Digital Commons Network^™

Spotify's Dj Algo: An Analysis Of Copyright Infringement Risks In A.I.- Powered Music Curation, Eddie Halwani

Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal

The note examines the legal and policy implications of Spotify's AI-powered music curation, arguing that while its use of copyrighted material may constitute copyright infringement, it qualifies as fair use under the transformative and non-expressive purposes doctrine. However, the analysis highlights the need for economic reforms to ensure equitable compensation for rights holders and sustainable innovation.

Aviation Cybersecurity And Third-Party Software Service Providers: Do Companies Like Crowdstrike Get A Free Pass To Create Cyber Vulnerabilities?, Claire Konerza

Journal of Air Law and Commerce

Commercial aviation has steadily become the busiest and most efficient means of travel across the world. In order to keep up with the increasing demands of its customers, the industry has undergone numerous digital and technological transformations in recent years. Collision avoidance systems have allowed for more planes in the skies, online ticket reservations have made booking a flight as simple as a few clicks, and in-flight wi-fi allows passengers to engage in both work and leisure at 30,000 feet. Overall, these innovations have increased safety, capacity, and convenience for both airlines and their customers. However, these transformations have also …

The Case For Climate Refugee Protection, Nicole Theriot

Notre Dame Journal of Law, Ethics & Public Policy

No abstract provided.

Ghosting The Crowd, Andrew A. Schwartz

Publications

Crowdfunded companies are legally bound to provide investors with an annual report--but most don't. This "ghosting of the crowd" violates federal securities laws and raises the risk of opportunism by entrepreneurs, who are more prone to misbehave if no one is watching. Most ominously, it threatens the very viability of the investment crowdfunding market, as investors who are ghosted by one company are less likely to invest in another.

This Article reports on the embarrassing record of noncompliance with the annual report rule imposed by the Jumpstart Our Business Startups ("JOBS") Act of 2012 and Regulation Crowdfunding, and proposes a …

Carceral Bonds, Tyler E. Dougherty

Faculty Publications

Over the past 50 years, the U.S. financed a massive physical and fiscal expansion of prisons via the municipal bond market—with devastating results. This project is the first to shine a light on the role of municipal debt in state-level carceral decision making, spotlighting the ways that the municipal bond market affects states’ capacities to incarcerate.

This Article argues that the two primary controls of states’ use of the carceral bond market—(1) market discipline and (2) states’ fiscal constitutions—are particularly ineffective at limiting states’ spending on prisons. This failure to restrain states’ spending through the carceral bond market enables private …

Worker Protection Or Commercial Facilitation: The British Empire, Labor Governance And The Gradual Invisibilization Of Labor Coercion During The Age Of High Imperialism, Christopher Roberts, Michelle Ong

Seattle Journal for Social Justice

This article considers labor governance and coercive labor practices in the British Empire between the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In particular, it focuses its attention on several major commissions of inquiry undertaken around the British Empire in the period, as well as reforms that took place alongside those inquiries. In part, the article concludes these reforms were motivated by protective purposes, demonstrating some degree of genuine concern with workers’ well-being. More significantly, however, it finds these reforms were motivated by British imperial desire to ensure stable labor supplies, enhance the legitimacy of the British Empire, and establish more …

Ineligible Partners: Tribal Nations And Cooperative Federalism In The Historical Development Of National Forest Law And Policy, James H. Baker

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Lands within the National Forest System (NFS), like all federal public lands, are rooted in Aboriginal Title and were once exclusively inhabited by Indigenous peoples and communities. Through the process of treaty-making, the federal government amassed millions of acres of ceded Tribal lands, many of which are now managed by federal public land agencies, including 194 million acres managed by the U.S. Forest Service (USFS). Several Tribes reserved various use and property rights on these lands that are protected by the U.S. Constitution’s Treaty and Supremacy Clauses. The federal government also has an overarching trust obligation to Tribes – a …

The Alien Tort Statute And U.S. Extraterritorial Jurisdiction: Legal And Economic Corporate Governance Implications Beyond Al Shimari V. Caci Int'l, Gabriel Richardson

Minnesota Journal of International Law, Vols. 28:2 onward (2019-present)

