Digital Commons Network^™

Vaccines For Pandemics: Lessons From Covid-19 For H5n1 And Beyond, Alison Mccarthy, Michael S. Sinha

University of Chicago Legal Forum

The COVID-19 pandemic brought unprecedented challenges to vaccine development and distribution. Never before has a vaccine been developed so quickly and distributed so rapidly. But compared to past pandemics and public health crises—like polio or even the more recent H1N1 pandemic—the United States government’s COVID-19 vaccine strategy depended greatly on the private sector.

COVID-19 vaccines were credited with saving millions of lives worldwide, but private companies reaped these rewards, retained their patent rights, and profited from the vast and pressing need for their vaccines. Now, five years later, not every company views its vaccine work as a success. Financial hits …

Emergencies, Alien And Domestic, Samuel Issacharoff

University of Chicago Legal Forum

Democracies survive some emergencies, even emerging stronger after some crises despite temporary suspensions of liberty. Democracies die when faced with other emergencies. This Article explores why. It addresses the claimed need to limit rights of electoral participation in response to the rise of antidemocratic forces through the lens of militant democracy in Europe and the Insurrection Clause of Section Three of the Fourteenth Amendment in the United States. When examined through the context of claimed exigency, the ability of democracies to survive or even thrive after emergencies turns heavily on whether the source of the perceived threat is foreign or …

Realizing The World Health Organization’S Constitutional Mission: Equitably And Everywhere, Sam Halabi, Lawrence Gostin

University of Chicago Legal Forum

COVID-19 revealed deeply embedded inequalities in countries’ capacity to respond to public health disasters. From 2020 to 2024, the content and scope of international health law expanded to address these deep inequities, including a new pandemic agreement and significant changes to the International Health Regulations (IHR). Recent moves by the Trump Administration leveled significant losses on this new global health law infrastructure. At the heart of this infrastructure is the World Health Organization (WHO)—the UN’s specialized agency, which for 77 years has led the world toward realizing the human right to the highest attainable standard of mental and physical health. …

Crisis And The Constitution: The Role Of Civil Liberties In Times Of National Security Threat, Michele Goodwin, Allison M. Whelan

University of Chicago Legal Forum

In this Article, we contribute to the unfolding debate around civil liberties and civil rights in times of political, cultural, and health crises. As this Article was drafted, the National Guard was deployed in Los Angeles, California and Washington, D.C. by the President of the United States. In Oregon, a federal judge issued a final order barring the Trump administration from deploying troops to Portland. These events renew questions related to federalism, states’ rights, individual civil rights, and civil liberties. As chaos unfolds, what is the rule of law and role of civil liberties in times of real or purported …

Emergency Lending By The Federal Reserve, Richard Clarida, Kathryn Judge

University of Chicago Legal Forum

The Federal Reserve established an array of innovative emergency lending facilities during the Great Financial Crisis and expanded the scope of its emergency lending yet further in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. This Article provides a retrospective of how the Federal Reserve used its emergency lending authority across these two episodes, identifying patterns and revealing some differences. It sheds light on the conditions that enabled the Federal Reserve to establish the facilities that it did, including the roles played by Congress and Treasury in providing the equity funding that made certain facilities possible. It shows how in each episode, the …

The Disaster Management Complex: Law’S Adaptations In Times Of Climate Disaster, Michael Burger, Jeffrey Schlegelmilch, Lucia Bragg

University of Chicago Legal Forum

The Anthropocene is marked by constant climate-related disasters and defined by the urgent need to foster and implement adaptations to future climate impacts that reduce disaster risk. The intensity, frequency, and severity of extreme weather events continue to rise even as nations and corporations alike miss their emissions targets, all promising a hotter, wetter, and more extreme future. A number of federal agencies, including the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), have, at times, sought to adapt their own famously fragmented responses to these changing circumstances. However, federal disaster response is conducted against a backdrop of authorizing legislation that is designed …

Health Care Financialization, Erin C. Fuse Brown, Hayden Rooke-Ley

Journal of Health Care Law and Policy

No abstract provided.

From Reform To Reality: Assessing The Impact Of The Revised Common Rule On Informed Consent, Christopher R. Trudeau

Journal of Health Care Law and Policy

No abstract provided.

Adaptable Ai Apprentices: Law Practice Sidekicks, Henry H. Perritt, Jr.

University of Miami Law Review

Two case studies involving motorcycle-accident negligence and administrative law in the context of drone regulation violations explore the transformative potential of generative AI in legal practice. Four AI engines—DeepSeek, Claude, ChatGPT, and Grok—were asked to analyze transcripts of client interviews by identifying legal claims and assessing their strengths and weaknesses.

