Digital Commons Network^™

Socializing The Rule 2.1 Lawyer-Advisor, Casey E. Faucon

Fordham Law Review

No abstract provided.

Chicana Professionalism: Embracing Greñas, Glitter & Boots, Luz E. Herrera

Fordham Law Review

No abstract provided.

Polygyny Between Sharia, Custom And State Law As A Persistent Dilemma In Post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan, Zharkynbai Sebetov, Mairambek Tagaev

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe

This article presents a comprehensive study of the century-long historical and legal evolution of state-imposed prohibitions on the institution of polygyny in Kyrgyzstan. The primary objective of the research is to evaluate the outcomes of a hundred years of repressive policies – originally classified as “crimes of daily life” (bytovye prestupleniya) during the early Soviet era–and to uncover the transformed legal paradoxes of this phenomenon today. Drawing on historical archival materials, Communist Party reports, and contemporary regulatory acts, the authors investigate the fundamental reasons why polygyny persists as a resilient “shadow” institution in Kyrgyz society despite its criminalization. Within the …

Levers Of Default: Can The President Unilaterally Alter The Terms Of The National Debt?, Lev E. Breydo, Nathan B. Oman

Faculty Publications

The inviolability of America’s $30 trillion debt is a cornerstone of global markets and the U.S. economy. This Essay identifies a critical loophole: the President’s underappreciated power to dramatically change its legal structure—and argues that Congress should act to prevent a potential catastrophe.

The Essay details, for the first time in the literature, the arcane legal architecture underpinning America’s sovereign borrowings. Our analysis finds that although the President lacks authority to change the terms of outstanding debt retroactively, the President can accomplish similar goals by issuing new debt instruments that embed unprecedented powers. In surprisingly short order, a determined Executive …

Liberal Trade And President Trump: Never The Twain Shall Meet, Joel Adu-Quaye, Petros C. Mavroidis

Faculty Scholarship

This paper seeks to distinguish between two consequences of the tariff policies enacted by both Trump administrations: (1) their adverse effects on free trade and (2) the existential damage inflicted upon the transnational institutions responsible for enforcing its rules and obligations. Although difficult to quantify the latter, there is an intuitive sense that this is what matters most. The global order appears to be shifting from a rule-based framework to one characterized by increasing disorder and unpredictability. Within this new world order, actions are permissible so long as they align with the, often ill-defined, national interests of powerful nations.

Article Iii Standing And The Public Interest Class Action, Sharon Brett

Cardozo Law Review

This Article suggests a new focus for Article III standing in public interest class actions brought under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23(b)(2). Rule 23(b)(2) is a vital tool for protecting communities from civil rights abuses. It is also receiving new attention in the wake of Trump v. CASA, the Supreme Court’s decision in June 2025 that severely restricted the use of nationwide injunctions. Rule 23(b)(2) cases seek only injunctive relief and are designed to permit individuals to pool their adjudicative power to prevent constitutional violations by government officials. A complicated web of doctrinal entanglements, including a heightened requirement for …

The Pro Bono Industrial Complex, Tanina Rostain

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Recent settlements between corporate law firms and the Trump Administration, consisting of donations totaling nearly $1billion in free representation, have brought law firm pro bono to the fore. Pro bono has been institutionalized in corporate law firms since the turn of the 21^st century. Pro bono evangelists and corporate law firms contend that pro bono increases access to justice and protects individual rights. Scholarship on pro bono has not challenged these claims, focusing instead on managerial and organizational incentives that could increase the number of hours corporate firms devote to pro bono. Given the prominence of corporate law firm …

Online Age Gating: An Interdisciplinary Evaluation, Noah Apthorpe, Brett Frischmann, Yan Shvartzshnaider

Faculty Publications

The recent surge in regulation seeking to establish age-based governance online is part of a decades-long attempt to establish online zoning. It is driven by active development of technologies to estimate or verify user age based on various characteristics of users, their credentials, or their activities. However, these developments have heightened prevailing concerns that online age gating technology will inevitably be abused and misused to cause a variety of privacy harms and rights infringements. This paper examines this ongoing debate by bridging technical and legal scholarship to explore the current state of online age-based governance. We discuss the current legal …

Beyond Redemption?: Examining The Sixth Circuit’S Dangerousness Approach For As-Applied Challenges To The Felon-In-Possession Ban, Jack Baker

