Digital Commons Network^™

Front Matter And Table Of Contents

University of Miami Race & Social Justice Law Review

No abstract provided.

Mutual Liberation: The Use And Abuse Of Non–Human Animals By The Carceral State And The Shared Roots Of Oppression, Michael Swistara

University of Miami Race & Social Justice Law Review

The carceral state has used non–human animals as tools to oppress Black, Indigenous, and People of the Global Majority (BIPGM) for centuries. From bloodhounds violently trained by settlers to aid in their genocidal colonial project through the slave dogs that enforced a racial caste system to the modern deployment of police dogs, non–consenting non–human animals have been coopted into the role of agents of oppression. Yet, the same non– human animals are themselves routinely brutalized and oppressed by the carceral state. Police kill several thousands of family’s companion dogs every year in the United States. Law enforcement agencies train animals …

Legal Avenues For Protecting Access To Starry Skies, Alexandra Feathers

Washington Journal of Social & Environmental Justice

In the millennia before the creation and adoption of electric lighting, night skies drenched in stars were the inalienable inheritance of humanity. Electric lighting threatens this birthright by emitting star-blocking light (also known as light pollution) into night skies. Left unaddressed, light pollution will restrict access to dark, starry skies so that many in future generations will only know the stars secondhand. Yet despite the many benefits of dark skies, little scholarship has considered the problem of light pollution limiting the accessibility of starry skies, or how law can address this problem. This Article balances the hope of a future …

Improving Care And Licensing Standards And Oversight In America's Zoos, Hannah Willis

Honors Theses

Since 1966, the Animal Welfare Act has been the official federal legislation passed to provide care standards and regulations for publicly exhibited animals, specifically exotic animals within zoos; however, in an age of major advocacy for improved animal welfare standards for all animals, the AWA has remained fairly stagnant in its guidelines for animal exhibitors. Through numerous articles, documentaries, and TV shows, specific zoos and animal exhibitors have shown many Americans that there seems to be little to no governmental oversight over zoos that have engaged in poor animal care or those engaging in often dangerous and cruel animal contact …

2022 Recognition Ceremony Program

Recognition Ceremony

No abstract provided.

The Implementation Of An Authenticity Clause In Social Media Influencers' Contracts, Sarah Tonos

Honors Theses

In the age of social media influencers turning social media platforms into jobs– monetizing pictures of their cats, dancing for dollars, or even making a mockery of themselves for fame and money, the question of whom to trust or distrust has become increasingly important among consumers. As more brands are starting to collaborate with influencers, it is essential to acknowledge the current relationship among all parties involved, including the Federal Trade Commission. There is currently a blurred line among trust, distrust, authenticity, and reliability during sponsorships. The common question among consumers is whether social media influencers believe in the brand …

Saving The World Through Zoning: The Sustainable Development Code, Regeneration, And Beyond, Jonathan Rosenbloom, Chris Duerksen

Journal of Comparative Urban Law and Policy

The land use and planning community began to address sustainability at the local level in the 1990s, but in reality, state-of-the-art development codes drafted in the 1990s and early 2000s did little to address climate change, energy conservation, community health, loss of biodiversity, shifting biochemical cycles, racial justice, food supply, and other key sustainability issues. This article reviews past challenges that had to be overcome for sustainable development codes to become mainstream. The good news is that an increasing number of local governments are adopting ambitious sustainable development codes that hold great promise to not only protect the environment and …

The Future Of The Comprehensive Plan, David Rouse

Journal of Comparative Urban Law and Policy

This article begins with a brief history of the comprehensive plan from its historic roots to the present day. It then considers contemporary comprehensive planning practice, using the Comprehensive Plan Standards for Sustaining Places developed by the American Planning Association (APA) as a benchmark. The article concludes by exploring how the comprehensive plan can and must evolve to address the major challenges of the 21st century. It draws on research and content from The Comprehensive Plan: Sustainable, Resilient and Equitable Communities for the 21st Century (Rouse and Piro 2022).

The Influence Of Civil Rights And Anti-Discrimination Laws On Shaping Our Transportation System, Marc Brenman, Thomas W. Sanchez

Journal of Comparative Urban Law and Policy

Regarding the title of this paper, “The Influence of Civil Rights and Anti-Discrimination Laws on Shaping Our Transportation System”, the reverse is also true—the transportation system has helped shape the civil rights laws in the U.S. The way bus lines in the South used to be segregated is one example, and fighting this helped shape the modern Civil Rights Movement. This influence goes back to include famous cases involving segregated train cars in the 1880s. In this article, we address the numerous ways in which civil rights and anti-discrimination laws shape our transportation system. We offer a suite of approaches …

Why The U.S. Founders’ Conceptions Of Human Agency Matter Today: The Example Of Senate Malapportionment, Susan D. Carle

Texas A&M Law Review

This Article links the U.S. founders’ ideas about “human agency”—i.e., their understandings of the link between the individual and the social and political structure—with how they designed the Constitution and, in particular, how they designed the U.S. Senate as a non-majoritarian institution. I mine primary sources to show that although the founders struggled with many disagreements in drafting the Constitution, they shared an amalgam of historically received ideas about human agency derived from both liberal and civic republican traditions. I identify five such ideas and then parse which of them continue to pertain today. I argue that although contemporary and …

