Law Commons^™

Qualitative Leveraging Natural Language Processing To Establish Judge Incrimination Statistics To Educate Voters In Re-Elections, Aurian Ghaemmaghami, Paul Huggins, Grace Lang, Julia Layne, Robert Slater

SMU Data Science Review

The prevalence of data has given consumers the power to make informed choices based off reviews, ratings, and descriptive statistics. However, when a local judge is coming up for re-election there is not any available data that aids voters in making data-driven decision on their vote. Currently court docket data is stored in text or PDFs with very little uniformity. Scaling the collection of this information could prove to be complicated and tiresome. There is a demand for an automated, intelligent system that can extract and organize useful information from the datasets. This paper covers the process of web scraping …

Deep In The Heart Of North America: Texas And The Future Of North American Energy Trade, Guillermo J. Garcia Sanchez, James W. Coleman

Mission Foods Texas-Mexico Center Research

Texas, the heart of North American energy markets, has recently emerged from history’s biggest oil boom, and is becoming the crossroads for an increasingly two-way trade in oil and gas. Texas and Mexico, in particular have much to gain from expanded energy trade. This report shows how energy law changes in the U.S. and Mexico present under-studied dangers to cross-border energy trade and will set an agenda for legal reform to enable mutually beneficial fuel and power trade.

Fewer, Not Fairer, Victoria Smiegocki, Pamela R. Metzger, Andrew L.B. Davies

Deason Criminal Justice Reform Center

In 2019, police across Dallas County asked the District Attorney to prosecute fewer marijuana cases than the year before. This report examines whether the racial disparity in those cases improved at the same time. Fewer, Not Fairer shows that while the number of referrals declined, police were still more likely to refer a Black person for marijuana prosecution than a non-Black person. However, some cities achieved more fairness when their police departments almost entirely stopped requesting marijuana prosecutions altogether.

Ending Injustice: Solving The Initial Appearance Crisis, Pamela R. Metzger, Janet C. Hoeffel, Kristin Meeks, Sandra Sidi

Deason Criminal Justice Reform Center

Most Americans expect that if they are arrested, they will quickly appear before a judge, learn about the charges, and have an attorney assigned to defend them. The reality is vastly different. After arrest, a person can wait in jail for days, weeks, or even months before seeing a judge or meeting an attorney. This report chronicles the resulting initial appearance crisis and highlights its devastating consequences. More importantly, it provides policymakers and advocates with actionable recommendations.

The Quad (The 2021 Alumni Magazine), Southern Methodist University, Dedman School Of Law

The Quad (Law Alumni Magazine), 1988-present

• Underwood Law Library Celebrates 50 Years • 20th Anniversary of the Naming of SMU Dedman Law

The Nonracist And Antiracist History Of Firearms Public Carry Regulation, Mark A. Frassetto

SMU Law Review Forum

This term, the Supreme Court will consider New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n v. Bruen, a Second Amendment challenge to New York State’s concealed carry weapon licensing system. Bruen is the first major Second Amendment case that the Court will decide on the merits in more than a decade. Briefing by the plaintiffs and gun rights scholars has in large part focused on arguments that laws regulating the carrying of guns in public, as well as gun regulation more generally, were historically intended to discriminate against minority groups. This argument is consistent with a broader effort in the conservative …

A "Second-Class Right" For "Second-Class Citizens", Benjamin A. Rice

SMU Law Review Forum

In McDonald v. City of Chicago, the Supreme Court countenanced against treating the Second Amendment as a “second-class right.” Against this admonition, congressional defunding of federal restorative programs has rendered the amendment a second-class right for an ever-increasing and much-maligned group of people: those who have been adjudicated as mentally ill. In a majority of states, those who have been involuntarily committed at any point in their lives to a mental health institution lose the right to bear arms for life. Taking guns out of the hands of those who have enjoyed decades of good mental health after a brief …

How To Do Surgery On The Constitutional Law Of Libel, R. George Wright

SMU Law Review Forum

Of late, the constitutional law of libel has become the focus of increasing dissatisfaction. This dissatisfaction has taken various forms. The argument below, however, is that the most crucial defect of constitutional libel law lies in the Court’s continuing attempts to draw and utilize distinctions among public figure and private figure libel plaintiffs. The Court should abandon these attempts. Instead, the Court should attend, broadly and fundamentally, to the constitutionally vital distinction between libelous speech that does or does not address some matter of public interest and concern.

