Law Commons^™

How Can Sovereign States Embrace Hospitality? A Study Of The Ius Gentium Tradition And Expulsions Of Immigrants At The Border, Pedro Rodríguez-Ponga

Saint Louis University Law Journal

Migration management reflects the inescapable dialectic between immigrants’ human rights and the rights of sovereign states to control their arrival. This article focuses on two disciplines to shed some light on the dialectic: philosophy and law. The first section presents the primary authors within the ius gentium tradition that dealt with the arrival of strangers to a political community. The lens through which this article analyses these authors’ contribution is hospitality, calling for the adequate treatment the stranger deserves while considering the host community’s moral value. The second section examines the cutting-edge issue of pushback practices at the European external …

Embodied Ecologies And Legal Wars: The Use Of Force, Ukraine, And Feminist Perspectives On International Law, Gina Heathcote

Saint Louis University Law Journal

In this article, I examine the international law on the use of force alongside a feminist analysis of the ongoing Russian aggression in Ukraine. I draw on records of mushroom foraging to evidence how everyday practices of communities are destroyed by military aggression that disrupts the embodied ecologies reproduced in intergenerational human and nonhuman encounters. The mushrooms foraged in Ukraine, the mushrooms destroyed during military encounters, and the mushrooms growing beside land mines provide an aperture for shifting both feminist and international legal accounts of armed conflict. I argue that ecologies of harm produce means to understand the gendered violence …

Masthead

Saint Louis University Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Refugee Identities At The Mercy Of Legal Determination, Rosário Frada

Saint Louis University Law Journal

The Refugee Status Determination process bears immediate repercussions not only on the formulation of refugee narrative identities, but on how asylum-seekers construct their very sense of self alongside their relationship to their past and future. Yet, International Refugee Law provides no guidance over status determination procedures, establishing a legal void that confers disproportionate power to State discretion. In an epoch characterized by exclusionary non-entrée regimes propelled by a post-9/11 securitization logic, the myopic fixation on border control has generated a dehumanizing surveillance machinery that transformed the asylum system into a threatening opponent of refugee protection, eliminating individual subjectivity and undermining …

Table Of Contents

Saint Louis University Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Doing Less—Reflections On Cognitive Load And Hard Choices In Teaching First-Year Legal Writing, Ellie Margolis

Saint Louis University Law Journal

The evolving landscape of legal research and writing (LRW) education requires LRW professors to balance a multitude of expectations and demands in the process of teaching foundational skills and ensuring that students are “practice-ready.” This essay argues that attempting to cover too wide an array of skills and competencies often leads to ineffective learning outcomes and suggests that a “less is more” approach may be more beneficial. It explores the challenges faced by LRW professors in teaching a comprehensive set of skills while ensuring students can transfer their learning to new contexts. Drawing on research and personal teaching experiences, the …

The Adaptable Legal Writer, Katrina Lee

Saint Louis University Law Journal

Today, more than ever, lawyers must constantly adapt—quickly and with deliberateness. This Article shines a light on the need to teach law students adaptability in law practice, and the central role of the legal writing professor in that endeavor. Part II explores the need for adaptability in a lawyer’s career. Part III provides an overview of three adaptability approaches from the legal writing pedagogy literature: information literacy, genre discovery, and the contextual case method. Part IV closes with a reflection on key features of adaptability pedagogy in legal writing—curiosity, inquisitiveness, and ethicality—and its general application in legal education. At heart …

Table Of Contents

Saint Louis University Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Flattening The Learning Curve For International J.D. Students, Sylvia Lett

Saint Louis University Law Journal

Non-U.S. lawyers entering U.S. law schools in accelerated J.D. degree programs (known as the “AJD” – Advanced Juris Doctor Program at Arizona Law) face particular challenges adapting to 1L legal research, analysis, and communication classes. First, English is not the typical lingua franca for AJD students, many of whom come from civil law countries and are faced with the challenge of learning legal writing methods for an American common-law legal system. Second, AJD students earn a U.S. J.D. degree in only two years because these accelerated programs give one year of “credit” for their non-U.S. law degrees. As a consequence, …

Teamwork Makes A Dream Work: Collaboration In The Legal Writing, Brenda D. Gibson

Saint Louis University Law Journal

This essay provides insights into the benefits (and some of the challenges) encountered when two relatively seasoned legal writing professors decided to collaborate in their first-year legal writing courses. The essay, in self-deprecating candor, describes how my colleague and I leveraged our individual strengths to improve our legal writing students’ learning experience. Along the way, a friendship, born of deep respect, was formed.

