Digital Commons Network^™

A Schönberg Approach To Devillier V. Texas: Synthesizing Text, Structure, And History Of The Takings Clause, Jordan Fortunati

University of the Pacific Law Review

No abstract provided.

Evicted Promises: Grants Pass Leaves Housing First Out In The Cold, Emily Cruz

University of the Pacific Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Nuances Of Prosecutorial Nonenforcement, Meighan R. Parsh, Carissa Byrne Hessick

William & Mary Law Review

The academic literature on prosecutors is divided: Some commentors believe that prosecutors should more aggressively use their ability to decline to bring charges, decreasing the overall number of criminal cases and helping to address the problem of mass incarceration. Others believe that broad prosecutorial nonenforcement poses significant risks to our constitutional order and public safety. While the visibility of this debate has increased—spilling over from the pages of law reviews into political campaigns and headlines—the terms of this debate are at times unclear. Prosecutorial nonenforcement is a multifaceted phenomenon, and discussions about its costs and benefits can obscure necessary tradeoffs …

Reforming Abolition, Daniel Fryer

Michigan Law Review

Abolition is an elusive concept, which allows people with various political views to identify with the idea. This Article unpacks some of the conceptual features that lead to its elusiveness. This imprecision has empowered some to point out the diverse—if not inconsistent—positions that self-identified abolitionists take when articulating the contemporary abolition movement’s demands. The question then becomes whether the movement could protect itself from being a rootless position with insufficient tools to guide change. I suggest that it can. Rather than getting caught up in debates about abolition’s ends, I propose that more attention be paid to abolition’s grounds. By …

Anti-Holistic Algorithms, Itay Ravid

Faculty Publications

This Article presents a critical tension in modern criminal justice between holistic criminal-justice aspirations and algorithmic governance: whether the holistic rehabilitation and reintegration project can survive technological determinism. As criminal legal systems embrace algorithmic risk- assessment tools as solutions to address recidivism, this Article reveals a profound epistemological concern: the fundamental incompatibility between viewing offenders as “whole persons” capable of transformation and reducing them to statistical probabilities within computational matrices. By doing so, it demonstrates how algorithmic mediation fundamentally alters—and potentially destroys—the holistic message itself.

In establishing this argument, the Article advances in two stages. It first identifies the development …

The Reasonable Officer And The Disabled Subject, Jamelia N. Morgan

Vanderbilt Law Review

Police violence against disabled people is a  fundamental problem of policing. Whether through so called wellness checks, quality of life policing, or coercive state civil commitment procedures, disabled people are often on the receiving end of intrusion, violence, and rights violations by law enforcement. Yet, so, too, is everyone else. That disabled people are similarly, and yet uniquely, vulnerable to intrusion, violence, and rights violations by law enforcement might seem like just another group to add to the list of groups harmed by policing and police violence. However, the focus on disability does not merely bring to the forefront problems …

Anti-Holistic Algorithms, Itay Ravid

Vanderbilt Law Review

This Article presents a critical tension in modern criminal justice between holistic criminal justice aspirations and algorithmic governance: whether the holistic rehabilitation and reintegration project can survive technological determinism. As criminal legal systems embrace algorithmic risk assessment tools as solutions to address recidivism, this Article reveals a profound epistemological concern: the fundamental incompatibility between viewing offenders as whole persons capable of transformation and reducing them to statistical probabilities within computational matrices. By doing so, it demonstrates how algorithmic mediation fundamentally alters and potentially destroys the holistic message itself.

