Digital Commons Network^™

The Federal Reserve's Mandates, David T. Zaring, Jeffery Y. Zhang

Minnesota Law Review Vols. 106:2 onward (2021-present)

Solutions to systemic problems such as climate change and racial inequities have eluded policymakers for decades. In searching for creative solutions, some policymakers have recently thought about expanding the Federal Reserve’s core set of macro-economic mandates to tackle these issues. But there are real questions about whether that can be done from a legal perspective and whether that should be done from a policy perspective.

In this Article, we propose a framework to answer these two questions of “can we” and “should we”—a framework grounded in administrative law and macroeconomics. In Part I, we consider the legal challenges that the …

Editing And Advocacy, Patrick Barry

Books

Good editors don’t just see the sentence that was written. They see the sentence that might have been written. They know how to spot words that shouldn’t be included and summon up ones that haven’t yet appeared. Their value comes not just from preventing mistakes but from discovering new ways to improve a piece of writing’s style, structure, and overall impact.

This book— which is based on a popular course taught at the University of Chicago Law School, the University of Michigan Law School, and the UCLA School of Law— is designed to help you become one of those editors. …

Feedback Loops: Feedback Fundamentals, Patrick Barry

Books

Learning how to give and receive feedback is fundamental to the development of every student and professional. Yet few of us are ever taught anything like “feedback skills.”

This book, which is the first in the Feedback Loops series, is designed to change that. Here is what students who have taken the University of Michigan Law School course on which the series is based have said about it:

“One of the most memorable and useful classes I have taken in law school!”

“Excellent, full stop.”

“This class was always a fun highlight of my week.”

Judicial Deference To Agency Action Based On Ai, Cade Mallett

Catholic University Journal of Law and Technology

No abstract provided.

Ai Risk Assessment Tools Amid The War On Drugs: Productive Or Counterproductive?, Matin Pedram

Mitchell Hamline Law Journal of Public Policy and Practice

The War on Drugs refers to a situation in which all the processes of production, distribution, and consumption of all illegal drugs are prohibited. This ambitious goal has imposed considerable costs on societies. The war has weaponized harsher punishments such as life imprisonment, execution, and long-term incarceration against drug offenders. Nonviolent offenders, those who possessed illegal drugs, have been easy targets for governments to show that the war is still ongoing. Although some countries became pioneers in changing the laws to end this costly war, Iran and the United States have made their stance on the drug issue clear, and …

Performance Gaps And Opportunities For Growth: Addressing Remote Learning In Nevada, Anna Dreibelbis-Colquitt

BYU Education & Law Journal

Although education is not a fundamental right under the United States Constitution, it is nonetheless deemed as “perhaps the most important function of state and local governments.” The importance of education is reinforced through the Nevada Constitution. Specifically, Article 11 states that “[t]he legislature shall provide for a uniform system of common schools,” which is seen through the public school system. However, this ‘uniform’ system drastically changed two years ago with the surge in online learning.

Diving Into Correctional Education Program Research: A Systematic Review, Evelyn Roehn

Undergraduate Honors Theses

In the last three decades, there has been a growing interest in correctional education programming and its effects on the recidivism rates of offenders. Research has concluded that programs such as general education equivalency (GED), college credit, and trade/vocational skill-building work to reduce recidivism rates among offenders. Although current research is widely accepted among scholars, several questions remain. 1) How is recidivism defined, and how does the definition change the rates? 2) How are researchers addressing selection bias in their study, and what impact does this have on their findings? 3) How are inmates with learning disabilities and language barriers …

Robot Regulations, Henry H. Perritt Jr.

South Carolina Law Review

No abstract provided.

Low-Head Dams (Aka Drowning Machines) Are Deadly: An Analysis Of Liability For Landowners And States, And Recommendations For Legislation And Warning Signs, Forrest R. Hansen, Rollin H. Hotchkiss

Kentucky Journal of Equine, Agriculture, & Natural Resources Law

No abstract provided.

Aclp - Updated Overview Of Iija Digital Equity Grant Programs - March 2023, New York Law School

Reports and Resources

No abstract provided.

What The Judge Ate For Breakfast: Reasonable Consumer Challenges In Misleading Food Labeling Claims, Jessica Guarino, Nabilah Nathani, A. Bryan Endres

Loyola Consumer Law Review

Food, being an established aspect of global human culture and history, occupies a unique role in contemporary society. Given the massive market available for packaged and processed food, companies have taken deceptive marketing to new heights, resulting in a flurry of consumer litigation. The dominant test for -evaluating the scope of these cases is the reasonable consumer standard, an amorphous assessment which requires a probability that a majority of the general public or targeted consumers would be misled by said deceptive marketing. By analyzing state and federal consumer protection statutes, landmark cases, and elements of human and cultural psychology, the …

Healthwashing: Corporate Communication Strategies In A Legal Gray Zone, Felix Delerm, Anna Galmiche, Melanie Levy

