Digital Commons Network^™

Reimagining International Investment Law For The Age Of Minerals, Taylor Nchako

Washington and Lee Law Review

New technologies––from artificial intelligence (AI) and electric vehicles to medical devices and consumer electronics––demand an ever-increasing amount of minerals like lithium, cobalt, and copper. The United States requires these aptly named “critical” minerals to develop AI infrastructure, advance the clean energy transition, and remain economically competitive. As technology continues to advance at an astonishing pace, the U.S. has grown increasingly interested in securing critical minerals from sources in Africa. To obtain critical minerals, the U.S. must utilize investment treaties in its business dealings with African countries. At the same time, international investment law has garnered increased attention due to a …

Litigating The Youth Mental Health Crisis: Mechanisms To Regulate Addictive Social Media Design, Talia Elliott

Washington and Lee Law Review

While social media offers real benefits to users, such as providing access to information and facilitating the free exchange of ideas, excessive social media use is associated with increases in anxiety, depression, and other serious mental-health harms. Social media platforms are designed to maximize profit by capturing user attention, resulting in interfaces that are dangerously addictive and prone to exposing users to harmful content. Currently, social media users alone bear the burden of navigating the dangers of social media. This is untenable. Young users, whose less developed brains leave them more vulnerable to addictive design features, find self-regulation especially challenging. …

Taking The Thumb Off The Scale: Rebalancing Parental And Children’S Rights To Empower Child Protective Services, Sebastian Wagner

Utah Law Review

This Note provides background on the current legal framework of state prevention of child maltreatment in the United States. It discusses parental rights and the Parental Rights Doctrine, child rights in the United States, and how states prevent child maltreatment through child protective service agencies.

This Note also explores the legal landscape surrounding the balance of parental rights and children’s rights in child welfare cases. One of the central issues in the current framework is how the Parental Rights Doctrine can significantly limit the state’s ability to intervene in cases where children are at risk. State intervention, governed by vague …

Illusory Copyright And The Private Censorship Of Art History, Peter J. Karol

Suffolk University Law School Faculty Works

This article makes a simple but in its own way startling claim: much 20th century U.S. visual art is not protected by copyright. These works were regularly “published” when they were first exhibited for sale in commercial galleries, often marketed through contemporaneous illustrated catalogs, almost always without copyright notice of any kind. They were thereby placed in the public domain. What is remarkable is the extent to which this reality has been ignored by artist estates and foundations and other art industry players. They operate on the incorrect, self-serving and generally unexamined assumption that most 20th century American art is …

Pragmatic Conceptualism, Public Nuisance, And The American Opioid Litigation, Benjamin C. Zipursky

Washington and Lee Law Review

Public nuisance as a part of American tort law has been as high profile in the first decades of this century as products liability law was in the last several decades of the twentieth century. The American opioid litigation over the past decades is a spectacular example, filling headlines and generating billions of dollars of settlements. There is a plausible argument, however, that the doctrinal core of the opioid litigation is meritless because there simply is no “interference with public right” as required by public nuisance law. The first aim of this Article is to articulate and assess that argument. …

Equality Before Tax Law, Charles Delmotte

Washington and Lee Law Review

The income tax code is riddled with exceptions—exclusions, rate preferences, and deductions—that reduce tax burdens for dominant majorities and powerful interest groups. These carveouts now amount to an astonishing $1.9 trillion, equivalent to 75 percent of all federal income tax revenue. By granting policymakers discretion to allocate tax exceptions, the tax system not only invites capture but also the weaponization of taxation against disfavored economic and political groups. Yet despite the central role of these exceptions, tax scholars have not articulated a principle requiring taxation according to general rules.

This Article bridges philosophy with insights from political economy to reveal …

Universal Injunctions And The Executive-Judicial Relationship In America, Jeremy Kang

Senior Honors Theses

This thesis examines a specific type of legal controversy surrounding the Trump administration’s dealings with the judicial branch. Central to the matter is the concept of universal injunctions: how a federal court can enjoin even non-parties to a case from behaving in certain ways.

