Digital Commons Network^™

Sharenting And Child Rights In The Age Of Platform Capitalism, Christiana Essie Sagay, Unyime Abasi Odong

Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law

The boundaries between private life, work, and visibility have become increasingly blurred in the digital age. Nowhere is this more evident than in the phenomenon of sharenting, a portmanteau of “sharing” and “parenting,” where parents routinely post images, videos, and personal narratives of their children on social media platforms. While often framed as acts of familial affection or digital memory-keeping, sharenting implicates commercial content creation and positions children as de facto participants in global digital labor markets. In this context, childhood increasingly unfolds within algorithmic and economic contexts that transcend domestic boundaries and challenge conventional legal norms, protections, and understandings …

The Unspeakable Unspoken: Terrorist Imagery, Symbolic Expression And The Shifting Boundaries Of Free Speech, Ayşe Yağmur Tunçak

Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law

A simple fruit like a watermelon can convey many meanings: solidarity for some, terrorism sympathies for others. Among other things, increasing restrictions on speech drive individuals to the use of symbols for political expression, which may lead to legal controversies at the international level due to the untended complexity of symbolic speech in legal discussions. Unlike verbal communication, the meaning and communicative content of symbols are often indirect and open to interpretation. Thus, international human rights standards should rely on context-sensitive evaluations to prevent arbitrary limitations. Although the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), due to its subsidiary role, assumes …

State Complicity And The Threshold Of Knowledge: From Fragmentary Evidence To Evidentiary Saturation, Christina Bradic

Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law

The International Court of Justice’s (ICJ) 2007 judgment in Bosnia v. Serbia turned on evidentiary gaps. Although the ICJ recognized that genocide had been committed at Srebrenica, it declined to hold Serbia complicit, reasoning that the record did not prove awareness of genocidal purpose. Intelligence was piecemeal, contemporaneous witnesses were scarce, and the ICJ refused to infer knowledge absent direct proof.

Two decades later, the evidentiary environment looks radically different. In October 2024, ninety-nine American healthcare professionals who had volunteered in Gaza sent an open letter to the White House reporting that children with gunshot wounds to the head or …

Racial Disparities In Maternal Mortality: The Role Of Explicit And Implicit Bias In U.S. Healthcare, Lailah Allen

Capstone Showcase

Maternal mortality in the United States remains a critical public health crisis, with disproportionately high rates among Black and other minority women. Despite advances in obstetric medicine, racial disparities in pregnancy-related deaths persist due to structural inequities, implicit bias in healthcare delivery, unequal access to prenatal and postpartum care, and broader social determinants of health. Nationally, Black women are significantly more likely to experience severe maternal morbidity and mortality compared to White women, reflecting longstanding inequities embedded within the healthcare system. This paper examines the relationship between race, healthcare access, and maternal outcomes through a focused case study of and …

Legal Stories Without Villains, Alison Peck

Law Faculty Scholarship

Lawyers have always been storytellers, and cognitive science is increasingly demonstrating that human beings are wired to learn through story. But legal stories may have a dark side if, as theorists have recently suggested, stories motivate pro-social action by reinforcing in-group identification and out-group hatred. In an increasingly divided polity, are we doomed to stories that drive us toward social disintegration? A solution to the legal storyteller’s dilemma may be found in an ancient source: Aristotle’s Poetics. By crafting legal stories that track the elements of the Tragedy as described by Aristotle and adapted by modern storytellers from Broadway …

The Zaporizhzhia Gambit: Great Power Conflict, Nuclear Hostage-Taking, And The P5'S Accountability Crisis, Arete Tsoukalas

Loyola University Chicago International Law Review

In a troubling precedent for modern warfare, Russian forces seized Europe’s largest nuclear facility, converting the delicate infrastructure of the Zaporizhzhia plant into a fortified military garrison rigged with explosives. Inside, Ukrainian engineers were reportedly held hostage, forced to operate the controls at gunpoint while enduring torture and the psychological terror of impending meltdown.¹ This is known as the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (“ZNPP”) Crisis.²

Within the reactor itself, the processes of producing nuclear energy cannot be abandoned, and constant custodianship is paramount.³ The intricacies and vulnerabilities of the fission process must be safeguarded, even during a …

