Digital Commons Network^™

From Dissent To Terrorism: The Formation Of A Security Grammar In Malaysia, Haezreena Begum Binti Abdul Hamid Dr

Indonesia Law Review

The absence of a universally accepted definition of terrorism has enabled states to exercise wide discretion in naming, governing, and exceptionalising violence. This article argues that, in Malaysia, “terrorism” did not emerge as a neutral legal category but as the product of a historically evolving security grammar, a patterned way of interpreting ideology, dissent, and conflict through the lens of existential threat. Employing a qualitative doctrinal socio-legal methodology, the study integrates analysis of international and Malaysian legal frameworks with case-based examination of key episodes, including Memali, Al-Arqam, Al-Ma’unah, Lahad Datu, and ISIS-linked incidents. Statutes, judicial decisions, policy materials, and regional …

Russian Linguistic Policy In The Post-Soviet World, Payton G. Deichler

The Dialogue

This paper examines the role of the Russian language as an instrument of soft power in the post-Soviet space, arguing that its geopolitical influence extends beyond demographic prevalence to the institutional frameworks through which it is promoted and mediated. Rather than functioning solely as a neutral medium of communication, Russian operates as an infrastructural component of influence that shapes access to media ecosystems, educational systems, and professional mobility across former Soviet republics. Drawing on the concept of a “Monopoly of Interpretation,” this study proposes that the centralized, state-linked promotion of Russian enables the consolidation of political narratives within shared linguistic …

Ai Mistakes: "Confabulation" And Abduction, Not "Hallucination", Stephen M. Mcjohn, Ian Mcjohn

Suffolk University Law School Faculty Works

"Hallucination" has become the common term for errors by AI systems, yet it implies a misleading analogy to human perception. LLM's process tokens. They do not have conscious experience or conscious perception. A hallucination is an experience, and (to our knowledge, to date) LLM's do not experience anything. This paper suggests that legal scholars follow the lead of a small number of AI researchers who have suggested that "confabulation" is a more accurate term, a metaphor grounded in psychology. People confabulate when they unknowingly invent spurious explanations or facts. We then take this terminological question and stretch it into a …

Voices From The Field: A Phenomenology Exploring Elementary Teachers’ Experiences Of The Impact Of Policy On Teaching Reading, Donna T. White

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The purpose of this transcendental-phenomenological study was to understand the lived experiences of reading teachers who implement policy-driven reading practices in elementary schools within urban school districts in Maryland. The theory guiding this study was Bandura’s theory of self-efficacy. The policies governing how teachers teach reading in Maryland's elementary schools informed this study. The Central Research Question was, " How do elementary teachers’ lived experiences of implementing reading policy in the classroom affect reading instruction? A transcendental-phenomenological research design was combined with purposive sampling and involved responses from 10 participants from urban school districts in Maryland. Transcript coding was used …

Sejarah Undang-Undang Dalam Pembuatan Rancangan Undang-Undang, Frans Limahelu

Jurnal Hukum & Pembangunan

Abstract

The Role Of Ai In Judicial Translation: Ensuring Access To Justice In Vernacular Languages, With Special Reference To Marathi, Bhushan Raut

Indian Journal of Law and Technology

This paper examines the role of artificial intelligence in judicial translation to enhance access to justice in India’s multilingual legal system, with a specific focus on Marathi. It situates judicial translation within the constitutional framework and Rule of Law theory, arguing that linguistic accessibility is essential to legal agency and fairness. Through doctrinal, empirical, and comparative analysis, the paper evaluates initiatives such as SUVAS, highlights gaps in vernacular availability of landmark judgements, and identifies challenges relating to accuracy, accountability, and legal semantics. It proposes a hybrid AI–human model and policy reforms to ensure reliable, scalable, and inclusive translation practices in …

Constitutional Litigation After Trump V. Casa, Howard M. Wasserman

Duke Journal of Constitutional Law & Public Policy

Trump v. CASA resolved a decade-old scholarly debate about whether federal courts can grant "universal" injunctions in constitutional cases—injunctions prohibiting the executive from enforcing the challenged law against all persons subject to the law, beyond the plaintiffs to the action. A 6-3 Court said federal courts could issue remedies necessary to accord "complete relief to the plaintiffs," without the power to protect non-parties.

