hamstrung its creations in two major ways: first, by focusing these materials almost exclusively on educating LMI individuals about formal law, and second, by considering the task complete once the materials have been made available to self-represented individuals. In …

Fading Extraterritoriality And Isolationism? Developments In The United States, Austen L. Parrish

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

Having the opportunity to deliver the twelfth Snyder Lecture is a privilege in part because of the distinguished scholars who have given the lecture in the past. It is also a privilege because of Earl Snyder himself. Earl was visionary in supporting these cross-Atlantic intellectual exchanges and ahead of his time in appreciating the value of studying transnationalism in its many forms. Today, in that tradition, my aim is to give you a sense of how the procedural rules of international civil litigation are developing and changing in the United States, and how those developments in turn affect more traditional …

Some Newly Emergent Geographies Of Injustice: Boundaries And Borders In International Law, Upendra V. Baxi

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

This conversation examines the relationship between the boundaries and borders in international law and the production of geographies of injustice through the lens of the colonial epistemologies, especially of private international law in the face of mass social disasters like the archetypal Bhopal catastrophe. I also address the languages and logics of coloniality and postcoloniality, as states of consciousness and social organization, under the complex and contradictory unity of neoliberalism.

Commonality And The Constitution: A Framework For Federal And State Court Class Actions, Joseph A. Seiner

Indiana Law Journal

In Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. v. Dukes, 131 S. Ct. 2541 (2011), the Supreme Court concluded that the allegations of pay discrimination in a case brought by over one million female employees lacked sufficient commonality to warrant class certification under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23(a). Though the case was expressly decided under the Federal Rules, some well-known employer groups have begun to advance the argument that Wal-Mart was decided on constitutional grounds. These advocates maintain that the Supreme Court’s decision creates a commonality standard for all class-action plaintiffs—regardless of whether those litigants bring their claims in federal or state court. …

Can Judges Make Reliable Numeric Judgments? Distorted Damages And Skewed Sentences, Jeffrey J. Rachlinski, Andrew J. Wistrich, Chris Guthrie

Indiana Law Journal

In a series of studies involving over six hundred trial judges in three countries, we demonstrate that trial judges’ civil damage awards and criminal sentences are subject to influences that make them erratic. We found that the presence of misleading numeric reference points (or “anchors”) affected judges’ decisions in a series of hypothetical cases. Specifically, judges imposed shorter sentences when assigning sentences in months rather than in years; awarded higher amounts of compensatory damages when informed of a cap on damage awards; imposed different sentences depending upon the sequence in which criminal cases were presented to them; and were influenced …

Duty To Defend And The Rule Of Law, Gregory F. Zoeller

Indiana Law Journal

This Article challenges Eric Holder’s and William Pryor’s views and explains the proper role of a state attorney general when a party challenges a state statute. In short, an attorney general owes the state and its citizens, as sovereign, a duty to defend its statutes against constitutional attack except when controlling precedent so overwhelmingly shows that the statute is unconstitutional that no good-faith argument can be made in its defense. To exercise discretion more broadly, and selectively to pick and choose which statutes to defend, only erodes the rule of law. (introduction)

Solving The Puzzle Of Transnational Class Actions, Kevin M. Clermont

Indiana Law Journal

How should a U.S. class action treat proposed foreign class members in a circumstance where any resulting judgment will likely not bind those absentees abroad? The Author responds to Zachary Clopton’s analysis of this puzzle, and introduces a counterproposal.

Class Actions, Conflict And The Global Economy, Hannah L. Buxbaum

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

This essay is a lightly edited and footnoted version of a lecture delivered in April 2011 (video below) to inaugurate the John E. Schiller Chair in Legal Ethics at the Indiana University Maurer School of Law. It was previously published in FESTSCHRIPT FOR ROLF STCTRNER ZUM 70. GEBURTSTAG 1443 (Bruns et al. eds., Mohr Siebeck 2013).

Civil Recourse Defended: A Reply To Posner, Calabresi, Rustard, Chamallas, And Robinette, John C. Goldberg, Benjamin Zipursky

Indiana Law Journal

American Association of Law Schools Torts & Compensation Systems Panel

A Decade Of Registered And Unregistered Design Rights Decisions In The Uk: What Conclusions Can We Draw For The Future Of Both Types Of Rights?, Estelle Derclaye

IP Theory

No abstract provided.