Collaboration defined simply is no more than “a process of working with others to accomplish something.”[1] To that end, collaborative teaching, i.e., team teaching is typically two or more faculty members working together to develop instructional …

Collaborative Creac Drafting: Co-Creating An Example In Context, Julie E. Zink

Saint Louis University Law Journal

The quickest way to a student’s mind is through engagement. As legal writing professors, we can assign pages on how to organize an analysis, provide helpful examples, and orally describe the process. However, some students need a more hands-on approach. In this article, I explain my process of actively engaging students to draft their first CREAC together. By collaboratively working together to assemble this ungraded CREAC over a series of classes, the students develop an understanding of how to properly organize their analysis of a discrete issue based on the assigned facts and law. For each part of the CREAC …

And The Results Are In … Reviewing The Results Of The First Year Larc Research Exam Wherein Some Of The Questions Were Redesigned To Meet The Expectations Of The Next Gen Bar Exam Format, Christine E. Rollins

Saint Louis University Law Journal

In 2010, the faculty of St. Louis University School of Law implemented a research exam to test student competencies after their first year of law school. Since its creation, the exam has helped students feel more secure starting their first legal internships, allowed faculty to identify areas of decreased competency, and helped faculty find “better” ways to teach legal research and writing material. In anticipation of the implementation of the NextGen Bar exam in July 2026, the faculty determined that it was necessary to make some changes to the research exam in order to both gather data on students’ responses …

Teaching And Learning About Implicit Bias In The Legal Practice Classroom: The Lesson Of Sandy Jordan, Anupama C. Connor

Saint Louis University Law Journal

“Implicit bias” describes the unconscious stereotypes and attitudes that all humans have hard wired in their brains. It can go awry when we have implicit biases based on race or ethnicity that are unrealized and unfair. Gen Z students are famously diverse, and they are proud of their diversity, but they are also uncomfortable talking about sensitive topics, including implicit bias. Legal Practice professors are in a unique position to work with their Gen Z students to identify and eliminate implicit bias because of our year-long course and the interactive nature of our class. This article discusses how implicit bias …

Artificial Intelligence And The Practice Of Law: A Chat With Chatgpt, Grant M. Gamm

Saint Louis University Law Journal

In late 2022, OpenAI introduced ChatGPT to the world. At the time of writing this article, ChatGPT and other generative AI models were no longer used only to generate silly responses but were being considered for substantive work in our daily lives. Specifically, this article highlights how ChatGPT and other learned language models can have a strong impact on the practice of law. Within this article, the uses of these forms of AI are explained on multiple levels: the individual attorney, the law firm, and the non-attorney. Along with its diverse applications, this article delves into potential ethical dilemmas and …

The Role Of Historic Preservation In St. Louis Vacancy Solutions, Mary Webb

Saint Louis University Law Journal

The homes of St. Louis, Missouri reflect the diverse backgrounds of the families who built them. As the need for labor grew during the City’s “brick boom,” families from the American South and from around the world immigrated to St. Louis, bringing unique architectural history with them. This history is now threatened by St. Louis’s rising vacancy rates.

The long-term impacts of racial zoning ordinances, restrictive deed covenants, and redlining have led to dense vacancy in North St. Louis neighborhoods. Crime, public health, and economic concerns follow vacant properties, adversely impacting North St. Louis individuals, families, and businesses.

Demolition has …

The Clean Water Act Section 401 Water Quality Certification Improvement Rule And Why It Deserves Chevron Deference, Joseph Retzer

Saint Louis University Law Journal

This Article reviews the history of CWA Section 401 and finds that it supports affording EPA’s newest interpretive rule Chevron deference. The CWA Section 401 Water Quality Certification Improvement Rule serves as an important case study of the doctrine which faces mounting criticisms and two cases challenging its legality in the Supreme Court at the time of this publication. Although its application delegates lawmaking authority to unelected officials who change policies with the tides of each election, this delegation has been necessary in many areas of the law due to Congress’s failure to act in recent years. Instead of simply …

Prioritizing Student Well-Being: Name And Pronoun Policies In K-12 Schools, Manni Jandernoa

Saint Louis University Law Journal

While federal protections against discrimination for LGBTQ students have increased in the past few years, at the same time state legislatures have proposed hundreds of anti-LGBTQ bills targeting transgender youth. With more students identifying as transgender or nonbinary, there is a need for clear policies on the usage of chosen names and pronouns in K-12 public schools. Schools need to be prepared to handle transgender and nonbinary students before a need arises. This article discusses the potential conflicts between the individual interests involved when name and pronoun policies are applied in K-12 public schools.

