Digital Commons Network^™

Digital Gold: The Impact Of Bitcoin Mining On Texas Surface Owners’ Rights, Kenney Broadnax

Oil and Gas, Natural Resources, and Energy Journal

No abstract provided.

Flattening The Eviction Curve: Lessons From Los Angeles About Tenant Protection During A Pandemic (And Beyond), Kaimipono D. Wenger

Loyola Interdisciplinary Journal of Public Interest Law

Health policy responses to the Covid-19 pandemic often focused on “flattening the curve.” Health officials and politicians took steps to try to limit the number of people who were sick at any one time, to protect hospitals from being overwhelmed by a flood of patients. Some legal responses to evictions during this time were based on a similar rationale.

Similar to public health concerns around Covid-19, tenant advocates were concerned with the possibility that economic effects of the pandemic could lead to a “tsunami” of evictions hitting all at once and overwhelming legal advocates and tenant communities. Tenant advocates argued …

Myths And Magical Thinking: American Civil Religion, The Establishment Clause, And “Codified Irrationality” In Anti-Crt Measures, Kyle Reinhard

Journal of Civil Rights and Economic Development

(Excerpt)

In Part I, I preview some of the overlapping tensions in U.S. public schooling created by the occasionally competing mandates of education federalism and democratic theory; describe the current state of the law with respect to the constitutionality of state and local governments seeking to inculcate (allegedly) prosocial community values in curriculum; and consider how battles over the meaning of “patriotism” through the decades show that ideology and religion often blend—and still, inevitably, make it—into the public square broadly nonetheless.

In Part II, I describe how religion is a useful tool, both descriptively and as a constitutional jurisprudential framework, …

Police Officers’ Perception Of The Anti-Police Movement And How That Affects Officer Retention In Minnesota, Kimberly Wood

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The research aims to investigate the perceived mass exodus of police officer departures alongside police officer retention rates throughout Minnesota. The study investigates whether high-profile police officer prosecutions together with national news incidents directly cause police officers to leave their jobs along with the Ferguson Effect taking place. The profession of policing has become more challenging and dangerous for its practitioners. The combination of recruitment challenges and increased assaults on police officers without punishment for perpetrators and elevated arrest resistance from suspects has led to the perceived mass exodus of police officers. The number of officer shootings and assaults combined …

Front Matter, Editors Of Osgoode Hall Law Journal

Osgoode Hall Law Journal

Volume 62, Number 1

Libel Via Language Models, Peter Wills

Osgoode Hall Law Journal

This article explains how developers and users of large language models (LMs) may be treated by English and Canadian libel law. LMs could be economically significant, and the liability environment they exist in will affect where they are developed, who accumulates wealth from their development, and who bears the burdens of any negative consequences of their development. Understanding the existing liability environment allows both developers and policy makers to make informed decisions—about which jurisdiction to offer services and what to prioritise, for the former, and about whether the existing law serves desired policy ends, for the latter. LMs also raise …

J Am Coll Dent 2025 92 1

Journal of the American College of Dentists

The Journal of the American College of Dentists (JACD) publishes scholarly articles, editorials, essays, and reflections addressing the ethical, professional, and social dimensions of dentistry. The Journal serves as a forum for advancing ethics, professionalism, leadership, and excellence within the dental community. By fostering dialogue across disciplines and perspectives, JACD provides readers with insights that encourage ethical, professional practice, lifelong learning, and service to the public, reinforcing dentistry’s commitment to advancing oral healthcare and the common good.

Grievance Redress Mechanisms For Commons: Evaluating The Design And Effectiveness Of Public Land Protection Cells In Rajasthan, India, Pooja Chandran

Journal of Law and Public Policy

Encroachment on common land represents a significant governance challenge in India. Weak institutions, irregular enforcement, and power imbalances often leave marginalised communities more vulnerable to eviction than others. This article examines the design and effectiveness of Public Land Protection Cells (PLPCs)—a judicially mandated grievance redressal mechanism in Rajasthan—in addressing common land encroachment disputes. Drawing on an analysis of cases before the Rajasthan High Court, field observations, and stakeholder interviews, it evaluates how PLPCs address enforcement gaps and promote accountability. Using the United Nations Guiding Principles 31 as a foundation, the article develops a contextualised framework to assess PLPCs to highlight …

Ndls Communicator: Week Of 10.13.25, Notre Dame Law School

NDLS Communicator

The Latest News

• Lady Chief Justice of Northern Ireland Siobhan Keegan talks about life and the law at Notre Dame
• Wrongful Conviction Day
• Annual Red Mass
• Notre Dame Law Students Assist with UN Report on Religious Freedom for People on the Move