The history of universal injunctions, from pre-Enlightenment England to modern America, is initially discussed. Then special attention is given to their use against President Donald Trump in particular, culminating in the Supreme Court curtailing them, and district court judges ignoring the high court’s ruling. Finally, previous examples of conflict between the American executive and judicial branches …

Preemption Of State Fraudulent Transfer Law By The Bankruptcy Code, David G. Carlson

Articles

The article argues that state law tort claims based on fraudulent transfers are preempted by the Bankruptcy Code. It contends that allowing such tort claims to persist interferes with a bankruptcy trustee's ability to achieve universal settlements and recover assets, as the trustee cannot guarantee immunity from third-party tort liabilities.

Editorial Foreword Ijsls Volume 5 Number 2, Sulistyowati Irianto

The Indonesian Journal of Socio-Legal Studies

No abstract provided.

An Abundant Lack Of Introspection, Jonathan Adler

Faculty Publications

In this review Jonathan Adler critiques Abundance authors Klein and Thompson's analysis of how regulation is holding back progress in decarbonization, America's housing supply crisis, and innovation. While agreeing with the authors' assessment that regulation policy is hampering efforts in these areas, Adler objects to the book's proposals for improving regulatory bottlenecks, arguing the authors of Abundance refuse to acknowledge the role of market institutions in creating abundant supply or to admit the fault in their assumption that the failures of centralized government decision making can be repaired while maintaining centralized government decision making.

This abstract has been constructed from …

Classical Liberalism And Property, Thomas W. Merrill

Faculty Scholarship

Classical liberalism is characterized by several key attributes. Its central normative criterion is the well‑being of the individual, not some aggregate like society or the nation‑state. Individuals are presumptively regarded as responsible actors, capable of judging their own best interests and accountable for their actions that interfere with the well‑being of others. Because individuals are presumptively regarded as responsible actors, there is a strong preference for imposing only minimal obligations on them through the power of the state, and these usually involve general negative duties that are universal in character, chiefly to forbear from using force or fraud to interfere …

There Is No Free Benchmark: An Institutional View Of Legal Ai Benchmarking, Neel Guha, Andy K. Zhang, Christine Tsang, Christopher D. Manning, Julian Nyarko, Daniel E. Ho

Faculty Scholarship

Despite substantial excitement around the use of AI in law, little information exists on the performance and associated risks of the domain’s widely marketed tools. Recent work, for instance, has demonstrated the significant potential for “hallucinations” — wherein models make up facts, law, and precedent — leading Chief Justice Roberts to spotlight this risk in his annual report on the judiciary. We argue that there is a need for public AI benchmarking in law. First, relative to other AI application domains, the legal AI ecosystem lacks legibility — there is little information about the design and performance of many commercial …

Operational Agency: A Permeable Legal Fiction For Tracing Culpability In Ai Systems, Anirban Mukherjee, Hannah H. Chang

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Modern artificial intelligence (AI) systems act with a high degree of independence yet lack legal personhood—a paradox that fractures doctrines grounded in human-centric notions of mens rea and actus reus. This Article introduces Operational Agency (OA)—a permeable legal fiction structured as an ex post evidentiary framework—and Operational Agency Graph (OAG)—a tool for mapping causal interactions among human actors, organizations, and AI systems. OA evaluates an AI’s observable operational characteristics: its goal-directedness (as a proxy for intent), predictive processing (as a proxy for foresight), and safety architecture (as a proxy for standard of care). OAG operationalizes that analysis by embedding these …

Learning By Writing: Exploring Authentic Legal Learning Through Case Summaries, Ee-Ing Ong, Wei Yang Quek, Duan Ning, Magdeleine Lew

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

We use authentic learning as a pedagogical framework in a collaboration between our law school and the national Supreme Court of a Southeast Asian country, which facilitates law students’ development of their legal analytical and writing skills, and helps them better bridge the gap between existing legal curricula and the needs of legal practice. Akin to a writing apprenticeship, students write summaries on selected Supreme Court judgments, with their output reviewed by faculty as well as judicial law clerks from the court. The results are published on the court’s website and circulated to other stakeholders. In the post-exercise survey, participating …

The Limits Of Disclosure: Artificial Intelligence, Arbitration, And The Illusion Of Informed Consent, Rishi Batra

