Digital Commons Network^™

Identifying Intangible And Biocultural Heritage Elements Toward Environmental Understanding: Engaging Stakeholders Through Art, Martha B. Lerski

Publications and Research

Grounded in a case study in Barbuda in the Caribbean, this research examines sustainability from the perspective of what arts and heritage can contribute to community engagement and local and broader understandings about the environment. This article documents a growing body of literature recognizing the role of arts and culture, including local knowledge and traditional ecological knowledge (TEK), in climate change endeavors. Art and TEK present expansive world views. Contextual information situates research done on the island of Barbuda pre- and post-Hurricane Irma. Visual arts workshops engaged community members in mixed methods research. Results documented cultural elements, particularly intangible and …

From Cigarettes To Cereal: Analyzing The Rise, Peak, And Fall Of Ultra-Processed Foods And The Legal Battle Against Industry Food Deception, Charlotte F. Baird

SMU Science and Technology Law Review

This Comment explores the legal, regulatory, and public health dimensions of ultra-processed foods (UPFs) in the United States and abroad, revealing the urgent need for comprehensive reform. It traces the historical evolution of UPFs, exposing how Big Tobacco strategically pivoted into the food industry after facing public backlash and regulatory crackdowns with cigarettes and tobacco products. Using the same research tactics, behavioral manipulation, and aggressive marketing practices once employed to sell cigarettes, Big Tobacco companies repurposed their corporate expertise to engineer food designed for potential addiction, overconsumption, and profit, while often targeting children and marginalized communities. This Comment critically examines …

The Court’S Haphazard Reasoning On The Separation Of Powers, Steven D. Schwinn

Saint Louis University Law Journal

The Supreme Court in recent years has taken a sharp and decisive turn toward originalism in cases touching on individual rights. Say what you will about the Court’s originalism in individual-rights cases (and there’s much to say), at least it’s an approach. We can’t even say that much about the Court’s treatment of cases touching on the separation of powers.

In short, the Court’s separation-of-powers opinions are a mess. They lack any consistent methodology or any coherent theory across cases. If five or six justices agree on the result in any given case, it seems, the explanation and reasoning are …

Muslim American Workers, Faith And Labor Organizing, Chaumtoli Huq

Saint Louis University Law Journal

Islam is one of the fastest-growing religions in the U.S. Muslim-Americans are racially, ethnically and theologically diverse and are a politically engaged constituency. It is a community experiencing immense economic insecurity alongside political vulnerability due to discrimination, which make them inclined to labor organizing. Despite these demographic changes, the U.S. labor movement is not addressing this growing faith-based community. In this article, I discuss three examples of successful labor organizing interventions led by Muslim-American workers or where Muslim-Americans were actively engaged which have resulted in positive gains for all workers. They are: (1) New York Taxi Workers Alliance (NYTWA) Post …

Kill ‘Em With Lies: The False Narrative Of The American Execution Laboratory, Danica Howell

Saint Louis University Law Journal

The Supreme Court’s narrative regarding capital punishment, in keeping with the laboratories of democracy theory, boasts the consistent development of more humane methods of execution. Contrary to the Court’s narrative, however, states are not driven by the desire to create humane execution; they are merely striving to keep state-sanctioned killing alive. Examination reveals that execution methods are adopted on best guess and are retained without post-adoption verification of their effectiveness, humanity or painlessness. As abolitionist ideals close in on capital punishment, legislative shortcuts, willful ignorance, and secrecy allow new methods to propagate. As those tactics begin to fail, states resort …

Cultural Cognition And The Thoughtful Judge, Jack Whiteley

Indiana Law Journal

That judges follow what the law is, and not what they wish it was, is a requirement of the rule of law. At the same time, scholars, lawyers, and judges often say that judges’ values influence their decisions. Connecting these two ideas has generated a conversation about the relationship between law, ideology, and politics.

Recently, part of this conversation has focused on a theory called cultural cognition. The theory offers an account of how people’s values shape how they interpret things without their noticing. People whose values tend toward hierarchy sometimes perceive facts differently than people whose values tend toward …

Common Law Executive Privilege(S), Jonathan Shaub

Indiana Law Journal

There are few Supreme Court cases that enjoy as much widespread support as the unanimous decision in United States v. Nixon. The recent pitched battles between Congress and the executive branch have made apparent the vast disagreement between the two branches over access to information. But that disagreement does not extend to Nixon, the unquestioned jurisprudential foundation for the doctrine of executive privilege. Closer inspection shows, however, that this foundation is not a stable one, but one constructed from unnecessary, ill-considered dicta.

