Digital Commons Network^™

Summer 2025

Ergo

No abstract provided.

Ben Ferencz’S Pioneering Transitional Justice Legacy, Including And Beyond Accountability, Federica D'Alessandra

Cardozo International & Comparative Law Review

The article argues that Benjamin Ferencz was a foundational figure in the field of transitional justice, extending beyond his recognized contributions to international criminal justice. His work laid the groundwork for the four pillars of transitional justice: truth, accountability, reparation/restitution, and memorialization. Ferencz’s efforts in investigating war crimes, prosecuting perpetrators, advocating for victim-centered justice, and preserving historical records demonstrate his pivotal role in shaping modern transitional justice frameworks.

Foreword, Gene Nichol

North Carolina Law Review

No abstract provided.

Ken Rose Interview, Ken Rose, Gene Nichol

North Carolina Law Review

No abstract provided.

Floyd B. Mckissick, Jr. Interview, Floyd B. Mckissick Jr., Gene Nichol

North Carolina Law Review

No abstract provided.

Charmaine Fuller Cooper Interview, Charmaine Fuller Cooper, Gene Nichol

North Carolina Law Review

No abstract provided.

Artificial Intelligence In Ethics And Society, Amy B. Cyphert, Sally Brown

Artificial Intelligence Exhibit

This section explores the ethical dilemmas, social impacts, bias and fairness of AI use.

No More Mixed Message, Missing Money: Revisiting The Birth Of Icl’S Victim Restoration-Reparations Regime To Conceptualize Its Modern Reform, Gregory S. Gordon

Cardozo International & Comparative Law Review

The article argues that the International Criminal Court's (ICC) system for victim reparations is fundamentally flawed due to mission dissonance between its punitive and restorative goals, insufficient funding, and procedural limitations. It proposes the creation of an independent Atrocity Victim Reparations Tribunal (AVRT) under the UN to address these issues, ensuring more effective and victim-centered reparations.

The Expungement Process: Survey Evidence On Applicant Experiences, Mira Edmonds, J.J. Prescott, Sonja Starr, German Marquez Alcala

Articles

Tens of millions of Americans with publicly accessible criminal convictions face significant collateral consequences that affect their employment, housing, and family life, which not only harm these individuals but also limit society’s access to their skills, productivity, and participation. In response, policymakers have enlarged the scope and enhanced the accessibility of criminal-record expungement laws. Little is known, however, about how individuals perceive, navigate, and take advantage of these new, broader laws. This Article presents findings from a large-scale survey of 1,439 expungement applicants and recipients in Detroit, conducted in partnership with Project Clean Slate (PCS), a city initiative assisting residents …

The Wages Of Constitutional Interpretation, Francesca L. Procaccini

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

The future of constitutional interpretation is a dynamic amalgam of knowns and unknowns. This article explores three. First, an unknown known: the Court's embrace of formal equality methodologies, more than originalist methodologies, is driving current conservative changes in constitutional law and ushering in a stale and acontextual bent to constitutional rights. Second, another unknown known: both the Court's equality and originalist methodologies serve to jettison the longstanding and widespread use of intermediate scrutiny and thereby push the level of protection for rights to the extremes. Finally, a known unknown: the Court's embrace of hyper-formal equality and originalist rules transfers hegemonic …

Putting Police Body-Worn Camera Footage To Work: A Civil Liberties Evaluation Of Truleo's Ai Analytics Platform, Farhang Heydari, Max Isaacs, Katie Kinsey, Barry Friedman, Christopher Slobogin, Alissa M. Heydari

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

This Article summarizes findings from a civilliberties evaluation of Truleo, an Al-powered analytics platform designed to automate thereviewofpolice body-worn camera (BWC) footage. It includes a summary of how Truleo's platform works, policy choices made by the company, and our assessment ofsafeguards and risks of the platform from a civil liberties perspective. This Article also offers a series of recommendations for policymakers considering the adoption of Truleo or similar technologies. These indude the necessity for independent testing of claimed benefits, democratic authorization for deployment, and ongoing transparency and public input around the platform's design and operation. Importantly, this Article argues that …

Putting Police Body-Worn Camera Footage To Work: A Civil Liberties Evaluation Of Truleo's Ai Analytics Platform, Christopher Slobogin, Farhang Heydari, Max Isaacs, Katie Kinsey, Barry Friedman, Alissa Marque Heydari