Journal of Dispute Resolution

Consider the following scenario: A warehouse worker brings a wage and hour claim against her employer under her state's labor code. Her employment contract, which she signed on her first day of work, contains a mandatory arbitration clause that she did not negotiate, did not fully read, and — like most employees in her situation — did not fully understand. An arbitrator is appointed, a hearing is held, and an award is issued in the employer's favor several weeks later, denying the employee's claims entirely. The award is well-organized and internally consistent, addressing each of the worker's claims with what …

A Decade Of Change: Technology’S Impact On Negotiation Deepens In The Age Of Ai, Noam Ebner

Journal of Dispute Resolution

When people consider the notion of negotiation changing, they tend to look first toward that magnificent negotiation construct, “the table.” Here are some immediately apparent areas of table-novelty: • There is often a screen on our table, rather than another person sitting across from us. • The table we “go” to negotiate at is not in our office or that of our counterpart; rather, it is a communications system such as email or an online platform developed by a third-party provider. • The table, in its online-platform form, sometimes structures process and facilitates communication in ways that our trusty old …

Reports Of Legal Writing’S Death Are Greatly Exaggerated: Why Generative Ai Will Not Kill The Craft, Jayne T. Woods

Journal of Dispute Resolution

In preparing for this essay, I typed the phrase “legal writing is” into Google to see how common searches finished the thought. The only completed thought to appear was “legal writing is hard.” Amen. Legal writing is an amalgamation of logical reasoning, cognitive psychology, classical rhetoric, legal terminology, legal citation, and proper grammar and style, all of which must result in a product accessible to readers of all education levels. When generative AI arrived, producing cogent, plausible legal prose in seconds, it led many to believe that writing, generally, and legal writing, specifically, had reached the end of days.

Beyond City Limits: Access To Adr And Child Client-Directed Counsel In Missouri’S Rural Family Courts, Reghan Matlock

Journal of Dispute Resolution

Reba McEntire once sang, “Don’t trust your soul to no backwoods southern lawyer”—a warning that still echoes in today’s debates about rural justice and representation. The catchy murder ballad captures a story driven by dramatic family ties and a broken justice system. While the song exaggerates for effect, it taps into a realistic concern: an existing divide in access to justice between rural and urban communities. This divide impacts all areas of law, including family law—where concerns about confidentiality and privacy are heightened because small communities make it difficult to shield sensitive matters from public view. The divide is troubling, …

Dari Coattail Ke Midterm Check: Pergeseran Patologi Presidensialisme Dan Rekayasa Baru Keserentakan Pemilu, Fitra Arsil

Jurnal Konstitusi & Demokrasi

This article offers a reinterpretation of the concurrent election practice in a multiparty presidential system. Traditionally, concurrent elections were designed as a constitutional mechanism to prevent political deadlock by aligning executive power with legislative support. However, the dynamics of contemporary presidentialism have raised a new problem: the threat to democracy now often comes from a president who is too powerful because he or she has succeeded in drawing nearly all political forces into an oversized coalition. This massive coalition ultimately becomes a tool of executive domination that legally narrows the space for opposition and undermines the oversight function of parliament. …

การบังคับใช้กฎหมายว่าด้วยหนี้ในทางปฏิบัติให้เสร็จสิ้นครบถ้วนตามกระบวนการแห่งกฎหมายวิธีพิจารณาความแพ่ง (Practical Enforcement Of The Law Of Obligations: Ensuring Complete Execution Under The Civil Procedure Law), Jutaporn Chaidejsuriya