In establishing this argument, the Article advances in two stages. It first …

Justice Through Proximity: Theoretical Foundations And Practical Applications Of Collaborative Justice, Federica Coppola, Jarrell E. Daniels

Vanderbilt Law Review

This Article introduces a collaborative justice framework as a model for addressing crime and reimagining approaches to policymaking and legal education. The framework emphasizes the prevention and resolution of criminal matters through holistic strategies that confront the structural and social determinants of crime and victimization including poverty, systemic inequality, trauma, unjust policies, and institutional neglect while also promoting broader systemic change. At its core is the active engagement between legal system actors especially decisionmakers such as judges, prosecutors, and policymakers and legal system impacted individuals and communities, fostering a more equitable distribution of decisionmaking power between justice providers and justice …

“Justice Of Our Own”: Defining Success At The Red Hook Community Justice Center, Hadar Dancig-Rosenberg, Peter Dixon

Vanderbilt Law Review

This study examines how success is defined at the Red Hook Community Justice Center in Brooklyn, NYC, through a participatory, community centered lens. Moving beyond standard metrics, it articulates a locally grounded vision of success centered on empowerment, support, systemic accountability, and community trust. Drawing on the Everyday Peace Indicators approach, we convened nine focus groups and two public voting sessions with neighborhood residents, justice professionals, youth, former defendants, and family members. Participants generated and ranked 72 indicators, which we thematically clustered into six key categories reflecting the diverse contexts in which participants perceived the Center's impact: (1) rehabilitation and …

Data As Policy, Janet Freilich, W. Nicholson Price Ii

Faculty Scholarship

A large literature on regulation highlights the many different methods of policy-making: command-and-control rulemaking, informational disclosures, tort liability, taxes, and more. But the literature overlooks a powerful method to achieve policy objectives: data. The state can provide (or suppress) data as a regulatory tool to solve policy problems. For administrations with expansive views of government’s purpose, government-provided data can serve as infrastructure for innovation and push innovation in socially desirable directions; for administrations with deregulatory ambitions, suppressing or choosing not to collect data can reduce regulatory power or serve as a back-door mechanism to subvert statutory or common law rules. …

A Second Chance At The Second Amendment, Blake Creekmur

Kentucky Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Trauma, Coercion, And The Tools Of Trafficking Exploitation: Examining The Consequences For Children And Youth In The Justice System, Sarah Bendtsen Diedhiou, Sarah Roberts, Christine Raino

Kentucky Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Crises Collide: Examining The Intersection Of Sex Trafficking And Opioid Use, Jennifer L. Brinkley

Kentucky Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Cruel And Unusual Camping, Cameron Baskett

Kentucky Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Incorporation By Any Other Name? Comparing Congress' Federalization Of Tribal Court Criminal Procedure With The Supreme Court's Regulation Of State Courts, Jordan Gross

Kentucky Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Overcrowding The System: Rethinking Juvenile Justice In Washington State, Mckenna White

Seattle University Law Review

The recent crisis at Green Hill School highlights the detrimental consequences of severe overcrowding in Washington State’s Juvenile Rehabilitation system—a problem exacerbated by the implementation of the JR to 25 legislation. This Note argues that the juvenile rehabilitation system, which is currently struggling to manage a wide age range of offenders, necessitates a fundamental rethinking of juvenile justice practices. By examining neurological research indicating continued brain development into the mid-twenties, along with the high prevalence of trauma among justice-involved youth, this Note proposes the creation of a dedicated third system of care within the Department of Children, Youth, and Families …

Addressing The Root Of Housing Insecurity: Washington Should Divest From “Crime-Free” Housing Programs, Sarah Cerdena

Seattle University Law Review

Crime-Free Rental Housing Properties (CFRHPs) have proven to be an ineffective and inequitable approach to public safety. Often, tenants in these properties are evicted—at times, extrajudicially—as a result of conduct that does not rise to violations of their lease provisions, much less criminal behavior. By placing extraordinary power in the hands of local law enforcement to carry out these ordinances, CFRHPs predictably pose significant harm to Black and Latinx communities, survivors of domestic violence, disabled tenants, and low-income tenants generally. Recently, the Washington State Supreme Court grappled with the tensions arising between CFRHPs and the enforcement of Washington landlord-tenant law. …

Employment And The Impact Of Nepotism In Human Resources, Arsim Gjinovci, Dren Gjinovci

