Digital Commons Network^™

Pretrial Publicity In A Modern World: Exploration Of Defense Attorney Experiences And Perspectives, Giray Uzen

Honors Undergraduate Theses

This research examined how pretrial publicity, like statements made by law enforcement and prosecutors, affects criminal defense strategy. Using a qualitative, phenomenological design, interviews were held with practicing defense attorneys to understand how they deal with media coverage, protect their clients’ rights, and adjust their strategy when a case starts getting attention. The project identifies common themes, including attorney concerns about biased jurors, distorted narratives, and pressure created by public commentary. Findings work towards reforming policy discussions to respect free speech while protecting the constitutional right to an impartial jury in our modern media environment.

The Impact Of Social Media Movements On Policy Changes Made In The United States, Michelle Levy Korine

Honors Undergraduate Theses

This study focuses on researching the relationship between social media movements and policy changes in the United States. Over the last decade, digital platforms such as TikTok, Instagram and X have become important tools to encourage political involvement. These platforms have led to an increase in public participation, movements to become more popular and to organize protests. Many current studies focus on the social and cultural aspects of online activism, but fewer examine wither these movements lead to the legislative change asked for.

This thesis relies on the question, "To what extent does social media activism contribute to policy change …

Two Heads Are Better Than One: Integrating International Law And Global Public Health Approaches To Firearm Violence To Promote Public Safety And Human Rights, Arturo J. Carrillo, Jonathan Lowy

Emory International Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Impact Of Digital Surveillance On Workers In Conflict Zones: A Case Study Of Kashmir, Sana Paul

Emory International Law Review

No abstract provided.

From Crime To Constitutional Crisis: The Legality Of El Salvador’S State Of Exception, Alex Jacobs

Emory International Law Review

No abstract provided.

Summoning Firms: Promoting Democratic Stability And Economic Prosperity In Times Of Constitutional Crisis, Jon D. Michaels

Emory Business Law Review

No abstract provided.

Useful Noise: Understanding Dicta And Knowing What To Do With It, Len Niehoff, Tucker Gribble

Articles

Sometimes we approach the idea of obiter dictum as if it were Latin for “Here the court says something I wish it didn’t.” When a judicial opinion includes a statement that hurts our case, we labor to cast it as dicta and we give it the first name “mere.” If the opposing party quotes the statement, we huff about its irrelevance and dismissively proclaim that it can, indeed must, be ignored. We treat dicta as background noise, and we encourage the court to plug its ears and hum.

The Surveillance Of System-Adjacent Individuals, Mariam A. Hinds

Faculty Scholarship

Although the Fourth Amendment protects against “unreasonable searches and seizures,” this right is not enjoyed by all people equally. Supreme Court jurisprudence has curtailed the Fourth Amendment privacy rights of individuals under probation or parole supervision. In this line of cases, the Court concluded that the government’s interest in monitoring supervisees, reducing recidivism, and promoting public safety outweighed their reasonable expectation of privacy.

However, surveillance mechanisms like probation and parole extend the criminal legal system’s carceral gaze beyond the supervisees and peer into the bedrooms and digital lives of their families, roommates, and communities, or who this Article calls system-adjacent …

Untangling Ai Openness, Parth Nobel, Alan Z. Rozenshtein, Chinmayi Sharma

Faculty Scholarship

The debate over AI openness—whether to make components of an artificial intelligence system available for public inspection and modification—forces policymakers to balance innovation, democratized access, safety and national security. By inviting startups and researchers into the fold, it enables independent oversight and inclusive collaboration. But technology giants can also use it to entrench their own power, while adversaries can use it to shortcut years and billions of dollars in building systems, like China’s Deepseek-R1, that rival our own. How we govern AI openness today will shape the future of AI and America’s role in it.   Policymakers and scholars grasp the …

Room To Breathe: The Surprising Capaciousness Of Osh Act Preemption, Michael C. Duff

All Faculty Scholarship

This essay is part of a Saint Louis University Law Journal seminar, conducted by the Wefel Center for Employment Law, titled "Shifting Workplace Law in an Era of Federal Vacuums: Business as Usual or Polycrisis?" The symposium presumed that the federal government would be scaling back workforce regulatory enforcement dramatically in the shadow of DOGE and several other developments. The essay focuses on OSHA and more narrowly questions the extent to which the OSH Act preempts state and local efforts to regulate workplace safety and health. The essay shows that unless OSHA promulgates a full-blown “standard” – a tedious form …

Disaster Risk Management During Climate Emergencies In The Dominican Republic And Puerto Rico, Rosleny Ubinas

Dissertations and Theses

This paper analyzes the DRM approach as an effective framework in addressing climate emergencies across the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico. These two Caribbean regions, with high hurricane exposure and differing response structures, are deeply shaped by their governments and affiliated international organizations. Disaster Risk Management is the systematic process of using laws, plans, institutions, and community networks to reduce vulnerability to hazards and coordinate effective response when disasters occur. It covers the full cycle, from prevention to reconstruction and rebuilding more resiliently. The Dominican Republic’s law-based intervention led to greater local-level community participation during disasters with its embedded volunteer …