Vanderbilt Law Review

The federal felon-in-possession statute permanently bans felons from possessing firearms, regardless of the severity of the predicate felony conviction. Both a murder conviction and a mail-fraud conviction equally satisfy the statute's elements. Critics thus argue that the statute is too expansive. Despite the criticism, the felon-in-possession ban has generally survived Second Amendment challenges. But the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass'n v. Bruen opened a new angle for constitutional challenges to the felon-in-possession ban. In Bruen, the Supreme Court established a history-and-tradition test for Second Amendment cases. Courts must now find historically analogous gun …

Compensation For Victims Of Crimes: Should Victims’ Financial Means And Insurance Coverage Matter? — Criminal Procedure Code 2010, S 359(1); Public Prosecutor V Ong Eng Siew [2025] Sghc 55, Benjamin Joshua Ong

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

Under s 359(1) of the Criminal Procedure Code 2010, the court can order an offender to compensate the victim with a sum which the victim would have been able to recover in a civil claim in tort against the offender. The courts have used this useful power extensively, though problems remain. One such problem is seen in Ong Eng Siew, where the court declined to make a compensation order. Given the purpose of the compensation system, the court was not correct to hold – in effect – that the purpose of s 359(1) is to benefit only impecunious victims, and …

Long-Term Consumer Welfare, Rebecca Haw Allensworth

Vanderbilt Law Review

Consumer welfare is not monolithic. Antitrust policy that pursues it as a goal must trade off the various incommensurable values that make up the consumer experience. Perhaps the most important of these-and the most poorly theorized-is the trade-off between consumers' short-term and long-term welfare. Many business practices that might be challenged as exclusionary or unreasonable restraints of trade can benefit consumers on one time horizon while hurting them on another. Often the trade-off is between short-term quality or price effects and long-term consequences for competitive entry and incentives to innovate. These disparate effects are well understood by economists, yet economics …

When Detention Becomes A Death Sentence: The Urgent Need For Greater Due Process Protections For Ice Detainees, Kyle J. Smith

Vanderbilt Law Review

This Note argues that U.S. immigration detention, though legally classified as civil, operates as a punitive carceral system that routinely subjects immigrants to abuse, neglect, and preventable death. Drawing on the tragic case of Ernesto Javier Rocha Cuadra and other documented instances of physical violence, medical neglect, solitary confinement, and sexual abuse, it demonstrates how U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement ('ICE') relies on detention as a default mechanism rather than as a last resort. The result is a system that mirrors the criminal legal system in scale and severity but denies detainees its constitutional safeguards.
The analysis situates the rise …

Understanding The Experiences And Visibility Of Asexual People And Guiding Policy To Effectively Protect Asexuality, Lizzie Stravens

University Honors Theses

Asexuality is sexual orientation defined by those who experience little to no sexual attraction. Despite asexuality being as common as red headedness or left handedness, it has been severely overlooked in research and conversations. Because many people are not aware of the existence of asexuality, it has not been directly attacked by anti-queer campaigns. Still, there have been some recent shifts in this dynamic as asexuality becomes more visible. I conducted a linear regression on the 2022 Ace Community Survey results. I analyzed the effect of theoretically important variables on the outness of asexual respondents. Results indicated an importance on …

Discriminatory Effect(S), W. Kerrel Murray

Faculty Scholarship

In constitutional law, “discriminatory effect” often matters. So it’s surprising how often we don’t quite know what it means. That opacity is trans-substantive; it has been a recent pitfall in contexts as diverse as admissions-policy challenges under the Equal Protection Clause, personal-jurisdiction disputes under the “dormant” Commerce Clause, and, under the Free Exercise Clause, requests for exemptions from facially neutral laws.

This Article’s first corrective is a novel typology. Constitutional discriminatory effect is murky, in part, because it has many types; we perceive it in myriad ways across constitutional domains. Comprehending this complexity enhances our understanding of what discriminatory-effect rules …

Evidence And Assessing Verbatim Transcription Quality Of Black English And Standard American English, L. Alexander Walker Iii

Faculty Scholarship

This chapter explores the accuracy of private transcription services when transcribing Black English and Standard American English. Courts and lawyers in the US regularly rely on transcripts from such services, but third-party verification of their accuracy, especially with respect to their quality when faced with nonstandard language varieties, is lacking. This study draws on experimental methods to contrast the quality of transcription services offered by transcribers and AI route. The quantitative results show that transcription by humans and AI resulted in more mistakes when transcribing Black English than when transcribing Standard American English. Furthermore, a qualitative analysis reveals that these …

