Digital Commons Network^™

From Relic To Relevance, The Resurgence Of Tariffs, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah, Doron Narotzki, Tamir Shanan

UC Law Journal

Modern legal scholarship has largely relegated tariffs to economic analysis, overlooking their legal and policy significance. This Article challenges that view by examining tariffs as a potential pillar of fiscal policy, exploring their viability as a revenue source alongside or in place of traditional income and corporate taxation. While historically central to U.S. government funding, tariffs’ importance diminished with the rise of income taxation and trade liberalization. However, their recent resurgence as a tool for trade protection raises broader questions about their role in national economic strategy.

This Article critically assesses the feasibility of a tariff-based tax system, drawing on …

Discriminatory Effect(S), W. Kerrel Murray

Faculty Scholarship

In constitutional law, “discriminatory effect” often matters. So it’s surprising how often we don’t quite know what it means. That opacity is trans-substantive; it has been a recent pitfall in contexts as diverse as admissions-policy challenges under the Equal Protection Clause, personal-jurisdiction disputes under the “dormant” Commerce Clause, and, under the Free Exercise Clause, requests for exemptions from facially neutral laws.

This Article’s first corrective is a novel typology. Constitutional discriminatory effect is murky, in part, because it has many types; we perceive it in myriad ways across constitutional domains. Comprehending this complexity enhances our understanding of what discriminatory-effect rules …

The Brave New World Of Judicial Election, Charles G. Geyh

Articles by Maurer Faculty

The 2023 Wisconsin Supreme Court election heralded the arrival of a new generation of judicial races in which state supreme courts are becoming war-torn forums for the resolution of deeply divisive policy questions that the federal courts and the other branches of government are unwilling or unable to address. It is a development that portends to be of unprecedented intensity, relative to the fractious “new politics of judicial elections” of the recent past and poses new challenges for legal theory and the existing judicial elections literature to explain. It adds new urgency to an increasingly stark choice: fight for the …

Contagious Discrimination: Why Race-Blind Justice In Courtrooms Is Not Enough, Yijia Lu, Murat C. Mungan

Faculty Scholarship

Existing theories of discrimination focus on discrimination at the individual, societal, or organizational level. We highlight the importance of the dynamic relationship between different institutional actors who jointly give rise to discriminatory outcomes. This reveals that discrimination can be contagious: discrimination that would otherwise not occur at one institutional level can arise due to discrimination at another institutional level. Therefore, discrimination by some actors can trickle down and create disparate impacts in processes that would otherwise be free of discrimination. This phenomenon, which we term “contagious discrimination,” can manifest itself in various settings such as employment and commercial trade negotiations. …

Wealth-Based Disparities In Higher Education: Compounding Privilege, Multiplying Barriers, Rachel Moran, Jonathan D. Glater

Faculty Scholarship

This Special Issue is prompted by a confluence of developments in higher education: increasing access to postsecondary schooling overall and concurrent increasing socioeconomic inequality. After World War II, American colleges and universities began to “massify,” expanding their enrollments by opening their doors to people who previously would have found them closed. First, these institutions admitted veterans, then people of color and women (Altbach and Reisberg 2018, p. 63; Gumport et al. 1997, p. 2; Labaree 2017, pp. 106–7). The U.S. was not an outlier, and in the ensuing decades, nations around the globe saw unprecedented increases …

A Primer On International Agreements Relevant To Marine Carbon Dioxide Removal, Korey Silverman-Roati, Romany M. Webb

Sabin Center for Climate Change Law

This primer provides an introduction to seven international agreements relevant to marine carbon dioxide removal (mCDR) research activities in the ocean. Each of these agreements has implications for whether, when, where, and how in-ocean mCDR projects will go forward. The primer is intended to provide policymakers, non-government organizations (NGOs), scientists, and others working on mCDR with an introduction to the agreements and explain their relevance to mCDR. It also offers guidance to those wishing to engage in discussions regarding mCDR under the agreements, which could help resolve open legal questions on their applicability to, and governance of, mCDR.

Regulation Of Coastal Weathering In Massachusetts, Ashwin Murthy, Korey Silverman-Roati, Romany M. Webb

Sabin Center for Climate Change Law

Carbon dioxide removal (“CDR”) will be needed, alongside emissions reductions, to achieve global climate objectives. One such technique is coastal enhanced weathering (“CEW”), which looks to accelerate the natural processes of weathering of alkaline-rich rocks to remove and sequester carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. This natural weathering process occurs slowly — over centuries to millennia — but scientists have suggested the possibility of speeding it up by finely grinding alkaline rocks and spreading them in the coastal zone, where the natural wave and tidal forces will catalyze weathering. As the alkaline rocks weather, they convert carbonic acid present in the …

