Digital Commons Network^™

Salvation From The Purgatory Between Personhood And Property: Disinterring Evidence For Property Rights In Human Remains, Harris J. Burton

William & Mary Law Review

This Note argues that next of kin have property rights in the remains of decedents, as opposed to a quasi-property right in their burial. Changing this distinction will allow courts to address wrongs committed against human remains through remedies traditionally available for harms to property, thereby incentivizing institutions, such as prisons, to exercise care and transparency in dealing with human remains. Treating human remains as property will result in courts applying concrete tests, rather than assessing the infringement of a vague quasi-property right, in cases involving human remains. If courts apply a property standard, next of kin will have …

The Original Meaning And Understanding Of The Investigative Power Of The Grand Jury In The Constitution Of Alaska, Savannah Shoffner, Richard W. Garnett

Journal Articles

The investigatory, or reporting, power of grand juries refers to the body’s ability to issue statements on wide-ranging matters of public policy, generally aimed at exposing “inefficiency, neglect, or criminal or quasi-criminal conduct” by government officials. Grand jurors may propose an investigation themselves or respond to a request from a citizen. The reports produced by these investigations need not be tied to a specific indictment to be released.

Text, history, and tradition reveal that the grand jury has been understood as an intermediary between the government and the people, empowered to make public statements on the people’s behalf and entrusted …

Brokering Safety, Chinmayi Sharma, Thomas E. Kadri, Sam Adler

Articles

For victims of abuse, safety means hiding. Not just hiding themselves, but also their contact details, their address, their workplace, their roommates, and any other information that could enable their abuser to target them. Yet today, no number of name changes and relocations can prevent data brokers from sharing a victim's personal information online. Thanks to brokers, abusers can find what they need with a single search, a few clicks, and a few dollars. For many victims, then, the best hope for safety lies in obscurity-that is, making themselves and their information harder to find.

This Article exposes privacy law's …

Dental Offices Subject To New Legal Mandates, Lance Plunkett Jd, Llm

The New York State Dental Journal

Several new workplace laws, applicable to dental practices, have been enacted, as New York continues its aggressive push in the employment law arena.

Targeting Unfairness, Omolara Bewaji Joseney

Vanderbilt Law Review

Companies often engage in racially targeted marketing practices whereby they target and tailor their advertisements to racially segmented consumer populations. As a result, a targeted racial group of consumers may receive advertisements for a product or service that is intentionally customized to appeal to them (a “pull”) or may be specifically untargeted or excluded from receiving advertisements as members of a nontargeted racial group (a “push”). This Article examines the marketing environment created by these pull-push dynamics as a consumer protection concern. Legal scholarship on targeted advertising has focused either on its risks to privacy due to the growing reliance …

“You Can’T Post That!”: Constitutionality Of Non-Disparagement Orders Barring Divorced Parents’ Social Media Posts, Kaitlyn B. Hammond

Vanderbilt Law Review

When a marriage goes wrong, a court may use a non-disparagement order to prevent a party from speaking negatively about another in some way, either permanently or temporarily. Family courts often use non-disparagement orders to protect parties or their children from psychological harm during divorce or child-custody proceedings. In such cases, non-disparagement orders forbid parents from denigrating one another in front of their children and/or third parties. To protect the child, non-disparagement orders are often imposed upon both parents by the court. But courts do not always protect children and other parties from disparagement in this way. Although non-disparagement orders …

Preempting Pre-Approval: Clarifying Preemption Doctrine For Product-Liability Suits Against Brand-Name Drug Manufacturers, Nicholas G. Wallenburg

Vanderbilt Law Review

One of the most important issues for product-liability lawsuits against drug manufacturers today is federal preemption. Plaintiffs injured by prescription drugs regularly turn to state tort law for a remedy. Defendants in these cases—often brand-name drug manufacturers—frequently invoke preemption doctrine to argue that the Food and Drug Administration’s (“FDA”) rigorous approval process for prescription drugs has displaced state causes of action. While the text of the Food, Drug, and Cosmetics Act does not clearly address this issue, the U.S. Supreme Court has relied on a so-called “impossibility” theory of preemption: When a drug manufacturer cannot comply with the duties imposed …

Antitrust And Economic Liberty, Doha Mekki

Fordham Law Review

No abstract provided.