When drafting and enforcing name and …

Urban Commons In Italy, Michele Graziadei

FIU Law Review

The Italian experience with urban commons has been very rich indeed. In the last ten years or so the number of social and legal initiatives relating to urban commons in Italy has exploded. The present Italian situation shows that urban commons are here to stay. By now, they are part of the collective imagination, of political and socio-economic transformative projects, of administrative practices, and of the law. The demand for the commons in the city originates from the social movements that intend to resist the penetration of the market and of private property in every ambit of life but is …

Filling The Gap: The Case For Driver's Licenses As A Lifeline To Opportunity For Undocumented Immigrants Where The Federal Government Fails To Act On Comprehensive Immigration Reform, David Peraza

FIU Law Review

The federal government has repeatedly failed at passing comprehensive immigration reform, which would provide basic benefits to the undocumented population in the U.S, including driver’s licenses. Various states have made attempts to provide undocumented immigrants with driver’s licenses. This work address the benefits and drawbacks of these policies and ultimately posits that holdout states should enact policies to provide driver’s licenses to undocumented immigrants in the face of the federal government’s inaction.

Lethal Immigration Enforcement, Abel Rodríguez

Faculty Publications

Increasingly, U.S. immigration law and policy perpetuate death. As more people become displaced globally, death provides a measurable indicator of the level of racialized violence inflicted on migrants of color. Because of Clinton-era policies continued today, deaths at the border have reached unprecedented rates, with more than two migrant deaths per day. A record 853 border crossers died last year, and the deadliest known transporting incident took place in June 2022, with fifty-one lives lost. In addition, widespread neglect continues to cause loss of life in immigration detention, immigration enforcement agents kill migrants with virtual impunity, and immigration law ensures …

Teaching Stare Decisis To First-Year Law Students In Higher Education: A Pedagogical Blind Alley?, Kenneth Yin, Carmela De Maio

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

The doctrine of stare decisis is often explained in first-year law studies as synonymous with the doctrine of precedent and dichotomised into ratio decidendi and obiter dicta. This explanation of stare decisis is frequently supplemented by an exercise where the novice law student is provided with a case and directed to identify the ratio decidendi of the case, and to appreciate the distinction between ratio and obiter dicta in it, the latter being persuasive only. It is argued that this pedagogy is limited and unrealistic because stare decisis is a dynamic process whereby, applying the precepts of formal legal logic, …

The Violence Of Free Speech And Press Metaphors, Erin C. Carroll

Washington and Lee Law Review

Today, our free speech marketplace is often overwhelming, confusing, and even dangerous. Threats, misdirection, and lies abound. Online firestorms lead to offline violence. This Article argues that the way we conceptualize free speech and the free press are partly to blame: our metaphors are hurting us.

The primary metaphor courts have used for a century to describe free speech—the marketplace of ideas—has been linked to violence since its inception. Originating in a case about espionage and revolution, in a dissent written by Oliver Wendell Holmes, a thrice-injured Civil War veteran, the marketplace has been described as a space where competition …

The Harms Of Heien: Pulling Back The Curtain On The Court's Search And Seizure Doctrin, Wayne A. Logan -- Professor

Vanderbilt Law Review

In Heien v. North Carolina, the Supreme Court held that individuals can be seized on the basis of reasonable police mistakes of law. In an opinion authored by Chief Justice Roberts, the eight-Justice majority held that the Fourth Amendment's prohibition of "unreasonable" seizures does not bar legally mistaken seizures because "[t]o be reasonable is not to be perfect." Concurring, Justice Kagan, joined by Justice Ginsburg, emphasized that judicial condonation of police mistakes of law should be "exceedingly rare." In a solo dissent, Justice Sotomayor fairly "wonder[ed] why an innocent citizen should be made to shoulder the burden of being seized …

