Law Commons^™

Digital Inclusion For People With Autism Spectrum Disorders: Review Of The Current Legal Models And Doctrinal Concepts, James Hutson, Piper Hutson

Faculty Scholarship

Objective: Today, a significant part of professional tasks are performed in the digital environment, on digital platforms, in virtual and other meetings. This necessitates a critical reflection of traditional views on the problem of accessible environment and digital accessibility, taking into account the basic universal needs of persons with disabilities.

Methods: A gap between the traditional legal perspective on special working conditions for persons with disabilities and the urgent need of a digital workplace (digital environment) clearly shows lacunas in the understanding of accessibility, which are identified and explored with formal-legal and doctrinal methods. The multifaceted aspects of …

Surprises In The Skies: Resolving The Circuit Split On How Courts Should Determine Whether An "Accident" Is "Unexpected Or Unusual" Under The Montreal Convention, Ashley Tang

Washington Law Review

Article 17 of both the Montreal Convention and its predecessor, the Warsaw Convention, imposes liability onto air carriers for certain injuries and damages from “accidents” incurred by passengers during international air carriage. However, neither Convention defines the term “accident.” While the United States Supreme Court opined that, for the purposes of Article 17, an air carrier’s liability “arises only if a passenger’s injury is caused by an unexpected or unusual event or happening that is external to the passenger,” it did not explain what standards lower courts should employ to discern whether an event is “unexpected or unusual.” In 2004, …

Blunt Instruments, Glass Slippers, And Unicorns: Ocean Governance In A Climate-Changed Gulf Of Maine, Susan E. Farady

Maine Policy Review

Management and governance systems should ideally match the nature of the natural environment and the range of human uses. Today’s ocean and coastal governance system is made up of singular laws and government agencies, the product of years of evolution. This system was never intended to reflect the complexities of the marine ecosystem and varied human uses of marine resources. The resulting “silo-ed” management system has never worked particularly well, but as we face a rapidly changing Gulf of Maine, and accompanying changes in uses, this system’s limitations are increasingly obvious. An “ideal” ocean governance system would be comprehensive and …

Justice On Trial: A Multifaceted Analysis Of Capital Punishment, Abby Long

Honors Theses

There is an ongoing debate surrounding the criminal justice system, focusing specifically on the controversial topic of capital punishment. Highlighting a startling statistic—one in nine death row inmates being exonerated— a pivotal question arises of what factors influence sentencing outcomes? Seven variables, number of sentences, income of offender, region of sentencing, race of offender, gender of offender, and political affiliation of sentencing state, are considered to understand the variations in sentencing outcomes and assess the fairness of the current judicial process. Using an OLS regression analysis of data from all 50 U.S. states, the paper seeks to better understand capital …

Ensuring Data Privacy In A Decentralized World: An Analysis Of The Legal Challenges And Implications Of Smart Contracts, Khusbeen Dhillon

Featured Student Work

Advances in blockchain technology have revolutionized what a contract can be: lines of code that are stored on the decentralized network, otherwise known as smart contracts. Smart contracts are self-executing agreements that automatically enforce the terms of the agreement using a series of if-then conditions. They are projected to give a better solution to traditional contracts in terms of reducing risk, reducing costs, and improving the efficiency of corporate processes. However, the transparent and immutable nature of blockchain technology imposes significant challenges regarding an individual’s right to control their personal information in the context of smart contracts. This article examines …

Rights Without Remedies: How The Illinois Post-Conviction Hearing Act’S Standing Requirement Has Failed Defendants, Nate Nieman

Northern Illinois University Law Review

The Illinois Post-Conviction Act is a procedural mechanism that allows a criminal defendant to assert that his federal or state constitutional rights were substantially violated during trial or at sentencing. The passage of the Act expanded a defendant’s ability to challenge his conviction and sentences collaterally, where before the Act, he had only been able to raise these challenges on direct appeal. However, the Act’s strict standing requirement precludes defendants from relief once they have completed their sentence, ignoring the fact that many important, life-altering civil consequences resulting from criminal convictions occur after a sentence has concluded.

This Article argues …

Is There Really Anything Wrong With That? An Aristotelian Analysis Of Duty, Luke J. Mcgrath

Honors College Theses

In the iconic Seinfeld series finale, Jerry, George, Elaine, and Kramer find themselves in a peculiar legal predicament when they mock a crime rather than intervene to help the victim. The show’s commitment to portraying reality, even in its finale, vividly demonstrates the potential consequences of a society lacking the legal obligation to aid others. This comical incident raises a thought-provoking question about the legitimacy of duty-to-act laws in the United States. This thesis examines the application of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics to the concept of duty-to-act laws and argues for the necessity and benefits of such laws in promoting a …