The argument below first emphasizes the constitutional logic underlying the Court’s initial …

Suing Texas State Senate Bill 8 Plaintiffs Under Federal Law For Violations Of Constitutional Rights, Anthony J. Colangelo

SMU Law Review Forum

Many people are deriding (or celebrating) the exceptional—and exceptionally deceptive—device of the Texas legislature to so-called “deputize” private individuals as government enforcement agents to carry out a state anti-abortion law that, at present, violates the U.S. Constitution. The law at issue, commonly referred to as Senate Bill 8, is extraordinarily broad, and provides that anyone can sue anyone who “aids or abets” an abortion after about six weeks of pregnancy (including, if read literally, the Uber driver who drove the woman to the clinic). The law awards recovery of no less than $10,000 and makes no exceptions for pregnancies resulting …

Texas, Abortion, And State Action, Alexander J. Lindvall

SMU Law Review Forum

The Texas Legislature recently passed what the Supreme Court describes as an “unprecedented” statutory scheme. Texas’s new law allows private, everyday citizens to sue anyone who assists a woman in obtaining an abortion after her sixth week of pregnancy. It’s clear that Texas chose this unusual enforcement mechanism to try to circumvent the Constitution’s “state action” requirement. Before a plaintiff can challenge a policy or action on constitutional grounds, they must show that the government somehow had a hand in causing their harm. But this Texas law strips the government of its enforcement power and instead gives it to everyday …

School Police Reform: A Public Health Imperative, Thalia González, Emma Kaeser

SMU Law Review Forum

Out of the twin pandemics currently gripping the United States­—deaths of unarmed Black victims at the hands of police and racialized health inequities resulting from COVID-19—an antiracist health equity agenda has emerged that identifies racism as a public health crisis. Likewise, calls for reform of school policing by those advocating for civil rights, racial justice, and Black Lives Matter have simultaneously intensified. Yet each remains siloed, despite the natural connection and implicit overlap between these separate movements and debates. Indeed, there are documented negative health effects of school policing for Black, Indigenous, people of color (BIPOC) youth. But these have …

The Texas Legislature Has Significantly Broadened The Statute Governing Recovery Of Attorney's Fees In Breach Of Contract Cases, Gregory Scott Crespi, West Menefee Bakke

SMU Law Review Forum

Texas recently enacted amendments that significantly expand the scope of section 38.001 of the Texas Civil Practice & Remedies Code, a statute that awards attorney’s fees to successful claimants in breach of contract cases. Under the new amendments, which take effect September 1, 2021, the prevailing party may recover reasonable attorney’s fees from most forms of business organizations, including partnerships and limited liability companies—not just from individuals and corporations, as the statute previously provided. And although there has been some confusion on this point, the amended statute continues to protect governments and governmental agencies from attorney’s fees liability. Additionally, the …

The Abcs Of Racial Disparity, Pamela R. Metzger, Kristin Meeks, Victoria Smiegocki, Kenitra Brown

Deason Criminal Justice Reform Center

Data show that Black and White people use marijuana at roughly equal rates. Yet in 2018, in six of Dallas County's biggest cities, Black people were vastly overrepresented in the enforcement of low-level drug crimes. With a look at enforcement trends before the election of District Attorney John Creuzot, this study launches a series of reports about how his reforms have impacted Dallas County.

Budding Change, Pamela R. Metzger, Victoria Smiegocki, Kristin Meeks

Deason Criminal Justice Reform Center

Budding Change explores what happened when Dallas County District Attorney John Creuzot (DA Creuzot) radically changed his office’s policies about the prosecution of first-time misdemeanor marijuana cases. The report concludes that DA Creuzot’s 2019 policies were associated with significant reductions in police enforcement of marijuana misdemeanor laws. As a result, marijuana screening caseloads within the District Attorney’s Office declined substantially. Budding Change shows that prosecutorial policies can have a profound impact on policing behaviors.

The Gun Rights Movement And 'Arms' Under The Second Amendment, Eric M. Ruben

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

After Donald Trump supporters breached the U.S. Capitol on January 6 wielding weapons including tasers, chemical sprays, knives, police batons, and baseball bats, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) remarked that the insurrection “didn’t seem . . . armed.” Johnson, who is A-rated by the National Rifle Association (NRA), observed, “When you hear the word ‘armed,’ don’t you think of firearms?” For many, the answer is likely yes.

This essay describes how the gun rights movement has contributed to the conflation of arms and firearms. In doing so, it shows how that conflation is flatly inconsistent with the most important legal context …

When Half The Neighborhood Is Missing: How To Overcome Systemic Poverty And Gentrification Following The Models Of Dudley Street And Mission Waco, Kevin A. Brown, Kevin A. Brown, Kevin A. Brown

Doctor of Ministry Projects and Theses

Abstract

By following the examples of Mission Waco and The Dudley Street Initiative, it is possible to renew a sense of beloved community by changing the narrative of poverty and gentrification by rebuilding the village through empowering the poor and marginalized.