As this Article demonstrates, Nixon conflated the constitutional question about one branch’s power vis-à-vis another branch with an …

The Anti-Discriminatory Right To Travel, Noah Smith-Drelich

Indiana Law Journal

Travel rights and travel restrictions shape nearly every part of society, moderating where and how we go about our daily lives. Yet a central aspect of travel has gone largely unnoticed in the legal literature. Oppressive governments have routinely restricted free movement as a principal means of effectuating discrimination. And travel rights, as a result, have always had a strong anti-discriminatory valence. From the Magna Carta to Blackstone’s Commentaries to the Constitution itself, rights to travel have consistently emerged from struggles against discrimination.

This Article makes several independent but related contributions. First, the Constitution’s protections of travel have a strong …

Should Copyright Protect Racist Works? A Review Of Intellectual Property And Immorality: Against Protecting Harmful Creations Of The Mind By Ned Snow, Cathay Smith

Texas A&M Journal of Property Law

This Essay reviews Ned Snow’s provocative book, Intellectual Property and Immorality: Against Protecting Harmful Creations of the Mind, and critically examines the intersection of copyright law and morality. It explores the ethical dimensions of copyright protection and examines whether works which fail to advance societal progress, as defined by Snow, should be ineligible for copyright. Drawing parallels between pornography and offensive and racially insensitive classic children’s literature and films, this Essay considers the broader implications of denying copyright to immoral works, including the potential for increased dissemination of harmful content, the challenge of aligning copyright with evolving moral standards, …

A Patent System For Temple Grandin, Andrew Chin

Faculty Publications

This article explores the intersection of neurodiversity and innovation through the lens of Temple Grandin’s contributions to livestock handling systems and her philosophical alignment with the U.S. patent system. Drawing on cognitive research by Simon Baron-Cohen, archaeological insights from Penny Spikins, and personal reflections, I argue that autistic cognitive styles—characterized by heightened “folk physics” aptitudes and visual thinking—have historically driven technological progress. Grandin’s patented inventions, motivated by sensory-based empathy for animals, exemplify how neurodivergent inventors seek to embed their conceptions of ethical utility into the nation’s technological infrastructure. The article critiques modern patent litigation trends, advocating instead for a system …

Civic Duties And Cultural Change, Daniel B. Rice

Faculty Publications

What duties do Americans owe the state? Today, this question seems almost incomprehensible. Compulsions in the common interest are received coolly in our rights-obsessed culture, and the Supreme Court has never announced a framework for identifying the burdens of citizenship. Yet the concept of civic duty has played a central role in America’s constitutional tradition. From shoveling snow to repairing roads to fighting overseas, private individuals have long been forced to serve the public in ways menial and profound. Strangely, the discourse of obligation that legitimated numerous compulsions has faded from professional view. Judges’ mawkish tributes to liberty pay no …

Rethinking Social Rights From Latin America, Christian Gonzalez Chacon

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

International human rights courts and bodies have traditionally enforced social rights within constrained frameworks, such as “available resources” and “minimum provision,” often overlooking deeper structural inequalities and urgent global challenges. This paper advocates for a paradigm shift grounded in the capabilities framework, reconceptualizing rights to encompass sustainability, harmony, and human flourishing. Drawing on indigenous philosophies from Latin America, I propose strategies to strengthen enforcement mechanisms, including the establishment of specialized human rights courts, equitable taxation systems, and regenerative economic models. By aligning human rights with capabilities and ecological stewardship, this paper illustrates their potential to address poverty, inequality, and climate …

Faking It: A Proposed Solution To Counter Nonconsensual Pornographic Deepfakes, Rena Song

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

2024 Louise A. Halper Award Winner for Best Student Note.

Deepfakes have become popular due to their user-friendly nature and accessibility, allowing anyone to create one by installing deepfake software programs on their phones or laptops. Deepfake software programs allow creators to create hyper-realistic multimedia featuring anyone whose image they can find. Some industries have drawn positive uses from deepfakes; however, deepfakes also create harms that can have detrimental effects on people’s mental health, employment, and reputation. Women and children, including those without a large online presence, have become the target for nonconsensual pornographic deepfakes. Congress has yet to pass …

The U.N. Global Plastics Treaty: How Narrative Shapes Global Environmental Policy, Ruth Jebe, Susan Park

North Carolina Journal of International Law

No abstract provided.