The results demonstrate that current AI technology effectively processes natural-language client interviews, identifies viable legal theories, and assesses claim strengths and weaknesses in both tort and administrative law contexts. The AI systems demonstrated proficiency in parsing legal theories and citing relevant statutes and administrative regulations, though case citations were frequently …

The Comstock Act: Will The First Amendment Finally Bury This Zombie Law’S Speech Restrictions?, Morgan Garces

University of Miami Law Review

The Comstock Act of 1873 is a federal anti-obscenity law that, along with lascivious and filthy literature, explicitly restricts the sending of anything that can be used to procure an abortion—including writing. However, since the decision of Roe v. Wade, the law’s abortion-speech provisions had been considered long-dead—although never officially being overturned. Now that Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization has rescinded the right to an abortion, the law appears to be reaching out from its grave. Anti-abortion activists are currently looking to the Comstock Act as a federal abortion ban already on the books because of its ban …

A Comparative Analysis Of The Rule Of Lenity And National Power Structures, Albert Kwon

Notre Dame Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

Queer Of Color Critique And The Politics Of Epistemic Agency: Rural Educators Desettling Curricular Expectations, C.A. Langerud, Madelaine Adelman, Daniel D. Liou

Journal of Queer and Trans Studies in Education

The purpose of this research is to use queer of color critique (QOCC) as an analytical framework to explore rural K-12 educators’ epistemic agency. The research focuses on educators’ engagement with a national initiative by an advocacy organization to distribute LGBTQ+ and racially diverse books to K-12 schools. The analysis centers on the educators’ praxis of epistemic agency against settled expectations associated with including queer and trans People of Color’s (QTPOC’s) stories in their schools. Our findings on educators’ epistemic agency center on three areas of knowledge and activity. First, educators demonstrate their ability to be aware of their local …

Replay Review: The Case For Federal Baseball And The Case For Overturning It, Rebekah Ansbro

Jeffrey S. Moorad Sports Law Journal (1994 - )

No abstract provided.

Coaches' Challenge: Incentivizing Diversity In The Nfl Amidst Legal Challenges To The Rooney Rule, Ryan Magill

Jeffrey S. Moorad Sports Law Journal (1994 - )

No abstract provided.

From Ice Queen To Shattered Dream: How The Kamila Valieva Case Sheds Light On The Extreme Vulnerability Of Minor Athletes Involved In Doping Cases, Emma Bertsch

Jeffrey S. Moorad Sports Law Journal (1994 - )

No abstract provided.

Challenging The Raid Boss: Antitrust In Esports, Mason Cole

Jeffrey S. Moorad Sports Law Journal (1994 - )

No abstract provided.

Marketing, Advertising Ethics And Consumer Criminal Law, Mohamed Jaouhar

Revue Marocaine de Droit, d'Economie et de Gestion (Moroccan Journal of Law, Economics and Management)

This paper examines advertising as a central marketing tool and evaluates ethical and criminal-law constraints intended to protect consumers. It discusses misleading and aggressive advertising practices and the role of criminal enforcement in promoting fair market communication.

Adversarial Comparativism: The Role Of Emotion In United States–China Comparative Law Projects, Matthew S. Erie

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

Contemporary comparative law operates across a landscape riven by protectionism, nationalism, and securitization, all of which complicate comparative law projects. Nowhere is this more evident than in the U.S-China relationship, the most important bilateral relationship in the world. Despite economic “delinking,” the U.S. and Chinese legal systems are interacting more than ever; however, how this interaction works is poorly understood. This Article proposes “adversarial comparativism” to explain this dynamic. It is an approach to comparative law and politics that includes different modalities: competition, aggressiveness, transactionalism, misunderstanding, opportunism, and gaslighting. Many of these are underpinned by emotion. As such, while this …

Roads To Regulation: A Discussion On Non-State Armed Groups' International Health Law Obligations, Eric Fogle

Journal of Law and Health

Non-state actors can look and operate like governments, yet without formal statehood, they exist in a regulatory gray area. Non state actors play an increasingly influential role in international law, yet they remain largely unregulated. This paper examines non-state actors as a class, with particular attention to non-State armed groups (NSAGs), and analyzes the regulatory gap they occupy specifically within international health law. The paper first surveys the rise, diversity, authority, and legitimacy of non-state actors in relation to States, highlighting their growing involvement in governance functions traditionally reserved for States. This paper then introduces the World Health Organization (WHO) …

Cultivating The Creative Ecosystem Amid The Disruption Of Ai, Sarah Oconnell

Tradition Innovations in Arts, Design, and Media Higher Education

Can humanity’s creativity, our artistic intelligence, thrive in symbiosis with the disruptive forces of technology’s Artificial Intelligence in work, media and education? “Who is responsible?” may be the more important question as we face a future infused with AI. Impacted individuals and industries cannot wait for ambiguous political powers to determine AI regulatory policy. They must develop strategies for critique and discernment in real time to prevent the technology’s disruption in society from devolving into oppressive dysfunction.

Who is responsible for cultivating the balance that sustains humanity? Scholars and practitioners with artistic intelligence are adaptive catalysts for collaborative problem solving …

Fda's New Approval Plan For Covid-19 Vaccines: An Inquiry Of "Benefit" Rather Than The Statutory Scope Of "Safety, Purity, And Potency"?, Henry Yat-Shing Kwan

Journal of Law and Health

This article analyzes the FDA's proposed policy plan issued in May 2025 regarding the approval of Covid-19 boosters for different groups of persons. It offers two constructive recommendations that will help prevent constitutionality challenge on impermissible intrusion of the freedom of health.