Faculty Briefs

• Nicole Garnett
• Patrick Corrigan
• Roger Alford
• Mary Ellen O'Connell
• Jen McAward
• Haley Proctor
• Rick Garnett
• Derek Muller
• Gerard Bradley

ND Law in the News

• The Law School's recent panel, "How Does Catholic Social Teaching Animate Human Rights in Africa," was mentioned in Irish Legal Network's Rights Watch. Events

Events

• Law and Economics Workshop
• SCOTUS Term Preview …

Rape Myth Acceptance, Pretrial Publicity, And Decision-Making: An Examination Of Perceptions Of Victim Credibility And Perpetrator Guilt In A Real-World Sexual Assault Case, Lindsey Strouse

Student Theses

This study explores how the media narratives and political perspective of pretrial publicity (PTP) can influence jurors’ perceptions in sexual assault cases, raising significant concerns about justice in courtrooms. Specifically, it examines whether media framing of a real-life sexual assault case — through varying media narratives, with media that either challenges or endorses rape myths, and media source (liberal vs. conservative) — affects mock jurors’ rape myth acceptance (RMA), views of victim credibility, and judgements of perpetrator guilt. Participants first completed a RMA scale, then read mock news articles varying in media narrative and political affiliations (media source), followed by …

W&L Law Fall Scholarship Celebration 2025, Andrew Christensen, Michelle Cosby, Brandon Hasbrouck, Jennifer Mitchell, Melanie D. Wilson

Library Events

On October 9, 2025, the Washington and Lee Law Library hosted the fifth W&L Law Fall Scholarship Celebration. The event was co-sponsored by the Frances Lewis Law Center and took place in the Law Library's main reading room from 5:00 to 7:00 p.m.

On display were dozens of scholarly articles, books, chapters, and court briefs authored by the W&L Law faculty and student body between October 2022 and October 2025. Additional works were accessible online via QR codes to W&L Law Scholarly Commons institutional repository. A selection of vintage scholarship by former W&L Law professors was also on display, courtesy …

Indigent Defense: How The Attorney Shortage Crisis Raises The Continued Need For Public Defense In Rural Areas Of The Lone Star State, Cody Jess Huffman

The Scholar: St. Mary's Law Review on Race and Social Justice

Abstract: The Sixth Amendment provides numerous rights, one of the most important being the right to counsel. The right to an attorney is crucial because it attaches at adversarial hearings such as interrogations, arraignments, and other serious matters as an individual weaves throughout the obstacles of the criminal justice system. An important distinction in that right to counsel as the admonishments are delivered is that not only does an individual have the right to counsel, often meaning one can be retained, but if an individual cannot afford to hire a private attorney, one will be appointed to them. As times …

Pawns In The Power Struggle: Navigating Creative Labor Precarity Across Mcns, Platforms, And State Regulation In China, Qingyue Sun

Interdisciplinary Studies

This study examines how digital creators navigate the precarious Chinese digital creative industries (DCCIs), shaped by multi-channel networks (MCNs), platform logic, and intensifying state intervention. Drawing on interviews with 34 creators, I identified three challenges facing Chinese creators: (1) dual exploitation by volatile platforms and capricious MCN management; (2) erosion of creative autonomy under MCN gatekeeping and state oversight; (3) involuntarily being enlisted as propaganda artisans. Creators, especially those affiliated with MCNs, are increasingly positioned as state labor with governed creativity: cultural workers whose output is shaped, constrained, and redirected by the layered imperatives of state mandates, platform governance, and …

Scrolling Into Risk: Navigating The Legal Landscape Of Social Media Influencers And Securities Promotion Under Section 12(A)(2) Of The Securities Act, Nathan T. Nguyen

San Diego Law Review

This Comment argues that the Supreme Court should clarify the definition of a “person who offers or sells” under Section 12(a)(2) of the Securities Act to resolve the disagreement among the circuit courts. Part II outlines the legal context of the Securities Act, examining efforts to safeguard investors from the illicit sale of unregistered securities. Part III delves into disagreements among circuit courts regarding the definition of a “seller” in today’s social media landscape. Part IV asserts that classifying social media influencers as sellers aligns with the Securities Act’s legislative intent and statutory language. Part V contends that the Ninth …

Regulating Government Statements Regarding Disinformation On Social Media, Michael J. Marando

San Diego Law Review

The United States saw in the 2016 presidential election how Russia used social media to spread disinformation. Russia engaged in similar conduct during the lead-up to its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and, most recently, during the days before the 2024 U.S. presidential election. An interesting development, however, has been the U.S. government’s issuance of public statements countering these disinformation attempts. This Article argues that such public statements are quite helpful, both in countering the disinformation and allowing social media companies to legitimately enforce their content. However, these types of statements pose risks and, at the extreme, could be …