Social Data's Role In Law And Political Economy, Salome Viljoen

Book Chapters

Over the past several years, the digital economy has been a notable uptick in interest from scholars across areas of law. This should come as no surprise. The digital economy encompasses some of the largest companies in the world, whose business models pioneer and spread new strategies to concentrate private power across the political economy more broadly. Digital companies have transformed commercial and social life, and they raise problems of concentrated private power. They are also charged with a slew of downstream disruptions resulting from collective pursuit of that power: global, social, and interpersonal forms of dislocation, oppression, impoverishment, alienation, …

Water, Water, Everywhere, And Not A Drop Of Justice: International Water Crimes In The Anthropocene, Matthew J. D’Amato

Student Works

No abstract provided.

Addiction By Design: The Case For Mandatory Warning Labels On Social Media, Julia Michael

Student Works

No abstract provided.

The Rise And Fall Of Ambulatory Baselines In The Law Of The Sea, Sean Murphy

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

Traditionally, it has been understood under the law of the sea that baselines are ambulatory; that they move in association with any progression or regression of the physical coast. More recently, however, relevant State practice, the work of bodies such as the International Law Commission and the International Law Association, and in particular the 2025 advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice on climate change, have all indicated that baselines are not necessarily ambulatory, at least not in the context of physical changes resulting from climate-change related sea level rise. Rather, while a State must establish baselines in accordance …

Compelled Contraception, Lars Noah

UF Law Faculty Publications

Can the federal government insist that people use contraceptives? It may come as a surprise to learn that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has done just that as a condition for allowing access to some pharmaceutical products that create a serious risk of birth defects. Over the last few decades, the agency has demanded that patients using certain teratogenic agents—now numbering over a dozen drugs prescribed for a variety of conditions, ranging from severe acne and psoriasis to multiple myeloma and pulmonary hypertension—agree to avoid becoming pregnant, sometimes for years after completing their course of treatment. Undoubtedly the …

Fair-Enough Ai, Jane R. Bambauer, Tal Z. Zarsky

UF Law Faculty Publications

AI is unfair. It can be inaccurate (in several ways), biased (in several ways, and to several groups), disproportionate, exploitable, and opaque. The policy world is awash in AI-governance frameworks, ethical guidelines, and other policy documents, but these lack concrete standards and provide little guidance on how to select between competing versions of (un)fairness. In other words, they abdicate the responsibility of setting priorities among values. At the same time, many of the policy documents harshly criticize AI and algorithmic tools for deficiencies in some particular aspect of fairness without considering whether alternative designs that fix the problem would make …

Dirty Water: The Failure Of The Clean Water Act's Tmdls, Annie Brett

UF Law Faculty Publications

Nonpoint source water pollution is the largest cause of water pollution in the United States today. From harmful algal blooms to acid rain to red tide, the impacts of nonpoint source pollution are devastating for human and environmental health. In the last several decades, states and the Environmental Protection Agency have spent billions of dollars trying to address this pollution through the Clean Water Act’s TMDL program. TMDLs have been derided for their lack of a coherent regulatory driver, but many academics have come to argue for their value as an example of information regulation: a regulation that requires the …

The Second Life Of Information, Thomas D. Haley

UF Law Faculty Publications

Information permeates every aspect of modern life. It is the price we pay for access to online services and the form in which we embody creative works. Law and policymaking tend to focus on first-order uses and transactions; information for access serves as the paradigmatic example. But information enjoys a robust second life—one that constitutes the true value and power that drives firms’ decisionmaking—as assets. Once aggregated and assetized, the power and risk associated with information increases exponentially.

To explore the implications of information’s second life, this Article introduces the concept of “untethered information.” Assetization depends on severing the connections …

Litigating Predator Management, John A. Erwin

UF Law Faculty Publications

Despite significant gains over the last half-century, predators such as mountain lions, wolves, and bears are in the crosshairs once again. Scientific management, democratic principles, and the holding of wildlife resources in trust for the public are all foundational pillars of the North American Model for Wildlife Conservation, yet state wildlife agencies and legislatures routinely fail to uphold these values where predators are concerned. Many of these tensions were thrust into the public consciousness in 2020 when gray wolves were temporarily delisted under the Endangered Species Act (ESA), resulting in a disastrous wolf hunting season in Wisconsin. States that have …