Sticks And Blackstone: Regulatory Takings And The Definition Of Property, Maryann Herman

West Virginia Law Review

When private property is subject to regulation, courts sometimes find that it effects a taking requiring just compensation under the U.S. Constitution. This Article explains that what is deemed a regulatory taking can depend on the definition of property the court applies. There are two predominant ways property is defined: either as a bundle of rights or as a person’s dominion over a thing. The bundle of rights, or bundle of sticks, definition conceives of property as a collection of various, discrete rights held by a property owner and others in relation to a thing. These rights can be disaggregated …

Community Lawyering In Coal Country: Empowering Those Who Power America, Gregory Robertson

West Virginia Law Review

Despite the intense and prolonged efforts of thousands of activists in the 1960s and 1970s to obtain safer working conditions for coal miners, pneumoconiosis rates, disease that develops as a result of inhalation of particle material, is on the rise. The Supreme Court’s decision in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo has shaken the ground upon which administrative agencies’ ability to promulgate rules to protect miners rests. This Note profiles a handful of attorneys, archetypes of community lawyering, who advocated for Appalachian coal miners during the height of the Black Lung Movement and continue to do so today. Through conversations with …

Practical Reason In The Portfolio Economy: Accept: Amend, Or Abandon, The Flsa?, Kevin Frazier

West Virginia Law Review

No abstract provided.

Individualized Cannabis Reparations, Scott Bloomberg

Faculty Publications

This Article makes an argument that should be obvious. The best way for governments to right the wrongs of cannabis prohibition is to give money to people with cannabis offenses. Nonetheless, this straightforward reform has been consistently overlooked, dismissed, or minimized by policymakers and scholars alike, eschewed in favor of other social equity programs that do not right those wrongs nearly as effectively. Governments have indeed invested hundreds of millions of cannabis tax dollars in social equity licensing programs and community reinvestment initiatives. These programs-while often worthwhile-do not benefit the vast majority of people with past cannabis offenses. Governments should …

Behind The Suit: How Recovering A Biblical Worldview And Implementing Spiritual Formation Practices Can Improve The Mental Health Crisis In The Legal Profession, Makayla G. Johnson

Senior Honors Theses

A Biblical worldview is the foundation upon which the United States government and legal system is built, however in recent years the understanding of a Biblical Worldview has been in decline. This shift has had a profound impact on the legal field, causing a loss of purpose and meaning in the profession, which research asserts has in part caused many mental health issues found in the legal field. With this in mind, the following study will include information regarding the extent to which the implementation of spiritual formation practices, when practiced specifically by those in the legal profession, could impact …

Order And Orthodox: The Influence Of Ecclesiastical Courts On The Federal Rules Of Civil Procedure And A Biblical Worldview, Rachel Auld

Senior Honors Theses

When analyzing the English history of American civil procedure, one could stop at the common law; however, England had two distinct courts at the time of the American Revolution: King’s courts and Ecclesiastical courts. At this time, the Ecclesiastical courts governed religious and moral issues including divorce, defamation, and probate. As a result, the Ecclesiastical courts had separate procedures from the common law King’s courts. America adopted the Ecclesiastical courts’ legal fields, and in turn, aspects of the Ecclesiastical court procedure. This thesis addresses the influence of the Ecclesiastical courts on the modern American Federal Rules of Civil Procedure by …

Patenting The Unexpected, Sean B. Seymore

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Unexpected discoveries have transformed human existence. They’ve revolutionized science and spawned entire new fields of research. While unexpected discoveries seem inventive and worthy of patent protection, they don’t formally align with traditional patent theory. The bedrock principle that an invention begins with the conception of an idea in the inventor’s mind and ends with implementation doesn’t apply to unexpected discoveries. This misalignment is most acute for pharmaceuticals, where the discovery of new uses for old drugs has tremendous social and economic importance. Since a drug can inherently treat multiple conditions in a patient—even those unknown to the patient, doctor, or …