The various opinions in CASA offer competing visions of litigation, adjudication, and judicial decisionmaking. The case plays and will continue to play an essential role in ongoing challenges to Trump Administration policies and regulations and all constitutional …

The Great Depression And Canada's Major Originalist Decade, Preston Jordan Lim

Faculty Publications

Few periods of Canadian history have been as momentous or terrible as the Great Depression. The Dominion and provincial governments’ inability to combat financial and environmental catastrophe led many Canadians to openly question the appropriateness of their constitutional framework. As legal historians have since documented, many leading jurists of the time believed that a strong central government could, through the institution of national programs, contain the Great Depression; in the eyes of these 1930s jurists, the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council—then Canada’s apex court—had sapped the federal government of its powers by misinterpreting the British North America Act, 1867 …

Censorship And Human Rights Violations: The Suppression Of Freedom Of Expression, Press, And Assembly In Cuba, Nicaragua, And Venezuela, Elisabell Laura Velázquez

University of Miami Inter-American Law Review

As the days, months, and years go by, Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela continue to violate the fundamental human rights of their citizens. Despite worldwide technological advancements and increased access to the digital world, these regimes continuously monitor and censor their citizens, depriving them of the fundamental rights to freedom of expression, press, and assembly. This article explores how censorship can represent a systemic violation of human rights. This article argues that strengthening cooperation between different international organizations is necessary because censorship in Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela is a human rights crisis that impacts civil society. Furthermore, this article explains the …

The Roots Of Reasoning: An Analysis Of Irac’S Reductive Framework And The Restoration Of The Rhetorical Foundation, Leslie Patrice Culver

Seton Hall Law Review

No abstract provided.

Socio-Legal Framework For Vulnerability: Using Public-Private Partnerships As A Tool For Disaster Management, Latisha Nixon-Jones

Pepperdine Law Review

As disasters continue to grow in size and intensity, the question arises: can governments effectively meet local and regional disaster response and recovery needs? This Article examines the history of utilizing public-private partnerships (PPPs) to enhance government functions in disaster management. The primary objective of this Article is to assess whether involving private entities in governmental roles is an effective strategy for building resilient communities and ensuring public safety, particularly for vulnerable populations. Existing literature focuses on the financial and logistical aspects of PPPs with mere mentions of legal importance. To address these failures, this Article proposes a novel socio-legal …

Originalism's Unbalanced Ledger, David Zaring

Duke Law Journal

This Essay examines the fundamental tension between originalism and cost-benefit analysis—the two dominant methodologies shaping modern, public law decision-making. Originalism, currently triumphant, prioritizes historical meaning and textual fidelity. It operates in stark contrast to cost-benefit analysis, the byword of the administrative state since 1982, which focuses on the future and efficiency. Descriptively, the two methodologies are irreconcilable. Nor is it possible to pair them by claiming they serve different purposes; originalism and cost-benefit analysis conflict when assessing agency design, constitutional rights, and judicial review of administrative action. As regulatory policymaking continues to rely on empirical and economic assessments, originalism's influence …

Bruen, Levels Of Generality, And Our Historical Tradition Of The Regulatory “Why”, Kevin K. Wang

UC Law Constitutional Quarterly

To pass Second Amendment muster under New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, gun laws encompassed by the Amendment’s plain text must align with our nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation. A challenged law comports with history and tradition when it is sufficiently analogous to historical regulations along two metrics: “how” and “why” the regulation burdens the right to keep and bear arms.

One glaring ambiguity leftover from Bruen is the level of generality at which courts, when analogizing between laws past and present, must frame a regulation’s “how” and “why”—an issue of major consequence. Characterizing the “how” …

Should Judicial Opinions Be Read Like Statutes?, Margaret H. Lemos

Northwestern University Law Review

Should judicial opinions be interpreted with an eye to their purpose, context, or the intent of their authors, or should interpreters focus on the ordinary meaning of the text? Opinions present the same sorts of interpretive puzzles as other legal texts, and yet they have been omitted from the debates over interpretive methodology that dominate the fields of constitutional and statutory interpretation. The omission is no accident: the Supreme Court has stated repeatedly—and with increasing frequency in recent years—that judicial opinions are not to be read like statutes. Yet neither courts nor commentators have explained why the principles that ground …

Place Names And Presidential Control, Austin Kruse

Northwestern University Law Review

Since the start of his second term, President Trump has issued executive orders at an extraordinary pace, using them to advance a broader ideological agenda across the administrative state. While scholarly attention has largely focused on the most sweeping of these directives, less prominent orders raise similar concerns about the reach of presidential power. This Note examines one such order: Executive Order 14,172, which directs the renaming of the Gulf of Mexico and Denali and expands presidential influence over the U.S. Board on Geographic Names (BGN).