UBT International Conference

The two interconnected problems of nepotism and corruption damage economic growth and public institutions while breaking down the rule of law. Nepotism manifests when organizations give employment opportunities to family members and personal acquaintances instead of selecting candidates based on their professional qualifications. Nepotism and corruption together create an environment of unfair competition that damages public trust between citizens and investors which threatens democratic governance. The research investigates which elements support nepotism and corruption while studying their effects on organizations and economic performance of the nation. The research investigates how these phenomena directly influence personnel selection and career progression throughout …

Enumerating Environmental Exemptions In Section 501(C)(3), Samuel D. Brunson

Pace Environmental Law Review

Tens of thousands environmental charities operate with the United States. These charities operate to “preserve, protect, and improve the environment.” Roughly half of the revenue of environmental charities is sourced directly from the public. These public donations depend, at least in part, on the organizations’ tax-exempt status, which allows donors to deduct their donations for tax purposes. Because donors take into account the after-tax cost of their donations, an environmental charity’s tax exemption encourages donors to donate more than they would if the charity lacked a tax exemption. However, an environmental organization’s tax-exempt status is tenuous and contingent on agency …

Forfeiture Takings, Police Power, And Necessity Destruction, Shelley Ross Saxer

University of Miami Law Review

Civil forfeiture laws allow law enforcement to seize property when there is probable cause it has been used or possessed in violation of legal rules, often before an owner has a chance to contest the government’s seizure in court. In the criminal context, forfeiture is typically an in personam action that requires a criminal conviction and is part of a defendant’s sentence. In the civil context, however, forfeiture is an in rem proceeding brought against the property derived from or used to commit an offense––not against the person who committed the offense. As such, a civil forfeiture may not require …

Pardon Me Please: Evaluating Clemency For Marijuana Offenders, Mitchell F. Crusto

Washington and Lee Law Review Online

Since 2012, several states and municipalities have decriminalized the non-violent use and possession of small amounts of recreational marijuana by adults. These criminal law reforms raise the issue of whether individuals who were convicted in the past should be exonerated retroactively by way of pardons or clemency. Consequently, many past marijuana offenders remain in state prisons for committing acts that are no longer deemed illegal in many states. Furthermore, these prisoners, as well as persons who were formerly accused or imprisoned, suffer from the stigma and negative collateral consequences of their alleged criminality. In response to these injustices, many governors …

Arbitrary Detention Powers And Section 1 Of The Charter: Two Critical Blind Spots In Luamba, François Tanguay-Renaud

All Papers

In the 2022 case of Luamba c Procureur général du Québec, the Superior Court of Quebec held that a police power to conduct roving random stop of motorists for the purpose of checking for traffic offences infringed ss 9 and 15 of the Canadian Charter in ways that were not saved under s 1. This decision was upheld by the Court of Appeal (“QCCA”) and the Supreme Court (“SCC”) has now granted leave to appeal to the AG Quebec.

In this comment, I seek expose two blind spots in the s 1 analysis carried out by lower courts: (1) …

Libel Via Language Models, Peter Wills

Osgoode Hall Law Journal

This article explains how developers and users of large language models (LMs) may be treated by English and Canadian libel law. LMs could be economically significant, and the liability environment they exist in will affect where they are developed, who accumulates wealth from their development, and who bears the burdens of any negative consequences of their development. Understanding the existing liability environment allows both developers and policy makers to make informed decisions—about which jurisdiction to offer services and what to prioritise, for the former, and about whether the existing law serves desired policy ends, for the latter. LMs also raise …