Can You Dig It? Yes, You Can! But At What Cost?: A Proposal For The Protection Of Domestic Fossils On Private Land, Bridget Roddy

Texas A&M Journal of Property Law

Paleontological resources require similar protections to archaeological resources because the threat of looting, improper excavation, and market demand are analogous. Paleontological resources are responsible for informing much of scientists’ understanding of evolution and the history of the planet, just as cultural property helps to inform the evolution of humanity and culture. Once either object is removed from its original context, there is an immediate and invaluable loss of information that could have illuminated important information about the past. When either is removed from the environment in which they were created, a nonrenewable link to the past is lost.

Existing laws …

Expanding American Indian Land Stewardship: An Environmental Solution For A Country In Crisis, Haley Edmonds

Richmond Public Interest Law Review

Land is the central foundation around which all life is formed. Therefore,

societies must have a stable connection with the land in order to be structurally

sound. If this connection is weak or inflexible, every building-block of

civilization laid on top of it will inevitably crumble. Some societies have established

stable relationships with the land by working around and responding

to nature’s rhythms in order to satisfy their needs. Whereas other societies

have ignored nature’s intricacies and instead have tried to strong-arm

nature into yielding to their whims. These two diametrically

opposed approaches to conceiving of humans’ relationship with the …

Symposium Transcript

Richmond Public Interest Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Dream Of The Common Good: Not A Nightmare, Jackson Gregory Dellinger

Honors Theses

This paper examines an emerging position in the philosophy of law, common-good constitutionalism. In the first two parts of the paper, I explain the position and constitutionalism more generally, examining how common-good constitutionalism fits within the definition of constitutionalism providing by a neutral scholar. In the next five parts, I attempt to show that common-good constitutionalism’s preference for explicit adherence to the common good does not violate constitutionalism. In doing so, I provide an examination of common-good constitutionalism’s relationship with three important constitutional principles and the separability of common-good constitutionalism as a whole and the infamous views of its most …

Property, Bas Van Der Vossen

Philosophy Faculty Books and Book Chapters

"This chapter discusses the nature and value of property rights. It will explain (1) what property rights are, (2) the relationship between private property and economic development, and (3) some objections to structuring societies around such rights. This discussion throughout focuses on the decentralizing nature of private property rights, asking what implications it has from a philosophical, but also social and political, point of view."

Whose Mussels Carry The Burden?: Public Law Standard Conformity Under The Cisg, Meredith P. Jones

Florida Journal of International Law

To date, there has been a strong contrast in decisions by various arbitration tribunals and courts of various jurisdictions regarding whether a seller should be liable for non-conformity under Article 35 of the Convention on the International Sale of Goods (CISG) if the goods do not comply with the public law standards in the buyer's country. In today's economy, international trade is ever-increasing and parties of various levels of sophistication engage in international commercial transactions. Therefore, the implications of this particular issue further increase uncertainty and transaction costs involved in international business transactions.

Part I of this Note provides a …

The "God Gap" In International Affairs: Missing Cross-Cultural Conversations In International Humanitarian Law And Islamic Jurisprudence, Corri Zoli

Florida Journal of International Law

The main purpose of this Article is, thus, to set out a preliminary case for such a rapport, one that brings together interdisciplinary scholarship in international law and security studies, and demonstrates in the specific case of Islamic and International Humanitarian Law (IHL) the potential to identify shared conceptual tools and common assessments of cross-cutting international security challenges.

In the following parts, I first outline key barriers in social science and comparative research on Islamic law and its implications. I then turn to the second prong in the argument, the symmetry between the challenges that both international and Islamic legal …

Retrospective Risk Allocation, Aditi Bagchi

Law and Contemporary Problems

No abstract provided.

Cle Working Paper No. 2/2022--Mexican Salsa And Mexican Farm Workers: How International Agricultural Development Marginalizes Farm Labour, Celia White

Centre for Law and the Environment

International food systems have become ever-more complex through systems of globalization, industrialization and technologization, and have been significantly influenced by, and entrenched in concepts of international development. One small meal can have countless intersections with international laws, domestic laws, environments and people. A simple salsa recipe, for example, containing merely tomatoes, lime juice, garlic, onions, and cilantro, contains in its history a complex story of power, privilege, poverty and possibility. Where did these ingredients come from? Who grew them? Where are those people from? What rights do they have? Innumerable personal stories are hidden within the seemingly innocuous act of …

The Rise Of Critical Infrastructure Protest Legislation And Its Implications For Radical Climate Activism, Nick Crockett

Colorado Environmental Law Journal

No abstract provided.

The Clean Energy Dilemma: How The Push For Clean Energy Could Threaten Indigenous Communities And An Exploration Of Potential Alternatives, Laura Berglan, Blaine Miller-Mcfeeley, Andrea Folds, Earthjustice

Colorado Environmental Law Journal

No abstract provided.