Food Stamp Participation And Health Outcomes In Ca Immigrants, Esther Kang

Scripps Senior Theses

The U.S. social welfare system includes programs aiming to increase access to nutritious food to reduce nutrition insecurity. However, studies suggest that immigrants continue to face disproportionate risks of nutrition insecurity and may face barriers to enrollment due to legal status. This study, using secondary data from the 2023 California Health Interview Survey, examines the associations between food stamp participation, food insecurity, and clinical diagnosis of diabetes among adult U.S.-born, naturalized, and non-citizen adults in California. The findings suggest that those enrolled in food stamps are more likely to report food insecurity than those who are not enrolled, and that …

The Intertemporal Law Doctrine’S Application To The Acquisition Of Colonies In The Americas, Kent Mcneil

All Papers

The intertemporal doctrine provides that international disputes have to be resolved in accordance with the international law that existed at the time the events giving rise to the dispute took place, not at the time the matter is adjudicated.1 It is thought to be impermissible to apply current standards to events that occurred in the past when different legal principles and rules were the norm. This doctrine applies as much to acquisition of colonies as to other international issues.2 So in order to determine whether a European nation acquired sovereignty over an overseas territory, it is necessary to determine and …

Neurobiological Determinants Of Psychopathy And Their Ethical Implications In Capital Punishment Cases, Brooklyn Lewis

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

This literature review examines the relationship between the neurobiological determinants of psychopathy and the ethical implications of applying capital punishment to violent offenders. Drawing on research from neuroscience, psychology, and criminal justice, the paper explores how structural and functional differences in brain regions associated with emotional processing, impulse control, and moral reasoning are linked to psychopathic traits. The review synthesizes findings on how these neurobiological factors may contribute to an increased risk of violent behavior while emphasizing that such influences are not deterministic. The paper further analyzes how neuroscientific evidence is interpreted within legal contexts, particularly in relation to assessments …

The Right To Seek Joy, Tyler Rose Clemons

Faculty Publications

Within the past three years, roughly half of American states have restricted access to gender-affirming medical treatment for children. In this article, I argue that these bans violate transgender children’s right to liberty guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause. I do so by excavating the Framers’ understanding of liberty as the right to seek joy. Rooted in the philosophies of John Locke and Epicurus, the Framers understood liberty as the right to make important life decisions according to one’s subjective preferences without undue interference from the government. Based on this understanding, I develop a new framework for substantive …

Abuse Of Contract: A Proposal For A New Cause Of Action, Miriam A. Cherry

Faculty Publications

With the growth of online commerce and the platform economy, many companies are including provisions in their online terms and conditions that extend far beyond what reasonable consumers would expect. Some terms and conditions purport to bind customers to separate contracts in future transactions that have little to do with the first contract. Other boilerplate purports to cover family members of the customer who created an account. Some retailers have argued that people shopping in their brick-and-mortar stores are subject to terms and conditions because those shoppers had at some point previously created an online account. For example, Disney argued …

The Bigotry Of The Future: Ai Recruitment Tools & Hiring Discrimination Law, Lily Manshel

City University of New York Law Review

As one-click applications and a competitive job market result in hundreds of applicants per listing, hiring tools that use Artificial Intelligence (“AI”) promise recruiters a convenient way to sort through the crowd and find the “perfect” candidate, all while eliminating human bias. These tools—which include resume screeners, gamified assessments and personality tests, and video interviewing software—are proliferating so rapidly that their ubiquity is positioned as inevitable by both the software companies that produce them and the employers who use them. However, the use of these automated decision-making tools creates a paradox under existing antidiscrimination law: the systems clearly perpetuate and …

Asset Forfeiture As An Animal Welfare Law: A Case Study On South Carolina's Bond-Or-Forfeit Statute, Morgan Mercer

Animal Law Review

This Comment examines South Carolina’s 2024 bond-or-forfeit statute (H.B. 3682) as a case study in the growing trend of extending existing legal frameworks to promote animal welfare. Traditionally, asset forfeiture treats animals purely as property subject to seizure. However, by shifting the costs of caring for seized animals from public agencies to the animals’ owners, H.B. 3682 embeds a concern for animal well-being into a framework historically focused on economic and property interests. This Comment argues that bond-or-forfeit statutes are part of a broader trend toward recognizing animals as sentient beings with welfare interests distinct from their owners’ property rights. …