This note is divided into four overall parts. To continue with the academic dialogue regarding the ATS, the first part (Part I) deals with the historical overview and case law of the ATS, while contrasting the development of extraterritoriality in the United States with that abroad (particularly, Europe). More specifically, the first part is divided into two subparts—Subpart A provides a comprehensive background and historical legal overview of the ATS and Subpart B discusses the international trend, particularly in Europe, in extending legal mechanisms to hold corporations accountable beyond their borders, unlike the United States—which, again, was once at the …

Suspending The Truancy Paradigm, Barbara A. Fedders, Lucy Carlson, Max Parker

Faculty Publications

In the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, school absences have skyrocketed. While racially minoritized, disabled, and low-income students have historically been, and remain, most likely to experience absence, white and affluent students’ rates of attendance have also declined. To respond to this new universality of student absenteeism, some policymakers have begun to seek alternatives to what we term “the truancy paradigm.”

We define the truancy paradigm as the range of coercive and often punitive interventions deployed by states and school districts to enforce compulsory attendance statutes. This paradigm, we argue, wrongly assumes (a) that strict enforcement of compulsory attendance laws …

Understanding Rural Legal Deserts To Inform Public Policy: Identifying And Describing Lawyer Gaps In Non-Metropolitan Counties, David J. Peters, Emma Bartling, Emily Meyer

South Dakota Law Review

Rural legal deserts have become a growing topic of interest to legal scholars and social scientists in the U.S. However, current research is limited by measurement issues and by the lack of national-scale analyses. To address these limitations, we identify legal deserts by applying latent profile analysis to lawyer gap rates for N = 2,307 non-metropolitan counties in the U.S. Lawyer gap rates are calculated as local demand for lawyers minus the local supply, using employment in private practice law offices from the Census Bureau. Next, we statistically describe the spatial, demographic, economic, and social characteristics of legal deserts. We …

Tribes In The Text: How State Constitutions Structure Governmental Relationships With Native Tribes, Paul Baumgardner

South Dakota Law Review

Although there has been a flurry of recent court cases that acknowledge the important role of state governments in tribal affairs, relatively little scholarly attention has been given to how American states actually relate to Native individuals, communities, or institutions. One way to begin outlining the nature of modern state-tribal relationships is to explore the highest laws within each state and see what these laws have to say about Native Americans. This article does just that, delving into the current state constitutions of all fifty states in the United States to better understand how these documents structure state governmental relationships …

Carceral Bonds, Tyler E. Dougherty

Lewis & Clark Law Review

Over the past 50 years, the U.S. financed a massive physical and fiscal expansion of prisons via the municipal bond market—with devastating results. This project is the first to shine a light on the role of municipal debt in state-level carceral decision making, spotlighting the ways that the municipal bond market affects states’ capacities to incarcerate.

This Article argues that the two primary controls of states’ use of the carceral bond market—(1) market discipline and (2) states’ fiscal constitutions—are particularly ineffective at limiting states’ spending on prisons. This failure to restrain states’ spending through the carceral bond market enables private …

The Economic Cost Of Exclusion: How Trump's Second-Term Immigration Policies Threaten California's Economy, Kit Johnson

Faculty Articles

The second Trump administration has pursued an array of immigration enforcement initiatives—from denaturalization and visa scrutiny to termination of humanitarian programs and aggressive workplace raids. Legal scholars have sharply debated these measures, but almost entirely through constitutional, statutory, and rights-based frames. This Article exposes a critical omission in immigration law scholarship: the economics of large-scale noncitizen removal. Drawing on major empirical studies of historic enforcement episodes—including Mexican repatriation between 1929-1934, Japanese internment during World War II, Arizona’s immigration restrictionism from 2007-2012, and federal immigration enforcement efforts of 2008-2015—this Article demonstrates that broad noncitizen removals may reduce the employment and wages …

The Growing Role Of Venture Studios In Startup Finance, David Nows, Lawrence J. Trautman

Case Western Reserve Law Review

No abstract provided.

Protection Of Male And Female Sexed Children From Genital Cutting: Making Sense Of Recent Legal Developments, J. Steven Svoboda

Cardozo Journal of Equal Rights & Social Justice

The article critically examines the disparate legal treatment of female genital cutting (FGC) and male genital cutting (MGC), arguing for a more consistent approach that recognizes both practices as violations of bodily integrity. It highlights the ethical and legal inconsistencies in how these practices are viewed and regulated, advocating for a unified legal framework that prioritizes consent and the rights of the individual.