Risk And Releasability: Rethinking “Suitable” Support Networks For Former Foster Youth In Ontario Bail Courts, Marsha Rampersaud

Journal of Law and Social Policy

Contemporary societal trends indicate many young adults rely on their families for financial and other support for longer than in the past, often well into their 20s. Youth leaving the child welfare system, however, do not have similar supports to rely on when they reach the age of majority (eighteen in Ontario). In bail court, the experiences of those who have familial support differ markedly from those who do not. Qualitative interviews with youth, lawyers, and social workers illuminate the experiences of young adults (ages eighteen to twenty-four) who have exited the child welfare system and come into conflict with …

Escaping The Labyrinth: Cutting Through The Maze Of Federal Sector Employment Laws To Streamline Appeals, Allow Faster And More Consistent Decisions, And Level The Playing Field Between Agencies And Employees, Christopher Ligatti

Chapman Law Review

Federal employees and their job protections have gained increased media attention due to the current presidential administration. Criticism has long been aimed primarily at the property interest and accompanying due process protections that federal employees have in their employment. However, this Article argues that while the federal sector employment law system is badly in need of reform, the issue is not the constitutionally required due process protections afforded to employees, but rather the additional statutory and regulatory protections Congress has granted employees. Currently, federal employees have multiple overlapping forums in which they can bring employment actions, may cross-appeal negative decisions …

Death By Discretion: Executive Power And The Arbitrary Machinery Of Federal Capital Punishment, Reem Haikal

Chapman Law Review

This Article argues that the federal death penalty is not merely at risk of being cruel; it is increasingly at risk of becoming arbitrary and lawless. Despite the procedural safeguards embedded in the Federal Death Penalty Act (FDPA), executive practices have reintroduced many of the same constitutional flaws that the Supreme Court identified in Furman v. Georgia. Through detailed analysis of the FDPA’s structure, this Article shows that the statute fails to meaningfully constrain the Attorney General’s charging discretion, allowing life-and-death decisions to hinge on opaque and often politicized processes. The Trump administration’s revival of federal executions, culminating in sweeping …

Remarks From Professor Robert C. Blitt, Robert C. Blitt

Emory International Law Review

No abstract provided.

Trolling The Rule Of Law: Presidential Lawfare, The Stalingrad Defense, And The Lawyers, David Luban

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This paper, part of a symposium on presidential lawfare, examines the so-called “Stalingrad Defense”—a strategy of total procedural obstruction—within the broader phenomenon of rule-of-law backsliding facilitated by legal professionals. By exhausting judicial resources and weaponizing procedural delays on behalf of political leaders, such lawyers do not merely defend a client; they actively participate in subverting the institutional foundations of democracy. I argue that the standard conception of legal ethics, which emphasizes neutral partisanship and zealous advocacy, is fundamentally inadequate to capture the wrongfulness of lawyers who use legal tools to dismantle the legal system itself. In its place, I propose …

Adversarial Certification Of Evidentiary Software, Nicholas G. Vincent, Bryan H. Choi, Eli Siems, Clay Halbert, Katherine J. Strandburg

Publications

No abstract provided.

Firearms And Fora: Constructing Public Carry Doctrine, Timothy Zick

Faculty Publications

Where can a person lawfully carry firearms in public? Under what conditions can they do so? Now that the Supreme Court has formally recognized a Second Amendment right to public carry, these are among the most important unresolved questions regarding the right to bear arms. The Second Amendment’s public carry doctrine is in its infancy. How the doctrine develops will have a profound impact on the exercise of Second Amendment rights in public places and on the public square. Integrating a new constitutional right into the public square is not a novel problem. After the Supreme Court recognized First Amendment …

The Police Archipelago: Decentralization, Police Violence, Over-Punishment, And Crime, José F. Girón

Faculty Publications

A strong consensus has taken hold in the legal academy. Criminal Justice Localism, espoused by scholars of every stripe, promotes greater local control of every facet of the criminal justice system. But Criminal Justice Localism largely overlooks an institution that plays a critical role in the criminal justice system, and which has been the subject of intense public criticism: the police. That oversight is remarkable for two reasons. First, calls for increased local control of the police seem to ignore that America operates one of the most—if not the most—decentralized policing models in the world, with its thousands of local, …

Tulsa V. O’Brien: A City Adds To The Battle Over Jurisdiction In Indian Country, Fatima D. Jaime

American Indian Law Review

No abstract provided.

Promoting Firearm Industry Accountability For Civil And Human Rights Abuses In The United States Through Strategic Transnational Litigation, Arturo J. Carrillo, Jonathan E. Lowy, Emily Fallin

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

The United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs) have made substantial in-roads across a range of industries, but the firearm industry is not one of them. The United States is the largest producer of firearms for civilian acquisition in the world, yet U.S. firearm manufacturers, sellers, and distributors remain generally impervious to regulation. Moreover, federal and state legislation provides unique legal protections for firearm industry actors, rendering them largely shielded from accountability for contributing to gun deaths and injuries. This creates a paradox that fuels the endemic gun violence crisis in the United States and throughout the …

Artificial Intelligence, Judicial Evolution, And Insurance, Renee Henson

Faculty Publications

AI-driven platforms have the potential to inflict traditional injuries in new ways. Proprietary algorithms trained on large volumes of personal data can cause mental, emotional, and sometimes physical injuries via conversational exchanges, harmful content recommendations, and the promotion of extremist content. This "algorithmic liability" fundamentally challenges existing legal doctrines and statutory protections, thereby exposing deficiencies in current insurance coverage frameworks. 