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

This Article summarizes findings from a civilliberties evaluation of Truleo, an Al-powered analytics platform designed to automate thereviewofpolice body-worn camera (BWC) footage. It includes a summary of how Truleo's platform works, policy choices made by the company, and our assessment ofsafeguards and risks of the platform from a civil liberties perspective. This Article also offers a series of recommendations for policymakers considering the adoption of Truleo or similar technologies. These indude the necessity for independent testing of claimed benefits, democratic authorization for deployment, and ongoing transparency and public input around the platform's design and operation. Importantly, this Article argues that …

Justice Citizenship, Lauren Sudeall

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

In recent years, the topic of democracy has seen a resurgence-perhaps due in part to a recognition of its heightened global instability. Yet, in these pervasive discussions regarding democracy and its role with respect to governance, relatively little attention has been paid to the courts, particularly at the state and local levels where most people are likely to interact with them. In a time when the courts' authority is being questioned, it may be helpful to emphasize that courts, like all democratic institutions, are "of the people, by the people, [and] for the people." In relation to the other branches …

Looking Forward, Reflecting Back: The Promise Of Dispute Resolution To Reform The Criminal Legal System, Cynthia Alkon

Journal of Dispute Resolution

The criminal legal system in the United States is plagued by serious and systemic problems. There have been countless efforts at reform over the last many decades that have included changes in what is a crime, how crimes are punished, how prosecutors do their job, and changes in policing. Yet, despite these efforts, problems such as mass incarceration remain deeply embedded. It is easy to be swept up in pessimism when discussing the criminal legal system. Change is hard, at best incremental, and we seem to be in the beginning of an era of backlash against recent reforms. This is …

Necessary Justice: “Political” Trials And Modern Political Philosophy, Rob Howse

Cardozo Law Review

Donald Trump’s election to President of the United States for the second time in November 2024 marked the beginning of the end of a sustained effort to hold him accountable in court for conduct that many Americans viewed as criminal.[1] Trump received not only the majority of Electoral College votes but a decisive plurality of the popular vote as well.[2] At the time of the election, he had already been convicted of thirty-four felonies surrounding a complex fraud to hide the use of campaign funds for hush money to an adult film actor.[3] Prior to this conviction, the decisions of …

Ai And The Erosion Of Law’S Moral Authority, Joseph Avery

BYU Law Review

Over the past decade, artificial intelligence (AI) has begun to assist, augment, and influence judicial and legislative work. At the end of 2023, U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts was “confident” that technological changes would continue to transform the common law and that judicial work would “be significantly affected by AI.”

In the legislative realm, there are AI tools devoted exclusively to drafting statutes, and the use of AI by members of the U.S. Congress is now officially sanctioned. These developments have led to a focus on technical and performance-related issues with AI, including those of accuracy and reliability, …

Leveraging The Convention Against Torture: Opportunities For U.S. Migrants Within International Human Rights Frameworks, Margaret Burnetti

DePaul Journal for Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Licensure As Pathway, Not Barrier, Brian Gallini

Arkansas Law Review

The legal profession knows it has an access to justice crisis. One side lacks a lawyer in approximately three-quarters of the twenty million civil cases filed across state courts every year. Against that concerning backdrop is how we license attorneys. The most common method is the written bar exam. But that exam bears little resemblance to the practice of law, produces racially disparate results, and is shockingly expensive for law graduates to prepare for and take. Its opaque scoring practices alongside its rare administration—offered just twice per year—strengthens the idea that the modern bar exam operates more as a barrier …

Thirtieth Aniversary Of The Srebrenica Genocide: Revisting The Judgment In The “Bosnian Genocide Case”, Harun Halilović

Indonesian Journal of International Law

The year 2025 marks the thirtieth anniversary of the Srebrenica genocide. This article aims to revisit and give an overview of the critical points of the judgment in the case of Bosnia and Herzegovina v Serbia and Montenegro (Judgment), related to the application of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide that was conducted before the International Court of Justice. The case (also known as the Bosnia v Serbia case) was brought to an end by the Judgment in 2007, drawing a mixed response. The main points of contention in the Judgment are related to …

Flourishing: A Plan To Strengthen Public Legal Education And Information, The Bc Plei Ecosystem Project, Catherine Dauvergne, Aara Johnson, Shannon Srivastava