Probing The Prevalence Of Pharmaceutical Corruption, Marc A. Rodwin

Suffolk University Law School Faculty Works

This article reviews the history and current evidence of systematic pharmaceutical industry corruption.  It draws on studies by the OECD on international corruption; reports of the Securities and Exchange Commission; studies of the Public Citizen health Research Group of settlement agreements between federal and state authorities and pharmaceutical firm; the history of the Medicare and Medicaid Anti-Kickback Act; professional and industry codes of ethics; the literature on institutional corruption; and studies of conflicts of interest.  These sources support findings of systemic corruption since the mid-20th century. The paper also explores the relationship between classic corruption, institutional corruption and conflicts of …

Article Iii's Constraints On The Legislative Power, Elizabeth Earle Beske

William & Mary Law Review

Article III’s heightened concreteness standard for statutory harms takes federal judges deep into legislative terrain, jeopardizing statutory damage provisions and confining Congress to post hoc solutions rather than preemptive strikes. The Supreme Court has insisted that creating a cause of action is a legislative function. At the same time, its recent standing cases instruct lower federal courts to permit suit on statutory injuries only when they find actual harm that bears a tight connection to injuries recognized at common law. This new harm requirement rests uneasily with countless statutes featuring statutory damage provisions that are in place precisely because damages …

Is It Credit?, Jim Hawkins

William & Mary Law Review

Earned wage access companies advance money to workers based on wages they have already earned but have not yet been paid. Then, one of three things happens to reimburse the earned wage access provider: (1) the worker’s employer sends the provider money directly, (2) the provider withdraws money from the worker’s bank account on payday, or (3) nothing. The last of these is the most interesting. If the earned wage access provider does not receive the funds from the worker’s employer or bank account, the worker just walks away. Even more remarkable, many providers do not charge any mandatory fees …

A New Standard: Default Inclusion Of Children In Clinical Trials, Megyn Gordon

Colorado Law Student Scholars

No abstract provided.

Unwelcomeness Reconsidered: Adapting Sexual Harassment Law In The Long Wake Of #Metoo, Collin Christner

Michigan Law Review

The federal cause of action for sexual harassment in employment grew out of Title VII’s prohibition of workplace sex discrimination. In many circuits, for sexual harassment claims to be actionable, the plaintiff must show they found the referenced conduct “unwelcome.” Commentators have criticized that requirement since its inception; nonetheless, it has been wielded by courts that are either resistant or reluctant to abandon it. “Unwelcomeness” (or lack of evidence thereof) has been used to permit swaths of inappropriate workplace conduct— enshrining old, sexist stereotypes into America’s employment regulations. This Note evaluates the current approach to the unwelcomeness requirement and proposes …

Reimagining Legal Education: The Transformative Power Of Small-Group Instruction, Michael I. Meyerson

Articles

Legal education is failing its students. Those entering their first year of law school have greater anxiety and less developed reading and writing skills than ever before. The traditional large Socratic class, which was never the most effective teaching method, has become increasingly counterproductive.

This Article contends that small-group instruction provides the opportunity for superior teaching, especially for first-year law students. Recent scholarship in active learning, educational psychology, and students’ mental health demonstrates the limitations of the traditional large Socratic class experience. Building on that theoretical foundation and informed by sustained classroom experience, this Article argues that small-group pedagogy more …

Press Freedom As A First Amendment Paradigm, Gregory P. Magarian

Villanova Law Review (1956 - )

No abstract provided.

The Press, Privacy, Expungement, And Second Chances: Shifting The Paradigm, Brian M. Murray

Villanova Law Review (1956 - )

No abstract provided.