Accounting For Spatial Effects And Social Norms In Making Algorithmic Law: Insights From And Applications In Urban Mobility, Jingkang Gao

Journal of Law and Mobility

This Article examines a prominent idea in the law and technology literature: that algorithms and big data can be used to make law dynamic and personalized. As currently envisioned by legal scholars, “algorithmic law” entails laws that adjust in real time to changing conditions and vary across individuals, improving welfare by tailoring legal rules and standards to personal characteristics.

This Article argues that this vision of algorithmic law is incomplete—and often counterproductive. Existing proposals treat personalization as a function of individual attributes alone, overlooking the fact that effects of individual behavior are fundamentally interactive. Individual behavior is shaped by spatial …

Contrasting Visions Of Age: Manifestations Of Ageism In Law, Art, And Health Care, Janet L. Dolgin

Health Matrix: The Journal of Law-Medicine

Ageism has befuddled the law’s attempts at remediation. Each “ism” (e.g., sexism, racism) differs from the others. Ageism, however, differs fundamentally from other “isms.” That difference explains the law’s failure to limit it. This article describes the difference, and it explains why that difference has rendered ageism resistant to legal remedies. Legal scholars and gerontologists have asked why the law’s efforts to limit the bias, stigma and discrimination that stem from ageism have largely failed. A remarkable framework for responding to that query derive from literary and artistic depictions of old people over time.

This article has identified shifting visions …

A Terrorist In Death Only: How The Death Penalty Fills The Gap In Federal Terrorism Law, Caroline Alden Mcbride

Law Student Publications

In the absence of a federal statute criminalizing domestic terrorism, the United States turned to an unlikely proxy: the death penalty. This Comment argues that capital punishment is used to define domestic terrorism, particularly when statutory tools cannot capture white supremacist attacks. Although former President Biden commuted most federal death sentences to life imprisonment without parole, three individuals whose attacks met the legal definition of domestic terrorism were excluded from clemency. Examining several cases from Timothy McVeigh to Luigi Mangione reveals a trend of defendants whose crimes meet the legal definition of domestic terrorism receiving the death penalty, even when …

Richmond Electronic Monitoring: The City Sees You While You're Sleeping, Fakira D. Johnson

Law Student Publications

The United States has increasingly recognized its reputation as a prison state, with widespread acknowledgment of its high incarceration rates. As of 2021, the United States imprisoned one out of every five prisoners in the world. Additionally, of its own population, the United States imprisoned one out of every one hundred people.

In response to this notoriety, worsening prison overcrowding, and the heightened risks posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, all fifty states, the District of Columbia, and the federal government increased their utilization of alternative measures to traditional incarceration. As both an addition and an alternative to traditional incarceration, criminal …

Insuring Algorithmic Liability: A Response To Artificial Intelligence, Judicial Evolution, And Insurance, Daniel Schwarcz

Articles

No abstract provided.

The Civil Justice Business, J. Maria Glover

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Our civil justice system rests on certain foundational commitments: to make rights real for those the law protects, regardless of their station; to hold wrongdoers accountable, no matter their power; and to deter misconduct in a landscape that depends, above all, on private enforcement for the regulation of wrongdoing. We put great faith in these values.

Civil justice, for all its lofty goals, is also a business. Attorneys and liability insurers have long had their own economic stakes in litigation, under their own professional and regulatory norms. But now, a new litigation finance industry has arisen: outside investors provide equity …

The Obverse-Turing Test: Rethinking Authorship, Trust, And Time In An Accelerated Age, Michael J. Miller, Chatgpt (Ai~Nesbo+)

Psychology

In this paper, we propose a new test for scientific accountability in the era of artificial intelligence: the Obverse Turing Test for Authorship. While the traditional Turing test focuses on a machine's ability to mimic human intelligence, our test addresses the question: when should a scientific contribution involving artificial intelligence be attributed joint authorship? We argue that more and more authors are using AI in the idea generation and elaboration stages of their work, but rarely acknowledge this use explicitly. To examine this gap, we analyze examples of human–AI interactions across fields and propose a new approach to authorship based …