Reflections On Arlington Heights: Fifty Years Of Exclusionary Zoning Litigation And Beyond, Robert G. Schwemm

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

Fifty years ago, when I was two years out of law school, I began work on a case—Metropolitan Housing Development Corp. v. Village of Arlington Heights—that was destined to take on epic proportions in the housing discrimination field. The case started with a complaint filed in 1972, shortly before I joined the plaintiffs’ legal team, and was not finally resolved until 1980, after I’d left that team to become a law professor. During the seven years that I worked on the Arlington Heights case, it produced a major Supreme Court decision on standing and the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause3 …

False Confessions And Police Torture In Mississippi, Chloe Ard

Merge

No abstract provided.

Judicial Protection Of Personal Non-Property Rights Of Military Chaplains In Ukraine, Artem Makovskiy, Svitlana Hrynko, Maksym Levytskyi, Valerii Vychavka, Oleksandr Tuz

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe

The article provides a theoretical overview of the Ukrainian legislative framework addressing the issue of judicial protection of personal non-property rights of military chaplains. Additionally, it justifies the necessity of restoring the institution of military courts for a more effective protection of the personal non-property rights of military chaplains in Ukraine. The theoretical analysis method is employed through its theoretical-multiple variety under implementation approaches. It has been established that the specific nature of military service involves risks to the life and health of military chaplains, as there are various factors that can lead to injuries, concussions, other health impairments, capture, …

The Meme Stock Fenzy: Origins And Implications, Dhruv Aggarwal, Albert H. Choi, Yoon-Ho Alex Lee

Articles

In 2021, several publicly traded companies, such as GameStop, Bed Bath & Beyond, and AMC, became “meme stocks,” experiencing a sharp rise in their stock prices through a dramatic influx of retail investors into their shareholder base. Analyses of the meme stock surge and its implications for corporate governance have focused on the idiosyncratic creation of online communities around particular stocks during the COVID-19 pandemic. In this Article, we argue that the emergence of meme stocks is part of longer-running and more structural digital transformations in trading, investing, and governance. On the trading front, the abolition of commissions by major …

Why Pushback To California’S Advanced Clean Cars Ii Policy Won’T Stop The Electric Car Revolution, Lily M. Pickett

Connecticut Law Review

In a move some have called the beginning of the end for the internal combustion engine, the California Air Resources Board has created regulations, Advanced Clean Cars II, to target California’s carbon pollution, banning the sale of new gas-powered cars and light trucks in the state by 2035. These regulations come from a special privilege held only by the state of California through a preemption waiver from the emissions regulations set by the Clean Air Act. Other states can sign on to California’s waiver, taking it from a special privilege to a second set of emissions regulations, almost equal in …

The Innocence Standard: Supreme Court Nominees And Sexual Misconduct, Lisa Avalos

Connecticut Law Review

Should the United States Senate allow judicial nominees who have been credibly accused of sexual misconduct to be seated on the Supreme Court? How should we handle these allegations when they arise during the vetting process? Despite the importance of these questions, lawmakers have failed to address them.

The contentious Clarence Thomas hearings in 1991 featured testimony from Professor Anita Hill and did much to raise Americans’ awareness about the prevalence of sexual misconduct in the workplace. Although Professor Hill subsequently called for the Senate to implement a process for addressing future sexual misconduct allegations against Supreme Court nominees, her …

Melodies Manipulated: Intellectual Property & The Music Industry, Fordham Iplj

Fordham Intellectual Property, Media and Entertainment Law Journal

Marilyn Mosby, Founder and Managing Partner of Mahogany Elite Consulting, opened the IPLJ Symposium with her Keynote Address which focused on the cultural, political, and social context surrounding the use of rap lyrics as evidence in criminal prosecutions.

The opening panel, “Do You Get Déjà Vu?,” comprised of Gary Adelman, Partner, Adelman Matz PC; Linna Chen, Senior Legal Counsel, Litigation & Copyright, Spotify; and Ilene Farkas, Partner, Pryor Cashman, and was moderated by Sarah Matz, Partner, Adelman Matz PC, and Adjunct Professor at Fordham University School of Law. The panel discussed recent copyright cases, specifically Williams v. Gaye …