Although geographic naming is ostensibly apolitical, place names are deeply entangled with questions of …

Mister President & May It Please The Executive: Causal Barriers To Court-Packing, Mason Smith

Seaver College Research And Scholarly Achievement Symposium

As attacks on democracy have become increasingly ubiquitous, scholarship has begun to shed light on a common, effective, and inimical means of subverting governments accountable to the masses: court-packing. So, how can democracies prevent court-packing? Among many implicit causal theories taken from the extant research, which hasn’t directly tackled this problem, two seem the most plausible and ripe for analysis, suggesting that court-packing’s success turns on either the strength (i) of institutional constraints or (ii) of domestic judicial norms. To see which theory works better in practice, I use a narrowly tailored iteration of comparative process tracing, as it best …

Invisible In The Storm: Disasters And The Disability Divide, Helia Hull

Idaho Law Review

“Sometimes it takes a natural disaster to reveal a social disaster.”

The Myth Of The Immigrant As A Criminal: Rhetoric, Otherness, And The Legal Construction Of Danger, Katerina Fernandez

Immigration and Human Rights Law Review

The figure of the “criminal immigrant” occupies a central place in contemporary U.S. immigration discourse, shaping public perception, enforcement priorities, and legal doctrine. Yet a substantial body of empirical research consistently demonstrates that immigrants—both documented and undocumented—commit crimes at lower rates than native-born citizens. This Note examines why the narrative of immigrant criminality persists despite this evidence and how it influences the development and operation of immigration law. It argues that “immigrant” functions not only as a legal category but also as a socially constructed marker of Otherness, encompassing perceived differences in race, language, culture, and religion. Through this lens, …

The Expanding Digital Border: Ai, Surveillance, And The Fight For Justice, James Chesser

Immigration and Human Rights Law Review

As artificial intelligence transforms the mechanisms of immigration control, the modern border has become a digital filter—one governed less by geography and more by code. This Article examines the legal, technical, and ethical implications of AI-driven systems now central to global border enforcement, including biometric surveillance, algorithmic risk scoring, and predictive profiling. It explores how states use these technologies not only to manage irregular migration, but to compete for global talent—constructing migration regimes that reward capital and compliance while eroding transparency, due process, and equality.

Through an international and comparative lens, the piece highlights the expansion of algorithmic decision-making across …

Historical Facts And Constitutional Law: New Challenges For Lawyers, Judges, And Scholars, Joseph Blocher, Brandon L. Garrett, H. Timothy Lovelace Jr.

Duke Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Unwanted Histories, Christen Hammock Jones, Karen M. Tani

Duke Law Journal

The Supreme Court’s turn to history as a method of constitutional decisionmaking has both intrigued and alarmed professional historians, for reasons now well-rehearsed in the literature. This Article takes as a given that history is now part of judges’ work. It then invites judges to think more expansively about the type of history they could—and perhaps should—be producing. This task, in turn, means engaging with some of the central questions about methodology and sources that preoccupy professional historians.

This Article focuses on a source base that historians routinely rely upon but that courts have shied away from: personal accounts of …

Falsifying Tradition, Darrell A. H. Miller

Duke Law Journal

From cases spanning gun rights, reproductive freedom, religious liberty, and personal jurisdiction; to separation of powers and other structural features of the Constitution, courts increasingly rely on tradition to guide their decisions. Often, judges appeal to tradition in a vaguely empirical way, as “facts to study, not convictions to demonstrate about,” in the words of Justice Antonin Scalia. Yet, for a claim that purports to be factual, there’s very little agreement, or even analysis, about what renders this factual assertion—tradition—true or false. This Article tackles that basic issue.