Women’S Exposure To Incel Content, Perceived Safety, And Gender-Based Violence Risk In The United States, Deja Bledsoe

Criminology & Criminal Justice Theses

The rapid proliferation of incel-related content across digital platforms has raised concerns about online misogyny and its potential impact on women’s perceived safety. However, less is known about how exposure to such content shapes women’s perceptions of risk and emotional responses in everyday digital environments. This study examines the relationship between exposure to incel-related content and women’s perceived risk of gender-based violence and safety-related anxiety. Guided by strain theory, social control theory, hegemonic masculinity, and intersectionality, the study employs an anonymous cross-sectional online survey of women aged 18 and older. Quantitative analyses were conducted to assess whether exposure to incel-related …

Author Biographies

Roger Williams University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Breaking Patterns Of Abuse: How Amending The Federal Rules Of Evidence Would Strengthen Domestic Violence Prosecutions, Isabelle Ryan

Roger Williams University Law Review

No abstract provided.

When Walking Out Doesn’T Mean Losing Out: Why Rhode Island Should Reform Its Model For Unemployment Insurance In Relation To Striking Workers, Trina Capezza

Roger Williams University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Trial By Character, Hillel J. Bavli

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

In this Article, I argue that courts regularly deviate from Federal Rule of Evidence 404(b), which prohibits character evidence—evidence of a defendant’s past misdeeds offered to prove that the defendant acted in conformity with a certain character trait on the occasion in question. These deviations undermine the fairness of a trial and the presumption of innocence. The Article addresses this problem in three ways. First, it explains how courts have misinterpreted Rule 404(b)—an error that I call the permitted-purpose fallacy—and how they have fortified this misinterpretation with a body of flawed principles and precedent. Second, it reports the results of …

Facilitating Mortgage Modification To Save Homes And Mitigate Lender Losses, Julia Patterson Forrester Rogers

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

Homeowners in financial distress or whose homes have been damaged by natural disaster may avoid foreclosure if their lender agrees to modify the loan to reduce payments. Commercial loans may also be modified to avoid foreclosure or in response to changed circumstances or changing market conditions. Although loan modifications are generally beneficial to both borrowers and lenders, barriers to modification exist. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) has addressed some of the roadblocks to residential loan modifications by regulating the procedures that mortgage servicers must follow in dealing with delinquent borrowers, but the CFPB and its regulations are at risk …

Let’S Modify Safety Valve To Value Family Ties, Laura Ginsberg Abelson

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

Federal sentencing law has long struggled to balance the breadth of drug conspiracy liability with the prin­ciple of proportional punishment. The statutory “safety valve” provision, codified at 18 U.S.C. § 3553(f) and mirrored in the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines, was designed to provide relief from mandatory minimum sentences for low- level, nonviolent offenders. Yet its requirement that defendants disclose all information concerning the offense sometimes places family-member codefendants in an untenable position: they may avoid harsh penalties only by incriminating loved ones. The requirement also conflicts with other provisions of the Guide­lines that provide guidelines reductions, but not relief from mandatory …

Front Matter

SMU Science and Technology Law Review

No abstract provided.

State Ai Therapy Regulations – Analyzing The Illinois Wellness And Oversight For Psychological Resources Act, Natalie Browne

SMU Science and Technology Law Review

According to the Harvard Business Review, the top use case for generative artificial intelligence (AI) in 2025 was therapy and companionship. Accordingly, numerous “therapy-specific” AI tools have hit the market in recent years, vying to fill this growing need. However, individuals are also turning to generic large language models (LLMs), such as ChatGPT, to express their deepest anxieties, seek reassurance, and gather advice. While tech optimists assert that AI therapy tools will extend mental health treatment in care deserts, attention-grabbing headlines about such use cases have shattered communities and shocked legislatures. To address growing concerns about AI therapy, Illinois enacted …

2026 Supplement To The Corporations Curriculum - Caremark: The Board's Duty Of Oversight Regarding Work Force Safety And Sexual Misconduct, Sarah Haan

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.