The Future Of Employee Job Security In Illinois, Daniel S. Alcorn

Northern Illinois University Law Review

The at-will employment doctrine is more than a century and a half old. Illinois has long subscribed to the at-will employment doctrine, but the doctrine is dying a slow death. The doctrine has positive and negative aspects, but the lack of employee job security will prove to be a fatal flaw. The doctrine is not so well founded in reason or legal history to save it. Employee job security is becoming increasingly desirable and important. The legislatures and courts are making significant inroads on the doctrine to protect employee job security. A bill to abrogate the doctrine and require cause …

Illinois’S Marijuana Madness: A Protectionist Scheme Of An Illegal Market In The Shadow Of The Constitution, Alec C. Moehn

Northern Illinois University Law Review

From prohibition to legalization, Marijuana has had a storied legal history in the United States, but its story is not quite over. A new gray area is coming to the forefront of the legal field: Marijuana is illegal federally but legal in many states. This Note discusses how some states, including Illinois, are operating in that gray area to better their political and economic goals, but the Constitution places a barrier to do so with the Dormant Commerce Clause. States are not free to discriminate against other states or out-of-state economic actors, and Illinois does just that with the Cannabis …

A Right To Fly: Navigating The Air Carrier Access Act And The Americans With Disabilities Act Following Alexander V. Sandoval, William Belles

Northern Illinois University Law Review

There are approximately 54 million disabled individuals in the United States. Those 54 million American citizens live their day to day lives differently than the average person, facing difficulties most others cannot comprehend. While legislation has come a long way in recent decades, one area that has remained stagnant is how we treat disabilities on airplanes. Despite legislation remaining relatively stagnant, judicial opinions have not. In fact, many United States Circuit Courts have determined that the Air Carrier Access Act, which provides limited protections on airplanes, does not confer a private cause of action for violations. As a result, the …

Leveraging Technology To Promote Access To Justice, Amy Emerson

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Common Sense Recommendations For The Application Of Tax Law To Digital Assets, Luís Calderón Gómez, Young Ran (Christine) Kim, Edward A. Zelinsky

Online Publications

In response to the Joint Committee on Taxation’s July 2023 request for comments on application of various Internal Revenue Code sections on digital assets, we propose a consistent set of rules to apply current law to digital assets. We highlight that the underlying economics and characteristics of transactions should be the primary concern for the application of rules and the valuation of digital assets. We believe any digital asset rules should (1) treat classes of digital assets with unique characteristics differently based on their economics, (2) minimize incentives for users to engage in tax-motivated structuring of transactions, and (3) allow …

Country-Of-Origin Information Reports: The Political And Legal Geographies Of Central American Migrants, Elise Dosch

Senior Theses

Country-of-origin information reports provide purportedly objective information on the political, economic, security, and humanitarian situation of a certain country. Within the context of asylum adjudication, country-of-origin information reports provide contextual information on the country-of-origin of the person seeking asylum. Academic literature on the legal use and application of these reports is limited, with the majority of research being contained within the European context. This thesis uses interviews with legal practitioners from the United States to investigate the use of country-of-origin information reports in the asylum adjudication process. These interviews revealed the uses of country-of-origin information reports by 3 key actors …

Will Idaho’S “Abortion Trafficking” Law Hinder Efforts To Prevent Human Trafficking?, Daniela Peterka-Benton, Bond Benton

School of Communication and Media Scholarship and Creative Works

No abstract provided.

Retconning Heller: Five Takes On New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. V. Bruen, Glenn Harlan Reynolds, Brannon P. Denning

Scholarly Works

New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen was the first significant Second Amendment case that the Supreme Court had heard in nearly fifteen years since its decision in District of Columbia v. Heller. This Article offers some preliminary observations about the opinion itself, as well as its likely effects, some of which are starting to manifest

Our first take concerns the question of opinion assignment. Why did Chief Justice Roberts-whose support for the Second Amendment has been suspect-assign the opinion to Justice Thomas?

Takes Two and Three concern Justice Thomas's substitution of text, history, and tradition for …

Indigent Defense In Louisville: Conditions For Unionization, Zane R. Phelps

The Cardinal Edge

This paper begins by examining the unionization efforts of the Louisville Metro Public Defender Corporation and seeks to link those conditions with national trends to cultivate a rich understanding of why the attorneys are unionizing and what policy solutions they hope to achieve. After surveying the sources of funding and oversight for indigent defense across varying state systems, it synthesizes a policy recommendation wherein federal intervention (National Labor Relations Board), state and local government budgetary oversight and appropriations powers (Kentucky General Assembly, Louisville Metro Council), and the collective bargaining and unionization process (concerted activity), protected by law, are utilized in …

Above Reproach? The U.S. Supreme Court's Ethical Issues, Christopher J. Przemieniecki, Jana Nestlerode, Carli Younce

Criminal Justice Faculty Publications

With society scrutinizing the American criminal justice system, a standard of ethics becomes ever so important for law enforcement officials, members of the bench, and correctional personnel. Creating a code of conduct not only benefits the individual players in the criminal justice system but it also protects the integrity of each institution. Unfortunately, one of the most important judicial branches in the criminal justice system, the United States Supreme Court, does not have, nor follow an ethical code of conduct. This creates a problem for criminal justice practitioners, the media, and society. This article examines the current requirements for a …

Constitutional Law—Filling The Gap: The Need For Legislative Action To Protect The Right To Record Police In The Age Of Citizen Journalism, Madalyn J. Goolsby

University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review

No abstract provided.