From Ambiguity To Accountability: The Case For A Legal Definition Of Antisemitism In Academia, Andrea J. Martin

Pepperdine Law Review

Following the October 7, 2023, Hamas attacks on Israel, U.S. college campuses experienced a sharp rise in antisemitic incidents, driven by an antizionism movement aimed at demonizing and delegitimizing the Jewish state and its supporters. A congressional investigation found that antisemitism persisted at prominent universities because administrators repeatedly failed to denounce antizionist conduct that functions as a vehicle for harassment of Jewish students and neglected to enforce their own nondiscrimination policies. The congressional committee, as well as several university antisemitism task forces, identified antizionism as a primary driver of campus antisemitism and strongly recommended that university leaders recognize and address …

Fcc V Consumers' Research: The Non-Delegation Doctrine And The Power To Tax, Bernard W. Bell

ConLawNOW

This Essay examines the 2025 Supreme Court case of Federal Communications Commission v. Consumers’ Research which seemingly involved an esoteric question of telecommunications law, but instead provided the Court with an opportunity some Justices have long sought to prune a foundational doctrine of the administrative state—the nondelegation doctrine. The nondelegation doctrine has garnered considerable judicial and academic attention, especially in comparison to the paucity of cases invalidating federal statutes on such grounds. The Court could have abandoned the forgiving “intelligible principle” test applied to congressional delegations for almost one hundred years, or, more cautiously, could have crafted a special rule …

Social Media, Social Sensibilities, And The Employment Relationship, Matthew W. Finkin

The Journal of Contemporary Legal Issues

Employers have long made decisions based on the applicant’s or incumbent employee’s respectability. Those whose transgress the bounds could be excluded; e.g., those who publicly embrace the Ku Klux Klan.[] In other words, frank speech—speech “unconstrained by anything that might normally encourage one to be more circumspect,”[] speech revealing one’s “true feelings, however repellant to popular morality”[]—is not invariably a good thing.[]

When social media came into wide use, employers extended their monitoring of applicants and incumbents for the acceptability of that speech.[] There is nothing new in that.[] In the absence of a clear direction embodied in law …

When Is Free Speech “Beyond” The Constitution?, Abner S. Greene

The Journal of Contemporary Legal Issues

The constitution of a nation without a state action doctrine might limit private restriction or compulsion of speech just as it limits the state. In such a nation, “free speech beyond the constitution” might not be a particularly meaningful concept. In the United States, however, the First Amendment’s free speech clause limits only what the federal, state, and local governments may do. As a nonconstitutional policy matter, it might or might not be a good idea for the government to impose First Amendment- like restrictions on private actors or for private actors to voluntarily impose First Amendment-like restrictions on themselves. …

Hear Me Out: What Is Our Obligation To Listen?, Thomas Healy

The Journal of Contemporary Legal Issues

Most scholarly discussions about “cancel culture” focus on the extent to which imposing economic or social sanctions on speakers violates the principle of free speech. In this essay, I consider a related question, which is whether deliberately avoiding, ignoring, or blocking speakers one disagrees with is antithetical to free speech. Although it might seem strange to suggest that a principle concerned with the right to speak entails an obligation to listen, I argue that genuine “good faith” listening is necessary to further the goals free speech is designed to serve. However, I also argue that this obligation is imperfect, or …

Comment On Hurd And Moore, Richard Arneson

The Journal of Contemporary Legal Issues

In their essay on “Wrongful Student Speech and Rightful Private University Responses to It,” Professors Heidi Hurd and Michael Moore (hereafter, Hurd & Moore) deepen the discussion by situating it in a general account of moral limits on freedom of expression and by noting connections to some of their own views on moral theory. The result is an excellent primer on freedom of speech, and more than just a primer. Their general views are shown to have plausible implications for tangled questions about what private university administrators ought to do in response to problematic examples of campus protest. That this …

From Mill To Mussolini And On To Microsoft: Freedom Of Speech In A Neo-Corporatist Era, Maimon Schwarzschild

The Journal of Contemporary Legal Issues

John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty—a fundamental text for political liberalism—not only defended the importance of freedom of expression and debate, but suggested that social pressure from private persons and institutions can be as much, or more, of a threat to freedom, including freedom of expression, as any legal sanction or act of government. Mill feared “a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression” which “leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul to itself”.