Part I surveys the ways in which courts use tradition in different …

Situating Ai Within The History Of Technological Adaptation In Law, Karin Mika

SLU Law Journal Online

This Article argues that the current anxiety surrounding generative artificial intelligence (AI) in the legal academy is the latest iteration of a recurring historical cycle. By examining the introduction of other technological enhancements in the law, the author demonstrates that each technological shift was initially met with skepticism regarding the potential loss of critical thinking skills. However, history shows that these tools ultimately pushed the profession away from a focus on mechanical form and toward a deeper engagement with substantive analysis and strategic advocacy. Rather than posing an existential threat, AI represents a logical next step that can automate the …

The Last Human Question: Generative Ai's Existential Threat To Consensus And Law, Joshua Fairfield

West Virginia Law Review

The true risk of artificial intelligence (“AI”) is not that the toasters will rise up. It is that AI will be competent to perform human tasks and indifferent to human welfare. The risk is that we will be outcompeted by generative automated processes that create output similar to ours (although never the same, as this Article explains), but which need none of the outputs of the economy for food, shelter, or human flourishing. Further, a more precise and existential description of the threat is that generative AI will disrupt and crowd out humanity’s evolutionary superpower, our ability to generate agreement …

Ai And Law Milestones: From Top-Down To Bottom-Up Computational Models Of Legal Reasoning (And Back), Kevin Ashley

West Virginia Law Review

This Article introduces five research and development milestones in the field of Artificial Intelligence and Law and then discusses how large language models (“LLMs”) and generative AI (“GenAI”) are affecting each of them. The milestones include legal expert systems, lessons learned in computationally modeling legal rules and statutes, knowledge-based models of legal argument, machine learning models that classify case texts and predict outcomes, and the design and evaluation of legal applications of LLMs and GenAI. These milestones illustrate how top-down knowledge-based computational models of legal expertise have rapidly given way to bottom-up models based on machine learning. Knowledge-based models explicitly …

Situating Ai Within The History Of Technological Adaptation In Law, Karin Mika

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

This Article will first trace this history of technological disruption and adaptation in the law. It will then situate the current AI moment within this established pattern, arguing that AI’s capabilities create an unprecedented opportunity to accelerate a pedagogical shift from foundational structure to sophisticated substance. Further, it will explore AI's significant potential as an equalizer for multilingual students. Finally, it will address the legitimate risks of AI, concluding that a framework grounded in professional ethics and critical human oversight is the key to harnessing its benefits responsibly. The challenge is not to resist this new technology, but to adapt …

A Guide To The Best Reading Of Environmental Law: Presumptions For Stability In Statutory Interpretation, Sanne H. Knudsen

Michigan Journal of Environmental & Administrative Law

Administrative law is in flux and its doctrines flexible. Recent doctrinal shifts—like the ousting of Chevron and the introduction of the major questions doctrine—raise significant questions about how courts will determine the best reading of statutes and carve out a role for agency expertise in statutory interpretation. For environmental law, a field that relies heavily on federal agencies for implementation, the flux and flexibility of administrative law presents challenges. But they also present opportunities.

On the one hand, the recent changes to administrative law pose a destabilizing and deregulatory risk for environmental law unless courts develop a consistent methodology for …

Full Issue

Brigham Young University Prelaw Review

No abstract provided.

Thinking Ahead: Ranking Substantive Canons To Protect Loper Bright, Tanner Macdonald

Brigham Young University Prelaw Review

After forty-two years, the Supreme Court overturned Chevron deference in their decision Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo (2024). The decision suggested a rising inclination towards legal formalism in cases of statutory interpretation. This Note argues that if the Court intends statutes to be interpreted in accordance with formalism, clarification is needed. Loper Bright was not sufficient to clear up the inconsistencies in statutory interpretation that the Court used to overrule Chevron. Without a strong prescription, Loper Bright will eventually collapse on itself. A formal ranking of substantive canons is one type of structure that would support Loper Bright and enable …

How Many Supreme Court Justices Can Stand On The Point Of A Needle? Originalist Scholarship, Political Neutrality, And Other Constitutional Nonsense, Stephen M. Feldman

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

In the 1935 article, "Transcendental Nonsense and the Functional Approach," Felix Cohen compared formalist legal reasoning, as practiced by traditional legal scholars and Lochner-era Supreme Court justices, to the philosophical musings of scholastic theologians. Unconnected to empirical reality, formalist legal reasoning was as nonsensical as a disquisition on “‘[h]ow many angels can stand on the point of a needle?’” Nowadays, originalist scholars are similarly engaged in nonsense. These scholars defend, refine, and practice originalist methods of constitutional interpretation as if the Supreme Court justices truly decided cases in accordance with the theory. Regardless, the justices—even the avowed originalists—do not consistently …