Bargaining In The Shadow Of The Truth: How Client Assertion, Perception Of Guilt, And Predictive Inaccuracy Influence Plea Recommendations, Anna D. Vaynman

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Over the past few decades, the largely hidden, secretive, and widely used system of plea bargaining has caught the fervent attention of scholars. The Shadow of the Trial model has been central to much of the plea-bargaining literature, despite significant critiques about its oversimplification. The model posits that defendants and their attorneys make plea decisions based largely on the estimated probability of conviction and the severity of the sentence to which the defendant could be exposed at trial.

The model, however, assumes that all actors are rational, equally risk averse, have no competing interests, and possess high predictive accuracy. It …

Valuing Social Data, Amanda Parsons, Salomé Viljoen

Law & Economics Working Papers

Social data production is a unique form of value creation that characterizes informational capitalism. Social data production also presents critical challenges for the various legal regimes that are encountering it. This Article provides legal scholars and policymakers with the tools to comprehend this new form of value creation through two descriptive contributions. First, it presents a theoretical account of social data, a mode of production which is cultivated and exploited for two distinct (albeit related) forms of value: prediction value and exchange value. Second, it creates and defends a taxonomy of three “scripts” that companies follow to build up and …

Defamation In The Twenty First Century: Some Observations And A Brief Taxonomy, John G. Culhane

Lincoln Memorial University Law Review Archive

Defamation law has had a bumpy ride lately. Designed as a mechanism for the restoration of unfairly sullied reputations, recent high-profile cases have revealed the tort’s limitations in the era of social media saturation and virality. Some of these cases should never have been brought, while others would more naturally have been based in other torts, including intentional infliction of emotional distress or interference with business relations.

Beginning with a brief, targeted history of defamation law that focuses on its essential purpose, this article then discusses several recent, high-profile cases that have both exposed the limitations of defamation law and …

Commentary: Further Prosecutions Over The 2020 Election Are Not Justified, Bruce Ledewitz

Newspaper Columns

Collected biweekly contributions to the Pennsylvania Capital-Star, a nonpartisan, nonprofit news site.

In The Room Where The Constitution Happens, Lorianne Updike Toler

College of Law Faculty Publications

Constitution-writing, according to the United Nations, should be participatory, non-exclusionary, and transparent. Recent scholarship has identified group inclusion, or ensuring that a broad swath of enfranchised groups is welcomed into the drafting room, as the lodestar of constitutional process. In making this comparative case--one which has important implications for modern constitution-writing--scholarship provides precious little empirical evidence, particularly from the historical genre. This ignores the benefit of studying the oldest constitution-writing traditions in America and all that can be learned by tracing a practice or idea to its roots.

This study, the first monogram on New Hampshire’s five constitution-writing processes between …

Did The Biden Administration Violate The First Amendment?, Bruce Ledewitz

Newspaper Columns

Collected biweekly contributions to the Pennsylvania Capital-Star, a nonpartisan, nonprofit news site.

Today’S Supreme Court: ‘Not A Normal Court,’ But Not Unprecedented Either, Bruce Ledewitz

Newspaper Columns

Collected biweekly contributions to the Pennsylvania Capital-Star, a nonpartisan, nonprofit news site.

Pardon Me? Why Biden Should Pull A Gerald Ford When It Comes To Trump, Bruce Ledewitz

Newspaper Columns

Collected biweekly contributions to the Pennsylvania Capital-Star, a nonpartisan, nonprofit news site.

Network Tango: Examining State Dispositions Toward Attribution In International Cyber Conflict, Robert Riley Turner

University Honors Theses

Cyberspace is an environment of international conflict often sought out due to its ability to create significant effects at little cost, and obfuscating the ready attribution of hostility. One avenue toward streamlining the attribution of hostile actions in cyberspace is the introduction of a due diligence of data transparency amongst states. This level of data transparency must somehow be incentivized. The following study surveys the geopolitical dispositions of three major powers that utilize cyberspace as a venue of conflict: The United States, China, and Russia; in order to determine how each nation might interact with an international due diligence of …

Six Lessons From The Debt Deal. What Did We Learn?, Bruce Ledewitz

Newspaper Columns

Collected biweekly contributions to the Pennsylvania Capital-Star, a nonpartisan, nonprofit news site.

A Perpetual Cycle Of “Give-And-Take”: The Case For Texas Eminent Domain Reform, Kathryn Faulk

St. Mary's Law Journal

No abstract provided.

The Durham Report Shows Why We Don’T Want The Fbi Involved In Politics, Bruce Ledewitz

Newspaper Columns

Collected biweekly contributions to the Pennsylvania Capital-Star, a nonpartisan, nonprofit news site.