Compensation For Victims Of Crimes: Should Victims’ Financial Means And Insurance Coverage Matter? — Criminal Procedure Code 2010, S 359(1); Public Prosecutor V Ong Eng Siew [2025] Sghc 55, Benjamin Joshua Ong

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

Under s 359(1) of the Criminal Procedure Code 2010, the court can order an offender to compensate the victim with a sum which the victim would have been able to recover in a civil claim in tort against the offender. The courts have used this useful power extensively, though problems remain. One such problem is seen in Ong Eng Siew, where the court declined to make a compensation order. Given the purpose of the compensation system, the court was not correct to hold – in effect – that the purpose of s 359(1) is to benefit only impecunious victims, and …

Success And Flourishing In Singapore: The Impact Of Laws And Policies On The Ethos And Character Of A People, Seow Hon Tan

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

According to virtue jurisprudence, good laws can be conducive to virtuous living; poor laws can contribute to character vices and entrench prejudices. This article focuses on what lies beyond the strict categorization of virtue and vice simpliciter—the ethos and mindset of a people. Using a case study of Singapore, this article examines how law, conceived of in the broadest sense as including policies chosen in a legal regime that leaves the concretization of policies to government bodies, can diminish the capacity and desire of individuals to live examined lives in pursuit of eudaimonia or flourishing. Insofar as living examined lives …

The History Of Multi-Member Commissions At The Founding, 1789-1840: New Evidence On Independent Agencies, Victoria Frances Nourse

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The executive removal power figures prominently on the Supreme Court’s current agenda. That agenda is beset, however, by a historical misunderstanding, when it comes to multi-member bodies, which too often are assumed to be modern creatures. This paper provides crucial new historical evidence showing that the Founders, indeed a who’s who list of Founders, approved and even sat on commissions in the Republic’s early years. In some cases, the Founders called these early commissions “independent,” deferred to their judgments as “final,” and demanded that the members be “impartial.” Given the vast discretion given these commissions, these characteristics are best described …

The Pro Bono Industrial Complex, Tanina Rostain

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Recent settlements between corporate law firms and the Trump Administration, consisting of donations totaling nearly $1billion in free representation, have brought law firm pro bono to the fore. Pro bono has been institutionalized in corporate law firms since the turn of the 21^st century. Pro bono evangelists and corporate law firms contend that pro bono increases access to justice and protects individual rights. Scholarship on pro bono has not challenged these claims, focusing instead on managerial and organizational incentives that could increase the number of hours corporate firms devote to pro bono. Given the prominence of corporate law firm …

Disciplining Mechanisms: Governing Data Markets With Competition And Regulation, Peter Ormerod

Faculty Publications

The past decade has witnessed conceptual renewals in both competition law and information privacy law. These regulatory movements—Neo-Brandeis antitrust and structural data governance—share the objective of recalibrating the balance of power between individuals and the massive data-processing firms that now dominate modern life.

Despite their common ends, policy interventions drawn from these schools of thought can work at cross purposes: competitive pressure can induce data exploitation, and privacy rules tend to benefit the largest firms.

This Essay exposes the friction in their relationship and offers guidance on how to mediate their tension. Competition policy alone will prove ineffective at indirectly …

Online Age Gating: An Interdisciplinary Evaluation, Noah Apthorpe, Brett Frischmann, Yan Shvartzshnaider

Faculty Publications

The recent surge in regulation seeking to establish age-based governance online is part of a decades-long attempt to establish online zoning. It is driven by active development of technologies to estimate or verify user age based on various characteristics of users, their credentials, or their activities. However, these developments have heightened prevailing concerns that online age gating technology will inevitably be abused and misused to cause a variety of privacy harms and rights infringements. This paper examines this ongoing debate by bridging technical and legal scholarship to explore the current state of online age-based governance. We discuss the current legal …

The Oral History Of Bill Miller, Bill Miller

UNLV Gaming Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Betting The House: Why The Safe Bet Act Is A Long Shot To Survive Constitutional Scrutiny Under The Commerce Clause And Anti-Commandeering Doctrine, Jared Weingard

UNLV Gaming Law Journal

The rapid expansion of legalized sports gambling following Murphy v. NCAA has raised concerns about problem gambling, predatory marketing, and inconsistent state regulations. In response, the SAFE Bet Act, introduced by Representative Paul Tonko, seeks to impose nationwide standards on sports betting. However, its framework raises significant constitutional concerns under the Commerce Clause and the anti-commandeering doctrine. This Article argues that the Act’s enforcement mechanism likely violates the Tenth Amendment by coercing states into compliance, conflicting with Supreme Court precedent on federal conditional spending and preemption.