Chulalongkorn University Law Journal

บทความวิจัยนี้มุ่งศึกษาความสัมพันธ์ระหว่างหลักกฎหมายว่าด้วยหนี้ตามประมวลกฎหมายแพ่งและพาณิชย์ กับหลักเกณฑ์การเสนอคดีตามประมวลกฎหมายวิธีพิจารณาความแพ่ง อันเป็นกลไกสำคัญในการบังคับใช้สิทธิของเจ้าหนี้ในทางปฏิบัติ เนื่องจาก “หนี้” เป็นบุคคลสิทธิ เจ้าหนี้จึงไม่อาจบังคับชำระหนี้ได้ด้วยตนเอง แต่ต้องเสนอคดีต่อศาลเพื่อบังคับให้ชำระหนี้ การวิจัยนี้เป็นการวิจัยเชิงหลักกฎหมาย (Doctrinal Legal Research) โดยวิเคราะห์ประเด็นสำคัญเกี่ยวกับหนี้ 7 ประการ ได้แก่ การบอกกล่าวลูกหนี้กับอำนาจฟ้อง การบังคับชำระหนี้ การเรียกดอกเบี้ยกรณีลูกหนี้ผิดนัด การใช้สิทธิเรียกร้องของลูกหนี้ การโอนสิทธิเรียกร้อง การเพิกถอนการฉ้อฉล และอายุความบังคับจำนอง ทั้งนี้ ผู้วิจัยได้จำแนกบทบัญญัติว่าด้วยหนี้ออกเป็น 3 ประเภท ได้แก่ (1) บทบัญญัติที่มีเนื้อหาไม่ครอบคลุมเกี่ยวกับการเสนอคดี (2) บทบัญญัติที่กำหนดวิธีไว้แต่ไม่ครบถ้วนหรือมีปัญหาในการตีความ และ (3) บทบัญญัติที่ไม่สอดคล้องกับกฎหมายวิธีพิจารณาความแพ่ง แล้วนำมาวิเคราะห์เชื่อมโยงกับบทบัญญัติในประมวลกฎหมายวิธีพิจารณาความแพ่ง รวมถึงศึกษาจากตำราและแนวคำพิพากษาศาลฎีกา ผลการศึกษาพบว่า การบังคับใช้กฎหมายว่าด้วยหนี้ให้มีประสิทธิภาพ จำเป็นต้องตีความและบังคับใช้สอดคล้องกับกฎหมายวิธีพิจารณาความแพ่ง ซึ่งผลลัพธ์ของงานวิจัยนี้จะช่วยลดปัญหาทางปฏิบัติและเสริมสร้างความเข้าใจที่ถูกต้องแก่ผู้ศึกษากฎหมายและผู้ปฏิบัติงานในคดีแพ่ง

ความรับผิดทางอาญาของนิติบุคคลในประเทศฝรั่งเศส: วิวัฒนาการและความสำคัญทางหลักกฎหมายของแนวคิด “Personnes Morales” (Corporate Criminal Liability In France: The Evolution And Jurisprudential Significance Of The Personnes Morales Concept), Rose Charmette

Chulalongkorn University Law Journal

บทความนี้ศึกษาวิวัฒนาการของความรับผิดทางอาญาของนิติบุคคลในประเทศฝรั่งเศสผ่านแนวคิด personnes morales ซึ่งบัญญัติไว้ในมาตรา 121-2 แห่งประมวลกฎหมายอาญาฝรั่งเศส โดยศึกษาแนวคิดนี้ภายใต้กรอบของความรับผิดของนิติบุคคลต่ออาชญากรรมร้ายแรง โดยเฉพาะอย่างยิ่งในบริบทของกฎหมายอาญาระหว่างประเทศ ซึ่งโดยหลักแล้วกำหนดความรับผิดแก่บุคคลธรรมดาเท่านั้น คำถามวิจัยหลักของการศึกษานี้คือ แนวคิด personnes morales ของฝรั่งเศสช่วยอุดช่องว่างของความรับผิดทางอาญาในกรณีที่นิติบุคคลได้เข้ามามีส่วนร่วมในการกระทำความผิดอาญาร้ายแรงตามธรรมนูญกรุงโรมได้หรือไม่ และแนวคิดนี้สามารถนำมาใช้กับความรับผิดทางอาญาระหว่างประเทศได้เพียงใด บทความได้วิเคราะห์คดีสำคัญ เช่น คดีอื้อฉาวทางเภสัชกรรม Mediator คดี Lafarge S.A. ในซีเรีย และคำพิพากษา Association Sportive ซึ่งตัดสินโดยศาลอาญาของฝรั่งเศส โดยที่ศาลได้วางหลักเกี่ยวกับเจตนาของนิติบุคคล (corporate mens rea) ผสมผสานกับความรับผิดโดยอาศัยการเป็นตัวแทนและความรับผิดโดยอิสระขององค์กร รวมถึงวิธีที่ศาลฝรั่งเศสบังคับใช้บทลงโทษกับนิติบุคคลได้อย่างมีประสิทธิภาพ นอกจากนี้ ยังมีการอ้างอิงเปรียบเทียบกับสหราชอาณาจักรและสวีเดนเพื่อแสดงให้เห็นแนวทางทางเลือกอื่น ๆ และเน้นย้ำว่าระบบฝรั่งเศสมีส่วนช่วยในการพัฒนาแนวคิดความรับผิดทางอาญาของนิติบุคคลอย่างไร ท้ายที่สุด บทความนี้ชี้ให้เห็นว่าหลักคำสอนของ personnes morales ไม่เพียงแต่เป็นกรอบแนวคิดเชิงปฏิบัติเท่านั้น แต่ยังเป็นแนวทางเชิงทฤษฎีที่สามารถแก้ไขปัญหาช่องว่างของความรับผิดในกฎหมายอาญาระหว่างประเทศได้และเสนอข้อคิดสำคัญสำหรับการปฏิรูปในอนาคตเพื่อเสริมสร้างความรับผิดชอบของภาคธุรกิจในระดับข้ามเขตอำนาจศาล