Loyola Consumer Law Review

In an age of rising prevalence of non-communicable diseases, transnational companies of the tobacco, alcohol, and food industries wash their risk-creating commercial activities and unhealthy products and incidentally mislead consumers. This paper examines industries' quest for legitimacy through elaborate communication strategies. It conceptualizes the practice of healthwashing as a new form of a commercial determinant of health, revealing the inherent tension between commercial and public health objectives. Healthwashing consists of deceptive, multi-level communication strategies, including labeling and advertising, that trick consumers into believing they support companies whose practices align with their values. The paper is the first to present an …

Complexities Of Community Consultation In Chile's Lithium Industry, Isabella R. Whelan

Honors Theses

Echoed by November’s COP27 in Egypt, the climate crisis has become an increasingly pressing and global issue, with the need to move away from fossil fuels more urgent than ever. In attempts to decarbonize the global economy, many countries and companies have turned to electrification –particularly within the transportation sector, one of today’s largest contributors of greenhouse gasses. A crucial component of energy storage and batteries is lithium, now considered a “critical mineral.” Demand for lithium has skyrocketed in recent years and is only expected to continue growing. More than fifty percent of the world’s lithium supply is found within …

Aircraft Leasing—How To Comply With The Regulations And What Happens When You Don’T, David T. Norton, Gregory J. Reigel

Journal of Air Law and Commerce

The Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) increased emphasis on investigating improper leasing/illegal charter presents a challenge for aircraft operators. Understanding the regulatory requirements related to aircraft leasing is critical for operators to ensure their aircraft operations are compliant. Equally important is the need for aircraft operators to understand how the FAA exercises its oversight when it investigates alleged improper leasing/illegal charter operations, the consequences to which an aircraft operator may be subject in the event of non-compliance, and how an operator who is the target of such an investigation may respond to and/or work with the FAA to successfully resolve the …

In Your Face: Whether Photographs Should Be Considered Biometric Information, Alessandra M. Conte

UIC Review of Intellectual Property Law

No abstract provided.

Why Do Corporations Merge And Why Should Law Care?, Chris Sagers

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

Mergers and acquisitions are extraordinarily prevalent in the United States, generating massive expenditures every year. However, a serious empirical puzzle lies at the heart of all that activity. That empirical phenomenon's most remarkable feature by far is that even though it is well established in an extensive literature and implies far-reaching policy consequences, American law ignores it entirely.

Generations of researchers have failed to find evidence that merger and acquisition activity generates any lasting benefits for the combining firms' owners or anyone else. No one seriously doubts that efficiencies of scale or technological integration are real or that acquisitions sometimes …

Preventing Intimate Image Abuse Via Privacy-Preserving Credentials, Janet Zhang, Steven M. Bellovin

SMU Science and Technology Law Review

The problem of non-consensual pornography (“NCP”), sometimes known as intimate image abuse or revenge porn, is well known. Despite its distribution being illegal in most states, it remains a serious problem, if only because it is often difficult to prove who uploaded the pictures. Furthermore, the Federal statute commonly known as Section 230 generally protects Internet sites, such as PornHub, from liability for content created by their users; only the users are liable, not the sites.

One obvious countermeasure would be to require Internet sites to strongly authenticate their users, but this is not an easy problem to solve. Furthermore, …

"Grossly Negligent Utilities," "Unimaginable Property Damage" And The Scope Of Liability Insurers' Duty To Indemnify Subrogated Property Insurers - Probative And Empirical Inferences From Courts' Divided Subrogation And Indemnification Decision, Willy E. Rice

Faculty Articles

Each year, extreme weather, natural disasters and allegedly "grossly negligent" investor-owned utilities concurrently destroy property, persons and lives. In the wake, billions of dollars are lost. Given utilities' general immunity under the judicially created filed-rate or filed-tariff doctrine, residential and commercial owners are precluded from filing ordinary negligence actions against utilities. Thus, many injured consumers try to settle their property-loss claims with their insurers. Some property insurers satisfy the "make-whole" doctrine and cover all losses. Most insurers, however, refuse to settle any claim. Or, they partially compensate the insureds. Yet, an overwhelming majority of property insurers are increasingly filing subrogation …

Consumer Bankruptcy In The Neoliberal State, Michael D. Sousa

Emory Bankruptcy Developments Journal

The rise of financialized capitalism as a component of the neoliberal state has resulted in our debt-based economy, under which utilizing credit—and incurring significant debt—is a necessary strategy for individuals and families to avoid economic marginality and to maintain some semblance of financial security in an evaporated welfare state. The current capitalist logic of differential accumulation and financial expropriation has created perpetually indebted citizens for whom debt needs to be understood as a social power and as a class relation of domination and exploitation between creditors and debtors. Many consumers who experience unmanageable debt often turn to the bankruptcy process …

