Digital Commons Network^™

Vol. 29, No. 1: Full Issue

Water Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Anonymous Officer, Shawn E. Fields

Faculty Scholarship

(Forthcoming 2026) Masked, plainclothes immigration agents in unmarked vans have terrorized communities in Chicago, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, and beyond. The indiscriminate violence committed by federal officers who at times appear indistinguishable from paramilitary units has forced immigrants into hiding and left lawmakers scrambling to address a growing and largely legal anonymity crisis in law enforcement. This Article explores the undertheorized implications of anonymous law enforcement, situating the rise of masked policing within a larger project of democratic retrogression and executive aggrandizement. Anonymity in policing and immigration enforcement frustrates core democratic norms of transparency, accountability, and legitimacy, providing the opacity needed …

Police Reform As System Justification, Shawn E. Fields

Faculty Scholarship

System Justification Theory (SJT) provides a useful lens through which to critique recent police reform efforts. SJT posits that members of society tend to justify and maintain existing social and political systems even when those systems disadvantage them, because the predictability of the status quo provides palliative, epistemic, and existential comfort in what otherwise appears to be an unjust and inequitable societal structure. Contrary to “false consciousness” theories, SJT claims that disadvantaged groups may intentionally rationalize what they know to be an unfair status quo, because doing so reduces social anxiety and threat while providing much desired order and meaning …

Unlucky Chapter 13, Lawrence Ponoroff

Missouri Law Review

As a social program for individual debtors dealing with financial upheaval, Chapter 13 of the federal Bankruptcy Code is a failure and has been from its inception nearly 90 years ago. It is overly complex, internally inconsistent, and the product of congressional schizophrenia. There is no eagerness to fix it and no interest in eliminating it, which are both suggestions I have offered in the past. And so, with two strikes against me, I’ve decided to take my third and final swing. Using one of the most recent subjects of judicial disagreement over the proper application of the statute as …

The Fight For Public Rights On America’S Waterways, Mark Squillace

Colorado Environmental Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Fencing In A Technological Age: Utilizing Federal Regulatory Frameworks To Implement Virtual Fencing On Federal Public Land, Sam Johnson

Colorado Environmental Law Journal

No abstract provided.

A Précis Of Pfas Legislation In The Southwestern United States, Brenden Catt

Colorado Environmental Law Journal

No abstract provided.

People Over Paper: The Effectiveness Of International Agreements Under Treaty Capture, Eric Nicholson

Colorado Environmental Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Greening With Justice: Evaluating Denver’S Urban Green Space Policies Through An Environmental Justice Lens, Vicente Tapia

Colorado Environmental Law Journal

No abstract provided.

The Eighth Amendment And Prison Staff-To-Sentenced Prisoner Sexual Violence, Matthew Lyskawa

Faculty Scholarship

In this Article, I provide the first comprehensive account of lower federal courts’ Eighth Amendment prison conditions jurisprudence regarding prison staff-to-sentenced prisoner sexual violence. I show that lower federal courts are systematically misunderstanding and misapplying Supreme Court case law in this context. The result is that sexually victimized prisoners must meet extremely burdensome doctrinal standards unique to sexual violence claims. Lower federal courts would faithfully follow Supreme Court precedent if they applied the excessive force standard to sexual assault claims and the conditions of confinement standard to sexual harassment claims. However, a faithful application of Supreme Court case law does …

From Player Piano To Generative Ai: Artificial Expression And The Law Of Copyright, Douglas Lind, Adrienne Holz

Fordham Intellectual Property, Media and Entertainment Law Journal

American copyright law has experienced challenges and sometimes faltered when confronting mechanical reproduction. This Article retraces the rise and diffusion of the player piano and the phonograph, examining how they reshaped the making and listening to music. As these technologies spread throughout American society more rapidly than copyright law could adjust, courts misclassified piano rolls and records as merely mechanics. Reducing these new fixations to machinery rather than embodiments of human expression left recorded human musical performances inadequately protected, which facilitated piracy. Applying these lessons, this Article contends that generative AI training implicates copyright law in ways not dissimilar to …

Havens For Corporate Lawbreaking, William J. Moon

Faculty Scholarship

Whether corporations are obligated to maximize profits or if they ought to consider societal interests more broadly remains one of the most highly contested debates in corporate law. Yet even the fiercest defenders of the firm’s profit motive concede that the corporation’s profit-seeking function cannot justify breaking the law. As a matter of American corporate law, directors and officers are in breach of their fiduciary duties if they facilitate or engage in profit-maximizing illegal activities. Or so we thought.

This Essay reveals a troubling trend of jurisdictions undercutting the legal compliance obligations of directors and officers. The current legal architecture …

The Deregulation Of Cancer, Daniel G. Aaron

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

Fifty years ago, the U.S. embarked on a radical new path. Under pressure from the environmental movement, Congress passed an array of statutes aimed at regulating carcinogens out of our world. This regulatory experiment sprawled from air and water to food and consumer products.