The Mysterious Federal Policy In Favor Of Arbitration: Festschrifts Squared, Robert H. Smit

Faculty Scholarship

As far as I can tell, John Fellas and I think alike on most things, both as practicing international arbitrators and as professors of international arbitration law. As arbitrators in practice, all of the awards we have rendered together — whether John chaired, I chaired or we both served as party-appointed arbitrators — were unanimous awards. As professors in academics, we both independently submitted essays — on the occasion of a festschrift in honor of Professor George Bermann — addressing related issues concerning the federal policy in favor of arbitration in the United States. John’s festschrift essay is entitled “ …

Sidewalk Living, Michael C. Pollack

Articles

In City of Grants Pass v. Johnson, the Supreme Court held that the Eighth Amendment does not prohibit a city from enforcing a criminal ban on encampments on public property such as parks and sidewalks. But even if municipalities are now permitted to use tactics such as policing, encampment clearing, arrests, and imprisonment, these are not the right ways to address the problems of public homelessness.

Instead, homelessness must be understood as one of many conflicts over limited public space. At its best, vibrant sidewalk life enhances communities and local economies. But at its worst, every use of these finite …

The Gig Is Up: How Rideshare Companies Operate Under The Guise Of Nontraditional Employment To Circumvent Labor Protections, Hope E. Newkirk

Pace Law Review

App-based rideshare platforms’ rapid expansion has transformed gig work from a temporary, flexible labor model into a sustained form of employment that serves as the primary source of income for millions of workers. Despite this evolution, leaders in the rideshare industry continue to classify drivers as independent contractors, thereby avoiding statutory obligations related to minimum wage, overtime, unemployment insurance, workers’ compensation, and healthcare benefits. This Comment argues that as platform-based labor becomes more permanent and economically dependent, the continued reliance on independent contractor classification becomes increasingly inconsistent with the governing legal standards designed to distinguish employees from independent contractors.

This …

The New Red Scare: The Shocking Truth Behind The Fda's Unethical Regulation Of Red 40 And Other Synthetic Food Dyes, Angelica Martuscello

Pace Law Review

For decades, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has allowed synthetic food dyes to remain in the American food supply, despite evidence linking them to cancer and behavioral issues in children. These additives offer no nutritional value yet remain common in everyday products. This essay scrutinizes the FDA’s failure to enforce its own legal obligations, particularly its continued approval of synthetic dyes, which were later found to be harmful to human health. Harmful dyes have been kept on the market due to weak oversight, outdated science, and industry lobbying. In 2025, the FDA finally announced a plan to phase …

Lessons In Pedagogy: My Experience With Problem-Based Learning, Leslie Y. Garfield Tenzer

Pace Law Review

This Article chronicles my experimental adoption of Problem-Based Learning (PBL) in first-year Contracts. After three decades of conventional teaching, I observed that Gen Z students struggled to transition from undergraduate memorization strategies to law school-level analytical reasoning, prompting my desire to engage in a fundamental pedagogical change. Drawing on successful PBL implementations in medical and mathematics education, I restructured my Contracts course around collaborative problem-solving in small groups, transforming my role from lecturer to facilitator. Students worked through authentic legal scenarios at whiteboards, developing rule-based reasoning through active engagement rather than passive reception.

This article first details my reasons for …

Trust In Regulation In A Time Of Revolution, Cristie Ford

All Faculty Publications

In a moment when big-P Politics feel practically catastrophic, the suggestion that we should be focusing on regulation could seem foolish, or worse: it could seem like some kind of self-serving effort to pretend our work rearranging deck chairs continues to matter. Regulation can feel like the opposite of resistance, and resistance is on many peoples’ minds these days, particularly in the United States. And, the goal of this paper is to argue that failing to focus on regulation – and especially on trust in regulation, in this time of revolution – would be a terrible mistake. Regulation is at …

Efektivitas Lembaga Penjamin Simpanan (Lps) Dalam Meningkatkan Kepercayaan Masyarakat Berdasarkan Tinjauan Yuridis Dan Moral Hazard, Arnelia Kesumadianty, Desran Jw Saragih, Dwi Marlianto