Legitimacy Without Legality, Or Bassok

Saint Louis University Law Journal

Beyond the controversy on women’s right to elect an abortion, in Dobbs v. Jackson there is a deep yet hidden disagreement over the Court’s source of legitimacy. The majority judgment speaks of the Court’s source of legitimacy in terms of expertise, while the dissenting opinion speaks of it in terms of public support. My starting point for exposing this disagreement is the divergence between the accurate quote of Alexander Hamilton’s famous dictum from the Federalist No. 78 in Justice Alito’s majority opinion, and dissenting Justice Breyer’s paraphrase of the same dictum in the Dobbs oral arguments. The paraphrased version replaced …

The Marketplace Of Ideas Is In Chaos. Chaos Theory Would Like A Word, Jared Schroeder

Saint Louis University Law Journal

The marketplace of ideas is the Supreme Court’s dominant tool for rationalizing expansive First Amendment safeguards. The model, however, is fundamentally flawed. Enlightenment-based assumptions about truth and human rationality that justices installed into the theory’s foundations have been criticized by scholars and, in the era of powerful algorithms and generative AI, are becoming even more suspect. The space is in a state of chaos. Perhaps chaos theory can help. The theory provides a lens through which to revise marketplace theory and therefore re-examine First Amendment free-expression rationales. Chaos theory identifies that Enlightenment-era positivistic, reductionist thinking fails to account for variables …

Equitable Ecosystem: A Two-Pronged Approach To Equity In Artificial Intelligence, Rangita De Silva De Alwis, Amani Carter, Govind Nagubandi

Michigan Technology Law Review

Lawmakers, technologists, and thought leaders are facing a once-in-a-generation opportunity to build equity into the digital infrastructure that will power our lives; we argue for a two-pronged approach to seize that opportunity. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is poised to radically transform our world, but we are already seeing evidence that theoretical concerns about potential bias are now being borne out in the market. To change this trajectory and ensure that development teams are focused explicitly on creating equitable AI, we argue that we need to shift the flow of investment dollars. Venture Capital (VC) firms have an outsized impact in determining …

Background And Implications Of China's Central Bank Digital Currency: E-Cny, Jiaying Jiang, Karman Lucero

UF Law Faculty Publications

The People’s Republic of China is a leading experimenter in central bank digital currencies (CBDCs). This Article explores the current background, deployment, features, potential impacts, challenges, and legal concerns of China’s CBDC: the electronic yuan, or E-CNY. This Article explains the potential significance of what is known and not known about E-CNY with a particular focus on how E-CNY might fit into existing legal and economic systems, both within China and internationally. On the surface, E-CNY looks transformative. When you dig a little deeper, however, most of the potential changes or transformations turn on broader institutional, political, and legal changes …

What Is An English Jew?: The Legal Construction Of Jewish Identity Under The Uk Equality Act Of 2010, Lesley Klaff

Indiana Journal of Law and Social Equality

No abstract provided.

David, Michael D. Green

Roger Williams University Law Review

No abstract provided.

2022 Rhode Island Public Laws, Aryamen A. Omshehe

Roger Williams University Law Review

No abstract provided.

A Liberal Theory Of Fiduciary Law, Robert J. Rhee

UF Law Faculty Publications

Fiduciary law requires a coherent theory. When courts are asked to determine whether a relationship is fiduciary, they do not have an operative rule absent statute or contract. They work through the facts with an inchoate idea. This state of incomplete knowledge would not be so problematic if the boundary of the principle is clear and the law is static. By hook or crook, case law and the law generally seem to have gotten the results about right. But there is uncertainty at the margins, and the boundary is continuously tested in litigation and academic conceptualization. Potential elasticity of the …

Gender Inequities, The Covid-19 Shecession, And The Need For A Conscious Transformation, Blassing, Marissa J.

Santa Clara Law Review

The recent COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated that new and acute burdens tend to fall on women in a time of crisis because society defaults to structural gender-normative roles. Even before the pandemic, women had a long history of facing structural inequities in the workplace and at home. Such inequities are fueled by implicit biases, expectations, and stereotypes. The fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic worsened gender inequities. For women, it disproportionately increased domestic obligations and it had a disproportionate effect on female-dominated occupations—threatening to roll back decades of progress.

This Article will discuss the problem of gender inequity in the workplace, the …

Chatgpt, Esq.: Recasting Unauthorized Practice Of Law In The Era Of Generative Ai, Joseph J. Avery, Patricia S. Abril, Alissa Del Riego

Articles

In March of 2023, OpenAI released GPT-4, an autoregressive language model that uses deep learning to produce text. GPT-4 has unprecedented ability to practice law: drafting briefs and memos, plotting litigation strategy, and providing general legal advice. However, scholars and practitioners have yet to unpack the implications of large language models, such as GPT-4, for long-standing bar association rules on the unauthorized practice of law ("UPL"). The intersection of large language models with UPL raises manifold issues, including those pertaining to important and developing jurisprudence on free speech, antitrust, occupational licensing, and the inherent-powers doctrine. How the intersection is navigated, …

Governing The Wild West Of Blockchain: Corporate Governance Issues With Daos, Chris Coon

Student Works

No abstract provided.