A Civil Rights Defense Of Gentrification, Carol Brown

Law Faculty Publications

Scholars across disciplines such as sociology, economics, and urban planning are writing about gentrification. The literature and beliefs surrounding gentrification are very diverse, but what often connects the various views is a negative perception that gentrification always disadvantages and displaces low-income minority residents, physically or culturally. But the connotations of race and class associated with gentrification in the minds of many do not align with the empirical research and scholarly findings. Thus far in law, there is no thick legal account of gentrification and its legal or policy implications. Much of the legal writing is predicated upon an inaccurate conception …

Living The Good Life In The Anthropocene, Danielle Stokes

Law Faculty Publications

The Stockholm Resilience Centre has concluded that the number of “planetary boundaries” we are crossing has increased from three in 2009, when the Centre’s researchers first introduced the concept, to six in 2023. Crossing these boundaries means humans are changing basic attributes of planetary systems to the point of risking the future of civilization. And the distinction between “safe” and “just” planetary boundaries raises questions regarding how to conceptualize the “good life.” In this latest in a biannual series of essays, members of the Environmental Law Collaborative explore conceptions of the “good” as well as the various elements necessary to …

Trust Law And The Tides Of Colonialism, Allison Anna Tait

Law Faculty Publications

Tethered to and inextricably linked with the absence or decline of democratic governance, there has always been empire. Empires rise and fall, as they say, but the imperial impulse is perennial and new iterations of old empires emerge with dismal regularity, showing us that imperial formations are hard to erase...

Ecosocialism, Degrowth, And Global South Thought: Critical Legal Transformations, Nicholas F. Stump

William & Mary Environmental Law and Policy Review

This Article explores how Critical Legal Research (CLR) can help drive transformations of our ecological political economy towards true system change. CLR entails a critical legal theory–informed approach to legal and broader socio-legal research. After articulating the CLR framework, this Article explores its potential in the context of leading and intertwined bodies of theory for transformative change: ecosocialism, degrowth, and Global South and Indigenous thought. Next, this Article offers concrete avenues to help pursue such emancipatory change—i.e., specifically focusing on the popular conception of an “ecosocialist transition.” Ecosocialist transition strategies include non-reformist reforms, dual power, a radical just transition, and …

We Can't Apply From The Grave: Why The Asylum Standard Of Proof Fails Those Who Need It Most, Hilana Said

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

A woman in Florida sits in front of her TV, unsure if the sound of static is coming from shock or the screen. Her eyes reflect the fires that blaze from within her church in Alexandria, Egypt. Numbly, the pads of her fingers attempt to call family members, praying that, for once, they skipped service. She lets go of a breath she did not know she was holding. The time between now and another attack exists on a clock that she cannot see. But she knows it is ticking.

An Ethnography Of Love Jihad: The Governance Of Interfaith Marriages In Times Of Hindutva, Snehal Sharma

Theses and Dissertations--Gender and Women's Studies

My doctoral research focuses on the violations of human and citizenship rights of women and religiously marginalized communities (based on religious differences) in the backdrop of right-wing movements in India. I assess the Hindu nationalist propaganda named “love jihad” to demonstrate the way it weaponizes religious exogamy. This propaganda legitimizes violence against Indian religious minorities and women as it claims that marriages between Hindu women and Muslim men are acts of terrorism against Hindus with the sole aim of increasing the Muslim population using Hindu women's bodies. I have used ethnographic research methods to explore the legal process of interfaith …

The Administrative State's Second Face, Emily R. Chertoff, Jessica Bulman-Pozen

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

We often assume that there is one administrative state, with one body of administrative law that governs it. In fact, the administrative state has two distinct faces: one turned toward regulation and benefits distribution, and one turned toward physical force and surveillance. The two faces are growing further apart under the Roberts Court, which has hemmed in the first face with decisions like Loper Bright while showing solicitude for national security and law enforcement agencies.

This Article delineates the two faces of the administrative state. It provides a descriptive account of the second face and the distinctive administrative law that …

Arbitrator Selection Default Rules, Irene M. Ten Cate

American University Law Review

This Article makes the case for changing the default settings for the selection of arbitrators in international commercial arbitration. For three-member tribunals, the rules of most international arbitration institutions provide that each party picks an arbitrator. The institution or the co-arbitrators then select the tribunal’s president. This prescription, which parties may set aside by agreement, codifies longstanding practices and corresponds to the strong preference of international arbitration insiders. Nonetheless, I argue that arbitration rules should default toward institutional selection of all arbitrators.