Civil Recourse Theory's Reductionism, Guido Calabresi

Indiana Law Journal

American Association of Law Schools Torts & Compensation Systems Panel

Two Roads Diverge For Civil Recourse Theory, Christopher J. Robinette

Indiana Law Journal

American Association of Law Schools Torts & Compensation Systems Panel

Beneath The Surface Of Civil Recourse Theory, Martha Chamallas

Indiana Law Journal

American Association of Law Schools Torts & Compensation Systems Panel

Not (Necessarily) Narrower: Rethinking The Relative Scope Of Copyright Protection For Designs, Sarah Burstein

IP Theory

No abstract provided.

Citizenship And Marriage In A Globalizing World: Multicultural Families And Monocultural Nationality Laws In Korea And Japan, Erin Aeran Chung, Daisy Kim

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

This Article analyzes how individual and local attempts to address low fertility rates in Korea and Japan have prompted unprecedented reforms in monocultural nationality laws. Korea and Japan confront rapidly declining working-age population projections; yet, they have prohibited the immigration of unskilled workers, until recently in Korea's case, on the claim that their admission would threaten social cohesion. Over the past two decades, both countries have made only incremental reforms to their immigration policies that fall short of alleviating labor shortages and the fiscal burdens of maintaining a large elderly population. Instead, prompted by the growth of so-called multicultural families …

The Costs Of Heightened Pleading, Alexander A. Reinert

Indiana Law Journal

In Conley v. Gibson, the Supreme Court announced its commitment to a liberal pleading regime in federal civil cases, and for decades thereafter was steadfast in resisting ad hoc heightened pleading rules adopted by lower courts. Thus, from 1957 until a few years ago, most litigants could count on surviving a motion to dismiss a complaint for failure to state a claim so long as their pleading provided some minimal notice to the defendant of the nature of their claim. Enter Ashcroft v. Iqbal and Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly. Iqbal and Twombly, by many accounts, two-stepped the Court from …

Civil Judicial Subsidy, Brendan S. Maher

Indiana Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Presidential Leadership And Civil Rights Lawyering In The Era Before Brown, Lynda G. Dodd

Indiana Law Journal

No abstract provided.

When Is An Alternative Forum Available? Rethinking The Forum Non Conveniens Analysis, Joel H. Samuels

Indiana Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Civil Society And Disability Rights In Post-Soviet Ukraine: Ngos And Prospects For Change, Sarah D. Phillips

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

This article uses an anthropological approach to critically examine the limitations and successes of the contemporary disability rights movement in post-Soviet Ukraine. Case studies of rights legislation and the work of disability advocacy NGOs are detailed to illustrate the paradoxes and problems that imbricate disability rights issues, and the strategies some activists have leveraged to successfully navigate these challenges. The article suggests specific tactics that rights groups in Ukraine might pursue to further enact change in their communities, including pursuing more international partnerships fielding candidates for political office, and launching informational and image campaigns.

Operationalizing Global Governance, Symposium. Indiana University …

Representativity, Civil Society, And The Eu Social Dialogue: Lessons From The International Labor Organization, Faina Milman-Sivan

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

This article addresses representativity questions that arise from the formal insertion of private,functional groups within the European Union (EU) governance via the EU social dialogue. It depicts the representativity debate at the EU social dialogue and suggests that important lessons can be learned through the examination of another institutional context in which similar questions have been raised and addressed: the International Labor Organization (ILO) tripartite structure. In addition, it ascertains that the issue of representativity of the EU social partners would further benefit from viewing it in the broader context of the EU "democratic deficit." The article concludes that such …

Customary Transnational Law: Attacking The Last Resort Of State Sovereignty, Till Müller

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

In the Westphalian State, Customary International Law (CIL) has traditionally been informed by high-level state action among close neighbors. However, it is no longer a foregone conclusion that CIL is resistant to the influences of greater globalization and transnational government and non-governmental action. As the interaction among and between national governments and non-governmental organizations increases in frequency, breadth, and physical distance, we are asked to reconsider the formation of modern CIL. Ultimately, the ever increasing importance of transnational cooperation, both in traditional governance and non-governmental action, necessarily informs modern CIL. The resultant body of law may appropriately be described as …