Legal scholars have paid scant attention to this wave of cancer regulation despite its size and importance and the public’s apparent interest in avoiding carcinogens. But there is a growing literature finding flaws with individual regimes within the framework, such as the Clean Air Act, the Toxic Substances Control Act, and the Tobacco Control Act. In …

How Should The Law Treat Future Ai Systems? Fictional Legal Personhood Versus Legal Identity, Heather Alexander, Jonathan Simon, Frédéric Pinard

Journal of Law, Technology, & the Internet

The law draws a sharp distinction between objects and persons, and between two kinds of persons, the ''fictional'' kind (i.e. corporations), and the ''non-fictional'' kind (individual or ''natural'' persons). This paper will assess whether we maximize overall long-term legal coherence by (A) maintaining an object classification for all future AI systems, (B) creating fictional legal persons associated with suitably advanced, individuated AI systems (giving these fictional legal persons derogable rights and duties associated with certified groups of existing persons, potentially including free speech, contract rights, and standing to sue ''on behalf of'' the AI system), or (C) recognizing non-fictional legal …

The Case Against State Emotional Support Animal Documentation Laws, Krista Wirth

Animal Law Review

Under the Fair Housing Act (FHA), a tenant with a service animal or emotional support animal (ESA) may request a reasonable accommodation from their housing provider to have their assistance animal live with them in housing that might not otherwise permit animals. In recent years, several states have implemented laws that aim to address “fraudulent” emotional support animals (“state ESA laws”). These laws limit the types of acceptable verifying documentation or place requirements on a healthcare provider’s ability to produce documentation to verify an individual’s disability and disability related need for a support animal—documentation an individual often needs to support …

The Last Human Question: Generative Ai's Existential Threat To Consensus And Law, Joshua Fairfield

Scholarly Articles

The true risk of artificial intelligence (“AI”) is not that the toasters will rise up. It is that AI will be competent to perform human tasks and indifferent to human welfare. The risk is that we will be outcompeted by generative automated processes that create output similar to ours (although never the same, as this Article explains), but which need none of the outputs of the economy for food, shelter, or human flourishing. Further, a more precise and existential description of the threat is that generative AI will disrupt and crowd out humanity’s evolutionary superpower, our ability to generate agreement …

In Defense Of Substantive Due Process, Maureen A. Edobor

Scholarly Articles

The Originalism Trap is a book for everyone—and it should be required reading for anyone trying to make sense of the seismic shifts in constitutional law on democracy, guns, and reproductive rights, even as the Constitution’s text has remained unchanged. Dennie’s sweeping and incisive defense of substantive due process raises a fundamental question: what better reflects democratic legitimacy—judicial doctrine shaped through decades of engagement between advocates, communities, judges, and lawmakers, or a narrow search through centuries-old texts for fragmented glimpses of “original public meaning” drawn from eras that excluded most people from citizenship, personhood, and power? Dennie forcefully answers: the …

The Lives Of Fritz Haber And Of International Law: Entwined Tales Of Tragedy And Irony, Mark A. Drumbl, C. William Vardy

Scholarly Articles

This article recounts the life of international law through the story of a single individual. This is the narrative of biographical international law. The subject — equally protagonist and antagonist — of this article is Fritz Haber, a German-Jewish scientist born in 1868. Devoted to the Kaiser, Haber was declared a war criminal by the Allies following World War I for having been ‘the father’ of chemical warfare. Haber argued that chemical weapons were more humane than conventional weapons. While under this shadow, Haber also won the Nobel Prize for chemistry in 1920 for his pioneering work with ammonia …

Incarcerated Persons’ Day In The Sun: Why Prisoners Should Have A Right To Fresh Air And Direct Sunlight, David Gross

Indiana Journal of Law and Social Equality

One word sums up the current state of a prisoner’s rights to fresh air and direct sunlight: conditionality. Because the rights are conditional in the United States, the sword of litigation hangs above prisons while residents are subject to violations of their limited constitutional rights. International law and medical research respectively recognize the right to, and need for, outdoor recreation. However, the grueling deliberate indifference standard debilitates attempts to change this reality in the courthouse. Thus, the impetus of change must come from the expansion of statutory rights. The right to fresh air and direct sunlight can be energized …

Momager Dearest: Why The Kidfluencer Industry Requires Stronger Regulation, Lewis, Annabel

Santa Clara Law Review

In the last twenty years, social media has undergone a massive transformation. What began as a medium to connect with friends has evolved into a multi-billion-dollar industry where influencers reign supreme, profiting from their online personas. This opportunity is not limited to those old enough to operate their own accounts.

The recent rise of child influencers, known as “kidfluencers,” enables parents to profit from sharing aspects of their children’s lives on the internet. These accounts are not without benefit. Beyond their financial appeal, kidfluencer accounts can serve as a means for parents to bond with their children and may open …

From Copper To Ashes: Violations Of The Right To A Healthy Environment And Health In Tsumeb, Namibia, Sarah Dávila A.