Technology and Economics Law Journal

This study examines the effectiveness of the Indonesia Deposit Insurance Corporation (LPS) in enhancing public trust in the stability of the Indonesian banking system and analyzes the potential moral hazard arising from the deposit insurance scheme. Employing a normative juridical method with a descriptive-analytical approach, the research reviews the legal framework of LPS under Law Number 24 of 2004 and its amendments, as well as Law Number 4 of 2023 on the Development and Strengthening of the Financial Sector (P2SK), and compares it with deposit insurance practices in several other jurisdictions. The findings indicate that LPS plays a crucial role …

Marked For Prosecution: The Use Of Tattoo Recognition Technology In Criminal Trials And The Case For Evidentiary Limits, Marc Consalo

Mercer Law Review

In recent years, tattoos have taken on a new and largely overlooked role in our criminal trial system. Once viewed primarily as personal or cultural expression, tattoos are now treated by law enforcement as biometric data which can be analyzed, codified, and then searched by artificial intelligence (“AI”). Police departments and prosecutorial offices have begun using tattoo recognition software to identify suspects, assume gang membership, and establish guilt based on imagery or symbols. Yet, despite the rapid growth of this technology, its use in the courtroom has received almost no scholarly attention and even less judicial scrutiny.

This Article seeks …

The Culture Cure: Behavioral Supervision And The Regulation Of Financial Institutions, David B. Lourie

Mercer Law Review

This Article advances a normative claim: U.S. financial regulators must move beyond primarily adversarial, enforcement-driven models and adopt behavioral supervisory tools—particularly elements of culture assessments—to proactively help guide ethical firm conduct and mitigate systemic risk. Importantly, the proposal here is incremental and resource-efficient. Many recommendations place the onus on firms to assess and demonstrate their culture, while regulators set expectations, review outputs, and selectively verify findings. The framework proceeds in progressive stages—beginning with voluntary, partnership-based initiatives, moving toward light-touch integration within existing examinations, and scaling only where persistent governance weaknesses or systemic risks warrant closer attention. This tiered approach reflects …

Catching Up With The Constitution? Georgia Fixes Its Fatal Burden Of Proof For Findings Of Intellectual Disability In Capital Cases, Meagan R. Hurley

Mercer Law Review

In 1988, Georgia became the first state to prohibit the execution of individuals with intellectual disability—a landmark reform spurred by the execution of Jerome Bowden, a Black man with an IQ of 59. Yet, due to a drafting error, the statute imposed an insurmountable burden: requiring defendants to prove their intellectual disability beyond a reasonable doubt. For nearly four decades, that fatal flaw rendered Georgia’s protection illusory. Not a single capital defendant facing intentional murder charges prevailed. While nearly every other jurisdiction adopted the far more workable “preponderance of the evidence” standard, Georgia stood alone, out of step with both …

Mergers And Cooptive Acquisitions, Alexandros Kazimirov

Mercer Law Review

A new wave of emerging companies developing foundation models has unleashed fierce competition in generative artificial intelligence. These emergents have significant innovation capabilities threatening incumbent tech companies. To protect themselves, incumbents have responded by partnering with leading product developers and subsuming smaller startups through quasi‑mergers.

To determine whether quasi‑mergers are cooptive acquisitions, this Article scrutinizes the Google–Character, Microsoft–Inflection, and Amazon–Adept transactions. These case studies describe the deployment of acquired assets before and after the merger and explore their potential effects. However, the analysis is plagued by the uncertainty inherent in nascent competition. Consequently, through contextual comparisons of circumstantial evidence like …

Recent Case Decisions

Oil and Gas, Natural Resources, and Energy Journal

No abstract provided.

North Dakota, William J. Black

Oil and Gas, Natural Resources, and Energy Journal

No abstract provided.

New Mexico, Blake C. Jones

Oil and Gas, Natural Resources, and Energy Journal

No abstract provided.

Imitation, The Sincerest Form Of Flattery: Whether The Unauthorized Use Of A Trademark After The Termination Of A Franchise Constitutes Counterfeiting?, Rachel Auld

Helms School of Government Undergraduate Law Review

This Note examines whether the unauthorized use of a trademark after the termination of a franchise constitutes counterfeiting. Currently, the United States Courts of Appeal for the Sixth and Ninth Circuits are divided in answering this question. The Sixth Circuit has held that a franchisee’s use of a franchisor’s trademark following the termination of a franchise does not constitute a counterfeit mark under the Lanham Act. However, the Ninth Circuit has held that a licensee’s use of a licensor’s certification mark following the termination of the license does constitute a counterfeit mark. While certification marks and trademarks differ in name, …