How Favored, Exactly? An Analysis Of The Most Favored Nation Theory Of Religious Exemptions From Calvary Chapel To Tandon, Luray Buckner

Notre Dame Law Review

In this Note, I argue that Justice Kavanaugh’s most favored nation test for religious exemptions actually differs from the one employed by the majority of the Court in Tandon. The majority’s formulation of the test is vague and explicitly requires courts to engage in a fact-intensive comparability analysis. Practically, lower courts applying Tandon to religious exemption questions have exploited this comparability step to rule against religious claimants generally, but more specifically to deny them strict scrutiny. Because the Tandon test was formulated to apply to all free exercise claims, the test is necessarily framed in more general terms and …

Untangling Right From Wrong In Insanity Law: Of Dogs, Wolves & God, Kate E. Bloch

UC Law Journal

In almost all U.S. jurisdictions, a qualifying mental illness that prevents an accused from distinguishing right from wrong can provide support for a determination of legal insanity. Nonetheless, “wrongfulness” remains a term of myriad and somewhat elusive meanings. Instead of enhancing clarity, by engaging with simplified examples, the U.S. Supreme Court’s broad-brush approach in its 2020 majority and dissenting opinions in Kahler v. Kansas threatens to exacerbate confusion about “wrongfulness” in legal insanity doctrine. This Article surfaces challenges in the Court’s and dissent’s analyses and aims to discourage reliance on problematic assumptions about “wrongfulness” in insanity law.

Overseeing Oversight, Michael Karanicolas, Margaret B. Kwoka

Connecticut Law Review

Accountability is at the core of democratic governance. In the United States, the administrative state is formally situated within the executive branch, but the unelected nature of agency officials, combined with the vast power they wield, has long been cause for concern. A crucial tool for establishing accountability within this so-called “Fourth Branch” is the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), which provides ordinary members of the public with a mechanism for direct oversight of how administrative agencies function. Similar right-to-information laws have been implemented in over one hundred countries. However, in contrast to most of its international counterparts, the FOIA …

Brains Without Money: Poverty As Disabling, Emily R.D. Murphy

Connecticut Law Review

The United States has long treated poverty and disability as separate legal and social categories, a division grounded in widespread assumptions about the “deserving” and “undeserving” poor. In the case of disability, individuals generally are not thought to be morally responsible for their disadvantage, whereas in the case of poverty, individuals are assumed to be at fault for their disadvantage and are therefore less deserving of aid. This Article argues that recent advances in brain and behavioral science undermine the factual basis for those assumptions. Poverty inhibits brain development during childhood and, later in life, adversely affects cognitive capacities that …

The Arkansas Ll.M. Program: Forty Years Of Leadership, Susan A. Schneider

Journal of Food Law & Policy

The University of Arkansas School of Law has been a leader in agricultural law education for over forty years through its innovative LL.M. Program in Agricultural and Food Law. This essay memorializes the history of this signature Program and charts its progress through the decades as agricultural law issues evolved and the discipline expanded.

Black-Owned Beef: Should Black Beef Producers Stake Space In Food Justice?, Shirah Dedman

Journal of Food Law & Policy

While there is growing interest in Black cowboys, the narrative is largely tethered to parades and urban and suburban saddle clubs, much like the fictional movie on Netflix, Concrete Cowboy. Missing from the narrative are today’s real Black cowboys: rural ranchers and farmers raising cattle for beef production and consumption.

The Broken Beef Cattle Industry: Cool, Covid And Cattletrace, Hayden L. Ballard

Journal of Food Law & Policy

While the Kansas City Stockyards themselves are gone, just like in the early 20th Century, a beef monopoly has once again found its way into the industry, and a way around the Packers and Stockyards Act of 1921 and is again suffocating the industry. While at the time of the act’s passage in 1921 five companies controlled the market, today the market is even more consolidated in the “Big Four,” as the four biggest meat packing companies in America are commonly known (Cargill, Tyson, JBS and National Beef/Marfrig), and are again arguably stifling the free-market. If Americans do not act …

Chilling Parental Rights, Meghan M. Boone

Fordham Law Review

Despite this clear lack of consensus as to what constitutes ideal parenting, state actors have increasingly intervened in families when they feel that a particular parenting choice is wrong. These interventions increasingly occur through the use of criminal law and punishment.5 This criminalization extends beyond prosecutions for what would traditionally be considered abuse or neglect to a wide range of parenting choices that do not rise to this level. Although many scholars have critiqued this criminalization of parenting, the focus of these critiques has centered on the harm to the families that are actually criminalized and on how a disproportionate …

Criminal Justice Expertise, Benjamin Levin

Fordham Law Review

For decades, commentators have adopted a story of mass incarceration’s rise as caused by “punitive populism.” Growing prison populations, expanding criminal codes, and raced and classed disparities in enforcement result from “pathological politics”: voters and politicians act in a vicious feedback loop, driving more criminal law and punishment. The criminal system’s problems are political. But how should society solve these political problems? Scholars often identify two kinds of approaches: (1) the technocratic, which seeks to wrest power from irrational and punitive voters, replacing electoral politics with agencies and commissions, and (2) the democratic, which treats criminal policy as insufficiently responsive …