Writing – Écriture, Peter Goodrich

Articles

This is the twentieth article in this series (and the fifth in volume 77).

A Legal Comedy Of Errors: Foia’S Judicial Drama Over Who Controls The Oversight Script, Caroline Savini

Villanova Law Review (1956 - )

No abstract provided.

Ndls Communicator: Week Of 06.29.26, Notre Dame Law School

NDLS Communicator

The Latest News

• Olivia Rogers ’23 J.D. to clerk for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett
• Notre Dame Law School Announces Faculty Promotions for Susan Azyndar and Msgr. John Paul Kimes
• ND Law’s Program on Church, State & Society Announces 2026 Writing Competition Winners
• Notre Dame Law School is Cultivating Hope

Faculty Briefs

• Paolo Carozza
• Francisco Urbina
• Mary Ellen O'Connell
• Jeff Pojanowski
• Haley Proctor
• Derek Muller
• Rick Garnett
• Ashley Sanchez
• Susan Azyndar & Yan Yu
• Carter Snead
• Emily Bremmer
• Emilia Powell
• Howard Glickstein

ND Law in the News

• Notre Dame Law School was mentioned in coverage of Indiana’s eviction …

Aligning Artificial Intelligence To The Law, Jack Boeglin

Villanova Law Review (1956 - )

No abstract provided.

Protecting Dependent Children In Bankruptcy, Michael D. Sousa, L. Alexis Whitley Esq.

Villanova Law Review (1956 - )

No abstract provided.

Still Working Nine To Five: How Boyer V. United States Keeps Women Stuck With Prior Pay Inequality, Mckenna Wark

Villanova Law Review (1956 - )

No abstract provided.

Recent Developments, Steven H. Jacobs

Arkansas Law Review

Recent Developments in Arkansas Law

Anchoring’S Absurd Influence On Judging, Jeffrey J. Rachlinski, Andrew J. Wistrich

Arkansas Law Review

Society demands much from its judges. Notably, judges should never be illogical or inconsistent. The heart of what we expect of a judge is to apply the law to the facts in a logical and consistent way. The human mind, however, is not a giant syllogistic machine. People are obviously capable of using deductive logic, but decades of research on judgment and choice indicate that commonly used cognitive strategies to make decisions do not conform to the dictates of deductive logic. People rely on mental shortcuts, rather than logic. These shortcuts can be efficient and useful, but they do not …

Judicial Rhetoric: Writing Persuasive Opinions, Gerald Lebovits

Arkansas Law Review

In 1947, Judge George Rose Smith denounced, in the Arkansas Law Review, the “dearth of material concerning the mechanics of writing a judicial opinion” as a “striking omission in legal literature.” He was right.

The lack of attention given to the judicial opinion-writing process back then was hard to justify. Judges spend much of their time writing decisions. Decisions are important. They determine rights and responsibilities, as well as resolve controversies. Scholars have written about every aspect of judging and legal issue—except one of the most important ones: how to decide a case and justify the decision. Judicial opinions set …