Who's Qualified? Examining Attorney Perspectives On Lpcs In The Legal System, Becca Wilson, Bernave Vega

Posters - 2026

Legal cases frequently intersect with mental health concerns, positioning Licensed Professional Counselors (LPCs) to contribute clinical expertise in custody disputes, trauma documentation, and psychological functioning. As mental health issues become increasingly central to both civil and criminal proceedings, the working relationship between attorneys and counselors carries real consequences for clients, yet LPCs entering legal settings often face challenges related to role clarity, courtroom preparation, and professional credibility. Existing research has focused primarily on counselors' forensic experiences, leaving attorney perspectives on LPC involvement largely unexplored. This gap is meaningful, as attorneys serve as gatekeepers to expert involvement and their perceptions of …

Law Library Blog (April 2026): Legal Beagle's Blog Archive, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Law Library Newsletters/Blog

No abstract provided.

Child Support Factory: Racist History, Harm, And Unconstitutionality Of The Child Support System's Contractual Operations, Daniel L. Hatcher

All Faculty Scholarship

Within America’s justice institutions, the child support system has become a business. The intended mission of aid has been traded and abdicated through contractual deals to churn vulnerable families into factory-like revenue operations. Juvenile and family courts across the country have partnered through countless intertwined interagency contracts with human service agencies, prosecutors, attorneys general’s offices, probation departments, and policing offices—all aimed at generating revenue from impoverished children and parents rather than serving their best interests. The resulting child support factory is vast, harmful, unconstitutional, unethical, and grew from a racist history that devastated Black families, and still operates with starkly …

A Legal Transplant Failure In The Ai Age, Xuan-Thao Nguyen

Articles

Thailand positions itself as the new AI-driven innovation hub in the Southeast Asia region as Big Tech companies invest billions in building new data centers to power the AI transformations in all sectors in Thailand. An integral part of Thailand’s new ambition is the legal transplant of personal data protection law from Europe. The transplant, however, is of form, not substance, as this Article illustrates the failure through in-depth analysis of Thailand’s Personal Data Protection Act and provides evidence of rampant violations and noncompliance by the largest ecommerce conglomerate and SMEs. This Article offers suggestions for Thailand to realign its …

Birthdate Phaseout, Katharine B. Silbaugh

Faculty Scholarship

This Article explores the Nicotine Free Generation ("NFG") policy, an emerging endgame strategy for tobacco products that employs a completely novel legal design. Tobacco remains the leading cause of preventable death, killing almost half of its users and imposing $600 billion in social costs each year. We see two basic choices for regulating sales: prohibition or a legal age-gate, such as twenty-one, for retail sales. NFG charts a third way. Recognizing the dire harm of tobacco and the serious consequences of abrupt prohibition, NFG lays the groundwork for a gradual transition to a sales sunset. In place of the twenty-one …

The Human Right To A Healthy Environment: Corporate Responsibility In Critical Mineral Extraction, Erika George

Faculty Scholarship

This paper argues that the emerging human right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment should guide the governance of critical minerals by incorporating the corporate responsibility to respect human rights throughout supply chains to ensure a racially just energy transition. It frames the climate crisis within the history and political economy of racial capitalism, contending that without rights-based guardrails, mineral supply chains risk reproducing the extractive harms and racialized disparities of the fossil fuel era, including labor abuses, displacement, water depletion, and violence disproportionately borne by racialized and Indigenous communities. Methodologically, the paper combines doctrinal analysis of international norms …

Giving Meaningful Effect To Victims’ Rights: The Canadian Victims Bill Of Rights As Quasi-Constitutional Legislation, Benjamin Perrin

All Faculty Publications

This research paper is the first detailed examination of the quasi-constitutional status of the Canadian Victims Bill of Rights ("CVBR") and the implications for its interpretation and application. It aims to provide a doctrinal account of this extraordinary legal recognition and to serve as a resource for scholars, judges, lawyers, and other justice system participants to ensure that the CVBR is interpreted and applied consistently with its aim of serving as a catalyst for transformative change to how the criminal justice system has historically treated victims.