Given these vulnerabilities, this Article explores three alternative approaches that would achieve similar regulatory …

Corridor Court And The Order Out Ordinance: Clark County's Solution To Homelessness In Las Vegas A Jackpot For Gaming Industry, Harrison Epstein

UNLV Gaming Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Polygyny Between Sharia, Custom And State Law As A Persistent Dilemma In Post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan, Zharkynbai Sebetov, Mairambek Tagaev

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe

This article presents a comprehensive study of the century-long historical and legal evolution of state-imposed prohibitions on the institution of polygyny in Kyrgyzstan. The primary objective of the research is to evaluate the outcomes of a hundred years of repressive policies – originally classified as “crimes of daily life” (bytovye prestupleniya) during the early Soviet era–and to uncover the transformed legal paradoxes of this phenomenon today. Drawing on historical archival materials, Communist Party reports, and contemporary regulatory acts, the authors investigate the fundamental reasons why polygyny persists as a resilient “shadow” institution in Kyrgyz society despite its criminalization. Within the …

Bankrupt Crypto Organizations, Kara Bruce, Christopher K. Odinet, Andrea Tosato

Faculty Scholarship

This Article provides the first comprehensive analysis of the intersection between decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) and American bankruptcy law. DAOs are blockchain-based entities that enable individuals to pursue common goals using decentralized decision-making and automated governance. Since their recent emergence, DAOs have proliferated dramatically—with over 20,000 organizations managing over $20 billion in assets and engaging in activities ranging from investment management to real estate and even attempting to purchase historic copies of the U.S. Constitution. Yet like any other organization, DAOs can fail, creating an urgent need to understand what happens when unstoppable code meets immovable bankruptcy law.

Our investigation …

Chicana Professionalism: Embracing Greñas, Glitter & Boots, Luz E. Herrera

Faculty Scholarship

The current political moment, where immigrant identity is scapegoated and academic freedom is threatened, requires an affirmation of personal identity, a recognition of personal struggle, and a celebration of resilience. This Essay embraces the ideas that professional identity development is temporal and that the current conceptualization of professionalism requires embarking on a reflection journey that addresses the dissonance between personal conscience and professional duty.   Part I briefly revisits the work of Professor Margaret E. Montoya, one of the first Chicana law professors that describes the formation of her professional identity as a law student. It explores the status of Latinas …

The Lost Origins Of Antitrust, William Magnuson

Faculty Scholarship

Over the last decade, the once-sleepy field of antitrust has suddenly sprung to the forefront of public attention. The digitalization of the economy, the expansion of Big Tech, and the rise of platform monopolies have all raised deep questions about the nature of corporate power and law’s capacity to constrain it. Some scholars have argued that antitrust enforcement must be reinvigorated in substance and broadened in scope in order to combat rapidly rising economic inequality. Others have argued that antitrust law is ill-equipped to address these broad moral issues and instead must be re-focused on its traditional principles of consumer …

The Gig Is Up: How Rideshare Companies Operate Under The Guise Of Nontraditional Employment To Circumvent Labor Protections, Hope E. Newkirk

Pace Law Review

App-based rideshare platforms’ rapid expansion has transformed gig work from a temporary, flexible labor model into a sustained form of employment that serves as the primary source of income for millions of workers. Despite this evolution, leaders in the rideshare industry continue to classify drivers as independent contractors, thereby avoiding statutory obligations related to minimum wage, overtime, unemployment insurance, workers’ compensation, and healthcare benefits. This Comment argues that as platform-based labor becomes more permanent and economically dependent, the continued reliance on independent contractor classification becomes increasingly inconsistent with the governing legal standards designed to distinguish employees from independent contractors.

This …

The New Red Scare: The Shocking Truth Behind The Fda's Unethical Regulation Of Red 40 And Other Synthetic Food Dyes, Angelica Martuscello

Pace Law Review

For decades, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has allowed synthetic food dyes to remain in the American food supply, despite evidence linking them to cancer and behavioral issues in children. These additives offer no nutritional value yet remain common in everyday products. This essay scrutinizes the FDA’s failure to enforce its own legal obligations, particularly its continued approval of synthetic dyes, which were later found to be harmful to human health. Harmful dyes have been kept on the market due to weak oversight, outdated science, and industry lobbying. In 2025, the FDA finally announced a plan to phase …

Lessons In Pedagogy: My Experience With Problem-Based Learning, Leslie Y. Garfield Tenzer

Pace Law Review

This Article chronicles my experimental adoption of Problem-Based Learning (PBL) in first-year Contracts. After three decades of conventional teaching, I observed that Gen Z students struggled to transition from undergraduate memorization strategies to law school-level analytical reasoning, prompting my desire to engage in a fundamental pedagogical change. Drawing on successful PBL implementations in medical and mathematics education, I restructured my Contracts course around collaborative problem-solving in small groups, transforming my role from lecturer to facilitator. Students worked through authentic legal scenarios at whiteboards, developing rule-based reasoning through active engagement rather than passive reception.