Recent decades in America have seen efforts to suppress free expression by colleges …

Interpreting The Law And Complying With It, Larry Alexander

The Journal of Contemporary Legal Issues

In this Article, I am going to focus on a set of issues that follow from the fact that laws are created by human beings and interpreted by human beings. It is unlike morality in these respects. For morality presumably applies to us humans, whether we accept what it requires or correctly assess what it requires. But it is we who decide what laws, good or bad, should govern us, and whose interpretations of those laws, correct or incorrect, should constitute our governing laws. And if the uncertainty of what morality requires creates the necessity for laws, and if laws, …

How Free Should Campus Speech Be?, Heidi M. Hurd, Michael S. Moore

The Journal of Contemporary Legal Issues

The general topic to which this piece is devoted concerns how non-governmental entities and individuals may and should respond to the speech of other non-governmental entities and individuals. The emphasis on private, non-governmental actions removes the discussion from the ambit of the First Amendment’s constitutional right of free speech and, indeed, removes the discussion from issues of legality, more generally. Although such normative discussions can result in recommended legal actions, in the first instance at least such discussions are about the morality—as opposed to the legality—of the negative responses by private persons to the speech of others.

The particular focus …

Should Private Universities Tie Themselves To The First Amendment?, Keith E. Whittington

The Journal of Contemporary Legal Issues

Private colleges and universities are generally free to depart from First Amendment standards regarding their own regulation of speech on campus and among campus community members. They may adopt more restrictive speech regimes that would sharply separate them from their public university counterparts which are bound by First Amendment requirements. In the modern era, private universities have nonetheless generally chosen to voluntarily embrace something like First Amendment principles to guide their own internal governance. Some would prefer that they shed those commitments and adopt some alternative speech regime. In this Article, I argue that private universities generally should adopt free …

Putting An End To Protective Privilege: Georgia Should Recognize The Psychotherapist’S Duty To Warn, Jan M. Levine

Law Faculty Publications

This article addresses several anomalies and problems with Georgia’s law concerning the duty a psychotherapist2 has towards third parties (i.e., non-patients): the lack of a duty to warn third parties about dangerous patients; flaws in the mental health commitment statute; and inconsistencies in the way the state treats medical confidentiality and evidentiary privilege. Georgia is the only state that has failed to definitively address the psychotherapist’s duty to warn via caselaw or statute; it is time to finally and definitively fix a problem that has existed at least since 1982.

Recruit Those Who Seek To Serve Others, Not Control Them, Annie Bright

Faculty Articles

ICE and law enforcement should recruit for service, not control. We need to take a hard look at law enforcement recruitment, not just at the federal level, but locally. Recruitment should invite those who seek to serve.

Ndls Communicator: Week Of 10.06.25, Notre Dame Law School

NDLS Communicator

The Latest News

• Faculty profile: Professor Mary Ellen O'Connell, globally influential scholar of international law and peace
• Panel explores Catholic Social Teaching and human rights in Africa

Faculty Briefs

• Nicole Garnett
• Sadie Blanchard
• Patrick Corrigan
• Roger Alford
• Mary Ellen O'Connell
• Christine Venter
• Paolo Carozza
• Avishalom Tor
• Emily Bremer
• Fr. John Paul Kimes
• Derek Muller
• Judy Fox
• Gerard Bradley

ND Law in the News

• Notre Dame Law School's partnership with Harvey AI was featured in a Law360 article.

Student News

• Third-year law student Dennis Weiboldt III wrote an article for First Things Magazine about the Red Mass

Events

• Law and Economics …

Promising The First Amendment: (De)Regulating Speech In Higher Education, Max M. Schanzenbach, Kimberly A. Yuracko

Northwestern University Law Review

The war between Hamas and Israel has caused havoc in higher education. Amid student unrest, alumni pressure, congressional hearings, civil rights investigations, and student lawsuits, universities stand at a crossroads. The current situation, in which most private universities unevenly regulate student speech under ambiguous student codes, is not sustainable politically or legally. A tsunami of litigation and regulatory actions has already begun. One increasingly favored response is for private universities to more vigorously enforce existing codes or expand their scope. An alternative is for private universities to deregulate student expression and commit by contract to the First Amendment. This Article …

Moving Beyond Traditional Legal Scholarship Impact Rankings, John Cannan

Faculty Publications

Legal academia is likely stuck with law faculty scholarly impact rankings—that is, using citation counts to judge a law faculty’s reputation and influence. But why can’t we produce better, more useful studies? Current rankings rely on outdated methods. Moreover, these rankings—touted by their creators as objective—suffer from long-standing flaws. They are also grounded in limited understandings of legal citations as sources of information. This paper calls on law librarians to advance legal citation research by adopting methodologies from other information sciences and developing legal citation taxonomies and theories.