Mission Waco and The Dudley Street Initiative are comprehensive sustainable communities because they combine numerous social and economic interventions under developed strategic plans. The principal question that this dissertation seeks to answer is whether these models can be implemented in local communities to help overcome gentrification and poverty. Implementation can be successful if we can identify the problem, rethink …

Automated Analysis Of Rfps Using Natural Language Processing (Nlp) For The Technology Domain, Sterling Beason, William Hinton, Yousri A. Salamah, Jordan Salsman

SMU Data Science Review

Much progress has been made in text analysis, specifically within the statistical domain of Term Frequency (TF) and Inverse Document Frequency (IDF). However, there is much room for improvement especially within the area of discovering Emerging Trends. Emerging Trend Detection Systems (ETDS) depend on ingesting a collection of textual data and TF/IDF to identify new or up-trending topics within the Corpus. However, the tremendous rate of change and the amount of digital information presents a challenge that makes it almost impossible for a human expert to spot emerging trends without relying on an automated ETD system. Since the U.S. Government …

Russia/Eurasia, Maria Grechishkina, Natalia Lantonio, Timur Bondaryev

The Year in Review

No abstract provided.

Middle East Committee, Hdeel Abdelhady, Sarah A. Oliai, Ibrahim Sattout, Dania Dib, Emma Higham, Yasser Shabbir, Abdulaziz M. Al Hussan, Amgad T. Husein, Mahmoud Abdel-Baky, Jonathan G. Burns, Zachary J. Walker, Christian Murad, S. Elisa Kim

The Year in Review

No abstract provided.

Mexico, Gil Anav, Francisco Garcia Bedoy Uribe, Susan Burns, Sergio Bustamante, Yurixhi Gallardo Martinez, Jorge Garcia Peralta, Karla Gudino Yanezyves, Matthew Hansen, Yves Hayaux Du Tilly L., Marco Antonio Pena Barba, Juan Pablo Sainz

The Year in Review

No abstract provided.

India, Aseem Chawla, Kavita Mohan, Poorvi Chothani, Gagan Kumar, Amit Kaushik, Namrata Patodia Rastogi, Sharanya G. Ranga, Riya Dutta

The Year in Review

No abstract provided.

Europe, Thomas Stanton, Laurent De Muyter, Angelique Devaux, Audrey Kavets, Valeria Miller, Jorg Rehder, John Richards, Andreas Ripken, Roselyn Sands

The Year in Review

No abstract provided.

Canada, Angela E. Weaver, Erin Brown, Melissa N. Burkett, Sunita D. Doobay, Theodore Goloff, George Karayannides, Ken Macdonald, Martin G. Masse, Terri-Lee Oleniuk, Taylor Schappert, Ellen Snow, Clifford Sosnow

The Year in Review

No abstract provided.

Asia Pacific, Justin G. Persaud, Zack Spencer, Genan Zilkha

The Year in Review

No abstract provided.

Africa, Diepiriye Anga, Lawrence Fubara Anga, Rosanna Barsati, Elisha Bhugwandeen, Susan Bishai, Anne Bodley, Ineke Brink, Ladawn Burnett, Kirsty Dean-Mhlongo, Michela Cocchi, Tamara Dini, Adam Dubin, Dr. Porpoise Evans, Rudolf Ezeani, Peter Finan, Elizabeth Fitzgerald, Katherine Flannery, Sara Frazao, Ganiyou Gassikia, Felicia Gordon, Jehmal Hudson, Joyce Karanja-Ng'ang'a, Sarika Karia, Ryan P. Kelley, James Lord, Lumela Lumela, Anis Mahfoud, Xolani Nyali, Nkatha Obungu, Nelson Ogbuanya, Steve Onwuasoanya, Ricardo Silva

The Year in Review

No abstract provided.

Transnational Legal Practice, Laurel Terry

The Year in Review

No abstract provided.

Sexual Orientation And Gender Identity, Mark E. Wojcik

The Year in Review

No abstract provided.

National Security Law, James D. Carlson, Geoffrey M. Goodale, Guy C. Quinlan, Sergio L. Suarez

The Year in Review

No abstract provided.

International Organizations: The Work Of The Un In 2015, Javier Etcheverry Boneo, Elizabeth A. Turchi, Renee Dopplick, Jehmal Hudson, Gabrielle Culmer, Poopak Taati

The Year in Review

No abstract provided.

International Human Rights, Noor Ahmad, Honorable Del Atwood, Jeffrey L. Bleich, Cindy Galway Buys, Nicholas J. Leddy

The Year in Review

No abstract provided.