This article first details my reasons for …

Trust In Regulation In A Time Of Revolution, Cristie Ford

All Faculty Publications

In a moment when big-P Politics feel practically catastrophic, the suggestion that we should be focusing on regulation could seem foolish, or worse: it could seem like some kind of self-serving effort to pretend our work rearranging deck chairs continues to matter. Regulation can feel like the opposite of resistance, and resistance is on many peoples’ minds these days, particularly in the United States. And, the goal of this paper is to argue that failing to focus on regulation – and especially on trust in regulation, in this time of revolution – would be a terrible mistake. Regulation is at …

Peran Ojk Dalam Pencegahan Fraud Pada Equity Crowdfunding: Studi Perbandingan Dengan Mekanisme Pengawasan Perbankan, Amanda Amelia Rizki, Ina Kurnia Savitri, Irsya Bakhtiar

Technology and Economics Law Journal

This study examines the role of the Financial Services Authority (Otoritas Jasa Keuangan/OJK) in preventing fraud in the implementation of Equity Crowdfunding (ECF) in Indonesia and compares it with the supervisory mechanisms of the banking sector, which are based on the prudential principle. Using a normative juridical approach and a comparative regulatory study, the research finds that although Financial Services Authority Regulation No. 17 of 2025 concerning the Offering of Securities through Information Technology Based Crowdfunding Services (POJK No. 17 of 2025) has strengthened the regulatory framework for ECF through licensing requirements, off-site and on-site supervision, issuer due diligence obligations, …

Perlindungan Hukum Penyelenggara Peer To Peer Lending Dalam Penagihan Wanprestasi Peminjam, Gina Marliana, Moch Teguh Al Baisar, Khoirul Amri Saputera

Technology and Economics Law Journal

The rapid growth of the peer-to-peer (P2P) lending industry in Indonesia has increased financial access for the public and micro-businesses, but this has been accompanied by an increase in default risks that threaten the stability of the industry. This study analyzes the legal framework governing protection for P2P lending operators and ethical and legally compliant collection strategies when borrowers default. Various regulations, including the PDP Law, ITE Law, P2SK Law, POJK 10/2022, POJK 40/2024, and SE OJK 19/2023, stipulate that operators must implement strict governance, identity verification, personal data protection, and collection ethics. Although the risk of default is in …

Efektivitas Lembaga Penjamin Simpanan (Lps) Dalam Meningkatkan Kepercayaan Masyarakat Berdasarkan Tinjauan Yuridis Dan Moral Hazard, Arnelia Kesumadianty, Desran Jw Saragih, Dwi Marlianto

Technology and Economics Law Journal

This study examines the effectiveness of the Indonesia Deposit Insurance Corporation (LPS) in enhancing public trust in the stability of the Indonesian banking system and analyzes the potential moral hazard arising from the deposit insurance scheme. Employing a normative juridical method with a descriptive-analytical approach, the research reviews the legal framework of LPS under Law Number 24 of 2004 and its amendments, as well as Law Number 4 of 2023 on the Development and Strengthening of the Financial Sector (P2SK), and compares it with deposit insurance practices in several other jurisdictions. The findings indicate that LPS plays a crucial role …

Perkembangan Dan Ruang Lingkup Sosiologi Hukum, Mulyana W. Kusumah

Jurnal Hukum & Pembangunan

Abstract

Mansion Markets: Re-Evaluating The Treatment Of Customs Unions In Antidumping Cases, Devin Humphreys

Mercer Law Review

Some customs unions look like glorified trade deals, while other customs unions look like nation‑states in the making. Since 1979, U.S. trade law has treated both kinds of customs unions the same, but this state of affairs ignores the variety of ways in which some (though not all) modern customs unions are remarkably economically integrated. Presidents from both parties have treated the European Union as a singular entity in regulating foreign trade with their Section 232 authority, and more recently, the current presidential administration has issued ad valorem tariffs against the European Union as a bloc. But due to a …

Marked For Prosecution: The Use Of Tattoo Recognition Technology In Criminal Trials And The Case For Evidentiary Limits, Marc Consalo

Mercer Law Review

In recent years, tattoos have taken on a new and largely overlooked role in our criminal trial system. Once viewed primarily as personal or cultural expression, tattoos are now treated by law enforcement as biometric data which can be analyzed, codified, and then searched by artificial intelligence (“AI”). Police departments and prosecutorial offices have begun using tattoo recognition software to identify suspects, assume gang membership, and establish guilt based on imagery or symbols. Yet, despite the rapid growth of this technology, its use in the courtroom has received almost no scholarly attention and even less judicial scrutiny.

This Article seeks …