UIC Law Open Access Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Imperfect Guardians, Amna A. Akbar, Ryan D. Doerfler

Articles

Professor David Strauss attributes the U.S. Supreme Court’s reactionary jurisprudence to a breakdown of elite consensus. He observes that lawyers and judges disagree about the proper “victims” of our political process: Are they Black, Brown, and LGBTQ+ people or, instead, Whites, Christians, and gun owners? Strauss worries the jurisprudential approach that emerged from Carolene Products now allows for judicial intervention on behalf of groups loaded with political power. Even then, he insists on the classic liberal defense of the courts: that courts serve as an important if imperfect check against the majoritarian domination of minorities.

In this Essay, we identify …

Untangling Ai Openness, Parth Nobel, Alan Rozenshtein, Chinmayi Sharma

Articles

The debate over AI openness—whether to make components of an artificial intelligence system available for public inspection and modification—forces policymakers to balance innovation, democratized access, safety, and national security. By inviting startups and researchers into the fold, it enables independent oversight and inclusive collaboration. But technology giants can also use it to entrench their own power, while adversaries can use it to shortcut years and billions of dollars in building systems, like China’s DeepSeek, that rival our own. How we govern AI openness today will shape the future of AI and America’s role in it.

Policymakers and scholars grasp the …

Reading Wars, Don Herzog

Books

Once again, we’re fighting wars over reading. Who gets to read? What do they get to read? These days, the right is obsessed with removing LGBTQ books from school and public library shelves and ensuring students read only the Correct version of American history. The left is obsessed with eradicating right-wing fantasies, not to mention outright lies, from the internet, and with airbrushing or even purging racist texts. You don’t have to stoop to whataboutery to notice a suspicious resemblance. But once again is wrong. We’ve always fought these wars, even if the enemies come and go. In this book, …

Balancing The Barre: Judicial Approaches To The Analysis Of Copyright Infringement Claims Of Choreographic Works, Sylvia R. Ofoma

Suffolk Journal of Trial and Appellate Advocacy

No abstract provided.

Panel And Discussion, Kyle Cohen, Heidi Kitrosser, Kate Klonick, Christina Koningisor, Jess Miers, Saurabh Vishnubhakat

Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal

No abstract provided.

An Excellent Genealogy Of The Core Concepts Of Indian Contract Law: A Review Of Dr. Shivprasad Swaminathan’S “A Historical Introduction To Indian Contract Law” (Routledge 2025), Katy Barnett

National Law School of India Review

This review discusses Dr Shivprasad Swaminathan’s new book, ‘A Historical Introduction to Indian Contract Law’, including his discussion of the history of Indian contract law, formation of contracts, contractual consideration, privity, contractual vitiating factors, frustration, damages and stipulated sums, and unjustified enrichment. As noted in the last chapter of Dr Swaminathan’s book, the discussion goes to the very heart of the common law itself and how it operates. We can all learn from the Indian experience of codification.

From Player Piano To Generative Ai: Artificial Expression And The Law Of Copyright, Douglas Lind, Adrienne Holz

Fordham Intellectual Property, Media and Entertainment Law Journal

American copyright law has experienced challenges and sometimes faltered when confronting mechanical reproduction. This Article retraces the rise and diffusion of the player piano and the phonograph, examining how they reshaped the making and listening to music. As these technologies spread throughout American society more rapidly than copyright law could adjust, courts misclassified piano rolls and records as merely mechanics. Reducing these new fixations to machinery rather than embodiments of human expression left recorded human musical performances inadequately protected, which facilitated piracy. Applying these lessons, this Article contends that generative AI training implicates copyright law in ways not dissimilar to …

What Is Hate Speech? A Proposal For An Ordinary And Legal Definition, Hannah Van Dijcke

SJD Dissertations

The term “hate speech” has been stretched in legal and public debates to cover speech ranging from insults to Holocaust denial. This definitional stretching has consequences beyond mere conceptual confusion: it risks obscuring the profound harm that hate speech does, and it facilitates the term’s misuse.

In this dissertation, I aim to precisely define hate speech and its harm, both in an ordinary (colloquial or non-legal) sense and in a legal sense. To do so, I examine real-world examples of speech widely understood to express hate, including texts from the context of the Holocaust and the Rwandan genocide, and conduct …

Prevention Beyond Deterrence, Benjamin A. Barsky

Emory Law Journal

This Article reconceptualizes preventive justice—the public safety paradigm that seeks to prevent harm before it occurs. Scholars have long documented how cities have advanced this paradigm through largely punitive measures, notably variants of broken windows policing, which posit that aggressive misdemeanor enforcement deters more serious crime. Yet in the aftermath of the 2020 George Floyd protests, and as underscored recently in City of Grants Pass v. Johnson, these measures have faced a legitimacy crisis—prompting calls for nonpunitive responses to nonviolent incidents.

This Article establishes a preventive justice approach that advances health and safety without emphasizing crime deterrence. It draws …