Historically, courts dismissed algorithmic liability claims early in litigation, invoking Section 230 immunity and First Amendment protections, and resisted classifying algorithmic tools as "products" for the purposes of products liability law. Recent jurisprudence, however, signals a critical turning point. On …

Home Rule, Dillon’S Rule, And The Legal Shape Of Local Governance, Bradon J. Rothschild

National Policy Consensus Center Publications

Public policy in common law democracies such as the United States is dictated by many factors, which you might call streams or strands. While on the one hand the vox populi may insist on a certain action, governing coalitions of political leaders may deign another direction, or policy researchers may conclude a third option is better yet. All such options, however, are constrained by the legal parameters of governance as defined by constitutional, statutory, and case (jurisprudence, or stare decisis) law. Where these streams meet, public policy actions which are popularly supported, politically advantageous, technically effective, and (importantly) legal may …

Protecting The Due Process Rights Of South Dakota Treatment Court Participants Facing Termination, Ryleigh Christopherson

South Dakota Law Review

Treatment courts in South Dakota are designed to reduce recidivism by treating the root cause of criminal behavior. The data shows that, of the almost three thousand participants who have applied and been selected to take part in a South Dakota treatment court, over a thousand participants have successfully graduated from these post-plea diversion programs. A slight majority of participants, however, did not complete the program and either left voluntarily or were terminated from treatment court. The apparent success of treatment courts can overshadow due process concerns which arise when a participant faces termination. While the Supreme Court of the …

Criminal Incidence In Indian Country: Evidence From The Fbi Uniform Crime Reporting Program, K. Aleks Schaeffer, Brian E. Whitacre

South Dakota Law Review

This article examines patterns of criminal incidence in Indian Country using longitudinal, county-level data from the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting (“UCR”) Program.  Public discourse and policy debates frequently assume that areas containing tribal lands experience systematically higher levels of crime—particularly violent crime—yet these assumptions are often based on anecdotes, selective statistics, or aggregated victimization reports rather than comprehensive comparative evidence.  Against this backdrop, this article asks a straightforward but underexplored question: how do reported crime rates in counties that include tribal lands compare to those in counties without tribal lands, once socioeconomic and demographic differences are accounted for?

Using data …

Howell Thomas Heflin Collection, University Of Alabama School Of Law

Manuscript Collections

The Howell Thomas Heflin Collection documents Heflin's years as legal reformer and Alabama State Supreme Court Chief Justice, as well as his tenure as United States Senator through press clippings, scrapbooks, speech files, audiotapes, videotapes, press releases and statements, newsletters and various printed materials, photographs, negatives, campaign materials, and memorabilia.

Alabama Criminal Code Development Collection, University Of Alabama School Of Law

Manuscript Collections

The Alabama Criminal Code Development Collection contains copies of the Criminal Code of Alabama, original drafts and edits, and email correspondence and meeting notes regarding creation.

What Constitution? The Dual State Theory In Immigration Law & Practice, Elizabeth Keyes

All Faculty Scholarship

Immigration law in the second Trump Administration has created profound disorientation and dissonance, where some legal matters proceed in largely familiar ways, and others seem to occur in an entirely new dimension. This Article avails itself of Ernst Fraenkel’s Dual State theory to examine this dissonance. It argues that a duality exists in U.S. immigration law today between the federal courts and the administrative immigration system. In Fraenkel’s terms, constitutional challenges to immigration policies and individual habeas cases demonstrate important features of the Normative State, one that is consistent with the Rule of Law. By contrast, the administrative system—comprising the …

The Unconstitutional Attempt To Criminalize Naming Ice Agents, Noah C. Chauvin

Faculty Articles

Some members of Congress propose to make it a crime to publish the name of a federal official with the intent of obstructing that official’s law or immigration enforcement duties. This Essay considers whether the lawmakers’ bill, the Protecting Law Enforcement from Doxxing Act, is consistent with the First Amendment. It is not.

Not Quite Fit To Fly: A Reflection On Due Process And Agency Rulemaking In The Faa’S Approach To Pilot Certification, Emily Ryter

Journal of Air Law and Commerce

Judicial and legislative involvement in agency rulemaking is a relevant and particularly salient topic. The authority of an agency to make sound policy with flexibility and discretion often comes into conflict with the judiciary’s duty to prevent arbitrary regulations, which lack solid evidence or convincing rationale. Considering that more than three million passengers fly every day, it is no surprise that establishing a robust certification process for pilots is among the Federal Aviation Administration’s top priorities. The courts and the Legislature have also recently made notable strides to exert more control over the standards for medical certification. In July, the …