Rogue Prosecutor Panic, Michael L. Smith

The Scholar: St. Mary's Law Review on Race and Social Justice

Discussions of criminal law, enforcement, and reform are frequently messy and misleading. Anecdotes distract from systematic abuse, and perceptions of crime frequently win out over existing trends. This essay identifies Zack Smith and Charles Stimson’s book, Rogue Prosecutors: How Radical Soros Lawyers are Destroying America’s Communities, as an example of this shoddy discourse. Smith and Stimson’s claim that “Radical Soros Lawyers” are being mobilized to destructive ends crumbles under minimal scrutiny, and I identify several core defects throughout their narrative, including a failure to demonstrate a truly unified scheme of ideology and funding amongst the prosecutors they identify, baseless assumptions …

Fcc V Consumers' Research: The Non-Delegation Doctrine And The Power To Tax, Bernard W. Bell

ConLawNOW

This Essay examines the 2025 Supreme Court case of Federal Communications Commission v. Consumers’ Research which seemingly involved an esoteric question of telecommunications law, but instead provided the Court with an opportunity some Justices have long sought to prune a foundational doctrine of the administrative state—the nondelegation doctrine. The nondelegation doctrine has garnered considerable judicial and academic attention, especially in comparison to the paucity of cases invalidating federal statutes on such grounds. The Court could have abandoned the forgiving “intelligible principle” test applied to congressional delegations for almost one hundred years, or, more cautiously, could have crafted a special rule …

Putting An End To Protective Privilege: Georgia Should Recognize The Psychotherapist’S Duty To Warn, Jan M. Levine

Law Faculty Publications

This article addresses several anomalies and problems with Georgia’s law concerning the duty a psychotherapist2 has towards third parties (i.e., non-patients): the lack of a duty to warn third parties about dangerous patients; flaws in the mental health commitment statute; and inconsistencies in the way the state treats medical confidentiality and evidentiary privilege. Georgia is the only state that has failed to definitively address the psychotherapist’s duty to warn via caselaw or statute; it is time to finally and definitively fix a problem that has existed at least since 1982.

Recruit Those Who Seek To Serve Others, Not Control Them, Annie Bright

Faculty Articles

ICE and law enforcement should recruit for service, not control. We need to take a hard look at law enforcement recruitment, not just at the federal level, but locally. Recruitment should invite those who seek to serve.

Take In Case Of Emergency: Reconciling Necessity Takings With The Original Meaning Of The Takings Clause, Tony Smith

Northwestern University Law Review

Does the Fifth Amendment’s Takings Clause permit the state to destroy property without compensation whenever it declares an emergency? The long-standing doctrine of necessity empowers the state to do exactly that.

Courts dating back to common law England have permitted governments to claim a privilege of necessity to avoid paying for private property they destroy in times of crisis. The privilege rests on the principle that the public good sometimes outweighs the harm the individual suffers. Today’s courts and academics stretch this principle to its limits, arguing necessity should be used as a vehicle for combating all manner of social …

Generative Suspicion And The Risks Of Ai-Assisted Police Reports, Andrew Guthrie Ferguson

Northwestern University Law Review

Police reports play a central role in the criminal justice system. Many times, police reports exist as the only official memorialization of what happened during an incident, shaping probable cause determinations, pretrial detention decisions, motions to suppress, plea bargains, and trial strategy. For over a century, human police officers wrote the factual narratives that shaped the trajectory of individual cases and organized the entire legal system.

This practice is about to change with the creation of AI-assisted police reports. Today, with the click of a button, large language models (LLMs), a type of generative AI using predictive text capabilities, can …

Remedies For Unreasonable Administrative Action After Vavilov, Kate Glover Berger

Articles & Book Chapters

This article comments on Pepa v. Canada (Citizenship and Immigration), arguing that it departs from the Supreme Court's previous guidance on remedies in an unprincipled manner. The article outlines the remedial framework established in Canada (Minister of Citizenship and Immigration) v. Vavilov, traces its development over the past five years, discusses key departures from the general rule of remittal, and highlights the principles these departures reflect. It then examines the approach to remedies adopted in Pepa. This assessment shows that the Pepa majority's invocation of the "single reasonable interpretation" exception to the general rule of remittal departs from the core …