The first is to avoid using the confusing term "benefit" but instead focus on the statutory parameters of "safety, purity, and potency." The affected group can make a strong case that their free choice of vaccination should not be deprived, as long as the vaccine qualifies for the statutory thresholds of being safe, pure, and potent. They are …

Ai-Enabled Decision-Support Systems In The Joint Targeting Cycle: Legal Challenges, Risks, And The Human(E) Dimension, Jessica Dorsey, Marta Bo

International Law Studies

Israel’s military campaign in Gaza as well as ongoing conflicts in Ukraine, Yemen, Iraq, and Syria include the reported military use of AI-enabled decision-support systems (AI-DSS) within the joint targeting cycle (JTC). These tools use AI techniques to collect and analyze data, provide information about the operational environment, and make actionable recommendations with the aim of aiding military decision-makers in evaluating factors relevant to legal compliance, such as taking precautions and ensuring proportionality in attacks. These systems are often touted as being simply a human aid and, as such, have flown largely under the radar regarding regulation as they are …

Algorithmic Editors: Section 230, Big Tech, And The Need For Clarity, Richard Gruters

Seton Hall Law Review

No abstract provided.

Light On The Scale, Heavy On The Problems: How Telehealth’S Accessible Weight Loss Solution Has Compounded Its Risks, Wendy Xia

Seton Hall Law Review

No abstract provided.

Cultural Superimposition In Humanitarian Protection, Jocelyn B. Cazares Willingham

Seton Hall Law Review

No abstract provided.

Over The Line: Assessing The State Of Ballot-Based Associational Rights In A Post-Kim New Jersey, Josh Kutner

Seton Hall Law Review

No abstract provided.

Unlocking The Benefits Of Transparent And Reusable Science For Climate Risk Management, Adam B. Pollack, Lisa Auermuller, Casey D. Burleyson, Jentry Campbell, Madison Condon, Courtney Cooper, Matteo Coronese, Sönke Dangendorf, James Doss-Gollin, Prabhat Hegde, Casey Helgeson, Robert E. Kopp, Jan Kwakkel, Corey Lesk, Justin Mankin, Robert E. Nicholas, Jennie Rice, Samantha Roth, Vivek Srikrishnan, Moira Scheeler, Nancy Tuana, Chris Vernon, Mengqi Zhao, Klaus Keller

Faculty Scholarship

People around the world seek climate risk information to guide their decisions. For instance, projections about future flood risk inform where households choose to live, how lenders manage credit risks, and which communities receive federal funding. Yet data limitations and fundamental validation challenges raise important concerns about the reliability of such projections. The principles of transparency and reusability help address these concerns by enabling scrutiny of assumptions and methods, development of foundational data and tools, and consistent application of evaluation standards. While there is ongoing debate about how much transparency commercial climate risk services should provide, many expect noncommercial actors …

Workers’ Compensation Codes In American Indian* Tribal Nations, Autumn N. Siegel

American Indian Law Journal

This Article examines various Tribal Nations’ experiences in developing their own workers’ compensation systems using a comparative law and legal development approach, including direct interviews with a diverse range of tribal members. Tribal Nations’ self-created workers’ compensation codes predominantly rely on local models and expertise to establish and operate their systems. However, Tribal Nations also infuse their own cultural values into their codes, incorporating tribal perspectives and priorities such as valuing traditional medicine and peace-making alternative dispute resolution, providing more generously to volunteers, and incorporating return-to-work programs into their workers’ compensation systems. Some Tribal Nations also find it necessary to …

The Tribal Rules Of Evidence, Nicole Morote

American Indian Law Journal

Rules of evidence shape litigation practice across the country. In this sense, they govern the truth as it enters the court. Legal scholarship has yet to study tribal approaches to evidence— an area with tremendous promise for legal practitioners and evidence rulemakers alike.

This Article is the first to do so. It analyzes an array of tribal evidence codes across the United States. It reveals three frameworks that describe tribes’ approaches to the Federal Rules. In doing so, it offers a modest contribution to the nascent intersection between Tribal law and evidence studies: crucial insight into tribal systems’ unique needs, …

Advancing The Rights Of Nature: Lessons From Sauk-Suiattle V. City Of Seattle, Harry S. Katz

American Indian Law Journal

Advocates for the “rights of nature” seek recognition of legal rights for natural elements such as mountains, rivers, and non-human species as a means of protecting the environment. In the United States, Tribal Nations have been at the forefront of this nascent movement. In a 2022 Washington state case, the Sauk-Suiattle Indian Tribe sued the City of Seattle, alleging that the City’s hydroelectric dams on the Skagit River infringe upon the rights of salmon. Those rights, they claim, include the salmon’s rights to exist, flourish, regenerate, and evolve. The case, known as Sauk-Suiattle Indian Tribe v. City of Seattle, …