Switching the default nudges parties that can’t take full advantage of the arbitrator selection game—due to inexperience, lack …

How Much Antisemitism Is There In The United States? Incidences Vs. Impacts, Ira Sheskin

FIU Law Review

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) (www.adl.org), founded in 1913, is one of the nation's premier civil rights organizations and was formed to stop the defamation of the Jewish people and to secure justice and fair treatment to all. Every year since 1979, the ADL has published an Audit of Antisemitic Incidents in the US (https://www.adl.org/resources/report/audit-antisemitic-incidents-2023). The Audit receives significant publicity and is important in communicating the problem of serious antisemitic incidents and the year-to-year increases in such incidents. But, based on surveys of American Jews, the Audit underestimates the extent to which American Jews are being impacted by antisemitism. Survey data …

Circuit Capture And The National Court Of Appeals, John P. Collins Jr.

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

We are facing a crisis of confidence in our federal courts. Polarization in the judicial selection process and partisanship in judicial decision-making have yielded a steep decline in the public’s trust of the judicial branch. Much of the blame lies with the Supreme Court, whose repeated ethical scandals and aggressive rightward tilt have renewed calls for major court reform—from court packing to jurisdiction stripping, from term limits to lottery dockets, and much more in between. But the Supreme Court is not the only court in need of reform. The vast majority of cases go no further than the thirteen U.S. …

The Supply Chain Is A Circle: Ai, Privacy, And People, Alicia Solow-Niederman

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

Artificial Intelligence (AI) governance underscores the AI “supply chain” and the “many hands” involved in the creation of AI systems. Although invaluable, this production-centered approach risks overlooking what happens when people use AI tools. That’s a mistake, because user interactions determine the real-world impact of AI.

This Essay contends that regulating AI and holding the appropriate actors responsible requires far more attention to what happens after deployment of an AI system. The supply chain is an invaluable start, but it’s not a linear chain. Rather, it is a circle that must incorporate users’ engagement with AI tools as part of …

Zoning Report: Virginia, Matthew Harris, Scott Markley, Rama Karlapalem, Diana Drogaris, Sara C. Bronin

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

Virginia is rapidly growing and transforming. Its population, now near nine million, is concentrated in Greater Richmond, Hampton Roads, and the urbanized crescent of Northern Virginia. While population growth has been strong, housing construction has struggled to keep pace. With the state facing a shortage of multi-family homes, housing costs continue to outpace incomes. That means too many Virginians are paying too much for their housing.

A significant factor in the cost of housing in Virginia is zoning: the local regulation of land uses, lots, and structures. This report analyzes National Zoning Atlas data on statewide zoning conditions. Part I …

Zoning Report: Colorado, Sara C. Bronin, Scott Markley, Matthew Harris, Diana Drogaris

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

Colorado is rapidly growing and transforming. Since 2020, more than 180,000 new residents have decided to call the state home. While housing construction has kept pace with this influx, home types and geographic distribution have not met the changing needs of Colorado’s diverse households. Indeed, housing is being offered at a cost that many Coloradans cannot afford and located in places that are far from jobs and other opportunities. As a result, the state grapples with a housing affordability gap.

This report, a first-of-its-kind analysis of zoning conditions in Colorado, was developed by the authors, affiliates of the National Zoning …

A National Zoning Atlas To Inform Housing Research, Policy, And Public Participation, Sara C. Bronin, Wenfei Xu, Scott Markley, Diana Drogaris

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

Through a unique combination of data science and legal analysis techniques, the National Zoning Atlas is creating the first public, online repository of standardized data about zoning. This article first discusses the context for and methodology behind the atlas. It then establishes three possibilities for using the atlas, including facilitating research (including fair housing research), strengthening planning, and empowering the public.

Zoning Impact Analysis: Texas Senate Bill 785, Sara C. Bronin, Matthew Harris

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

Texas Senate Bill 785 (2025) aimed to increase the amount of land municipalities zone for manufactured housing. Using the comprehensive repository of data in the National Zoning Atlas (NZA), this paper finds that: • SB 785 would increase the amount of land zoned for manufactured housing. • 44% of the 579 municipalities in the NZA dataset would have to enact zoning reforms to comply with SB 785. • 56% would comply with, or be exempt from, SB 785. In addition, the paper recommends that Texas legislators refine definitions, include a "good faith" clause, and require reporting to ensure the legislation …