Medication Abortion And The Mails: The Ghost Of Anthony Comstock Rides Again?, Lars Noah

UF Law Faculty Publications

Mail-order dispensing of the prescription drug mifepristone has become the latest flashpoint in this country’s long-running debate over abortion access. It also has brought back from the dead one of the oldest federal statutes to address that contentious subject. In their fight to limit access to a drug approved by the FDA one quarter of a century ago, abortion opponents have rediscovered the Comstock Act. Although amended on several occasions since 1873, Congress never managed to repeal or clarify its ambiguous language relating to abortion. On its narrowest reading, this provision would have no impact whatsoever on access to mifepristone; …

Dead Infants And Taking The Fifth, Tracey Maclin

UF Law Faculty Publications

This Essay offers tribute to Professor Colb's teachings and insights expressed in her writings on the Court's Miranda and Self-Incrimination Clause rulings. Since the start of the twenty-first century, Professor Colb wrote many blogs on the Court's Miranda doctrine. Miranda v. Arizona famously held that persons under arrest must be warned of their right to silence and to have counsel's advice before being subject to interrogation. Generally speaking, Professor Colb was critical of the Court's results and reasoning—for good reason.

As someone who supports a broad interpretation of the Fifth Amendment, I offer a counterview of Professor Colb's conception of …

Do Ais Dream Of Electric Boards?, Robert J. Rhee

UF Law Faculty Publications

When artificial intelligence (“AI”) acquires self-awareness, agency, and unique intelligence, it will attain ontological personhood. Management of firms by AI would be technologically and economically feasible. The law could confer AI with the status of legal personhood, as it did with the personhood of traditional business firms in the past, thus dispensing with the need for inserting AI as property within the legal boundary of a firm. As a separate and distinct entity, AI could function independently as a manager in the way that legal or natural persons do today: i.e., AI as director, officer, partner, member, or manager. Such …

Employment Law Reform From A Contracts Perspective, Rachel Arnow-Richman

UF Law Faculty Publications

For most of history, pro-worker legal reform has meant legislative action. By contrast, this Essay, prepared for the 75th Annual NYU Conference on Labor & Employment Law, looks to contract law as the source and site of progressive change.

This may seem odd. Contract has primarily been a tool of management. Terms set by the “parties” to an employment relationship, are likely to be those imposed by the employer. Yet contract law is essential to employment law reform. Protective legislation is incremental and discrete. Beyond its provisions, the employment relationship is defined entirely by private ordering. The day-to-day experience of …

The Ironically Important Role Of Incidental Take Authorizations In Whale Conservation, Alexander Carbaugh-Rutland, Jessica Owley, Kenneth Broad

Articles

The late 1970s and early '80s saw a regime shift in wildlife protection under the Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA) and the Endangered Species Act (ESA). That shift may be impeding the recovery of cetaceans (whales, dolphins, and porpoise species) in ways that are yet underexplored. As enacted, the MMPA and ESA established a conservation framework designed to reduce, to the fullest extent possible, "takes" of protected species. Between 1978 and 1982, a series of amendments to both statutes introduced a complex web of incidental take authorizations designed to ensure Congress' initial push for wildlife conservation would not impede economic …

Rahimi And The Future Of (The Rest Of) The Protection Order Prohibition, Bonnie Carlson

SMU Law Review

In the summer of 2024, the Supreme Court considered United States v. Rahimi. Scholars and lawyers watched with bated breath to see how the court would interpret and apply the foundation-shifting Second Amendment test it established in New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n v. Bruen two years earlier. Ultimately, the Court upheld the federal law which temporarily bans some protection order respondents from possessing firearms. But the Court provided little in the way of additional guidance that lower courts desperately needed as evidenced by the disparate outcomes on gun cases nationwide following Bruen. Rather, the Court opted …

Regulating The Forever Wild, Edward W. De Barbieri

SMU Law Review

Communities in rural areas regularly come into conflict with government bodies regarding the use of protected lands. From New York, to Alaska, to Nevada—and many places in between—a common question emerges: who should have authority to regulate human activity on and around wilderness lands? It is not a new phenomenon for urban dwellers, often controlling money and political power, to use influence and a specter of conservation to control what is permitted in rural spaces. Resulting unrest among rural resi­dents may be the result of the exclusion of poor, racially underrepresented, indigenous, and other residents who earn their livelihood from …