All Faculty Publications

The Public Legal Education and Information (PLEI) Sectoral Planning Project, headed by Dr. Catherine Dauvergne, K.C., was commissioned by the Law Foundation of British Columbia with the goal of making recommendations about how to improve public legal education and information in the province. The project was co-sponsored by the Law Foundation and the province’s Ministry of the Attorney General. We have come to understand this constellation of resources and organizations as the “public legal education and information ecosystem.” There is a wide array of high-quality, easily accessible, clearly written, legal information available in British Columbia. Ecosystem leaders are at the …

Robbing The Cradle: Georgia's Battle To Enact "Raise The Age" Legislation Through Hb 462, Elizabeth Hammond

Georgia Criminal Law Review

In the state of Georgia, seventeen-year-olds are not old enough under the law to vote or consume alcohol and tobacco products. Despite this, they are old enough to be criminally tried as adults. Georgia is one of three states that continues to process seventeen-year-old juvenile offenders through the criminal justice system instead of juvenile court. In September 2023, forty-five juveniles were prosecuted as adults and incarcerated in Georgia prisons. This is significant because juvenile offenders experience better outcomes when they are processed through the juvenile court system because juvenile courts account for a youth’s “naturally high capacity for change and …

The Shadow Pandemic: The Response To Domestic Violence In The Wake Of Covid-19 And What We Can Carry Forward, Presley Sneed

Georgia Criminal Law Review

When the COVID-19 virus brought the pandemic to the United States in March of 2020, the legal system was not prepared for the increase in domestic and intimate partner violence that would follow. The United Nations (UN) later identified this social phenomenon as a second pandemic, a “shadow pandemic” that resulted from an increase in stay-at-home orders and a decrease in support services for victims. By the end of 2021, forty-five percent of women globally reported either they themselves or a woman they know had experienced some form of domestic or intimate partner violence since the emergence of COVID-19. One …

Misreading The Federal Child Pornography Statutes, Owen Senders

Georgia Criminal Law Review

For the past 40 years, federal courts have committed two grievous textual errors in interpreting the federal child-pornography statutes and sentencing guidelines. These errors have caused hundreds of wrongful convictions—many the bases for decades-long sentences—and have produced a body of caselaw that is profoundly incoherent and in direct conflict with basic tenets of First Amendment doctrine. They have also likely endangered children. This article identifies these errors, surveys their consequences, and suggests legal arguments for people charged or convicted under the child-pornography statutes.

The first error impacts the application of all of the federal child-pornography statutes and sentencing guidelines. These …

Directing Unconstitutional Verdicts: When Judges Become Jurors On Self-Defense, Anjali Pathmanathan

Georgia Criminal Law Review

The right to self-defense is one of the oldest and most universal concepts in Anglo-American criminal law and criminal procedure. Under this defense, an accused person, who honestly believed that using force was necessary to protect themself from imminent danger, did nothing criminal even if another person was harmed as a result. To assert self-defense at trial, however, the accused must admit to intentionally committing the forceful acts alleged to explain how they only used such force to save themself from immediate harm. Once an accused has made such a grave admission, the jury must consider whether the force was …

Penyalahgunaan Kekuasaan Dan Viktimisasi Proyek Strategis Nasional Di Pulau Rempang, Dandi Jayusman, Annarentika Faajra Shakhila, Benedikta Wewieta Li Pena, Elly Saskia, Esterlita Nova Yaser Rantung, Heni Nur Febriyanti, Athifah Danika Pramesti

Jurnal Hukum & Pembangunan

Implementing the National Strategic Project (PSN) on Rempang Island caused controversy over the abuse of power that harmed some local communities. This research aims to analyze the conception of victims of abuse of power in the implementation of PSN, the structural victimization of PSN, the impact of PSN victimization, and the regulation of the rights of people affected by PSN. The research method used is doctrinal research with statutory regulations, victimology, and case approaches. The study shows that communities who experienced repression and violence during the implementation of PSN on Rempang Island are victims of abuse of power. Structural victimization …

A (Loper) Bright Future? Charting Federal Ai Legislation With State Blueprints In A Post-Chevron World, William B. Simpson

Student Journal of Information Privacy Law

Despite a growing proliferation of algorithmic systems across the market, the U.S. lacks a comprehensive federal AI law to address the risks posed by this technology. The 2024 Supreme Court case Loper Bright v. Raimondo, which overturned the doctrine of Chevron deference, arguably complicates the passage of such a law by constraining Congress’ ability to use ambiguous statutory language as a means of reaching legislative consensus. Nevertheless, as Congress prepares to tackle this complex issue, it can look to state legislatures that have passed AI laws amidst similar constraints. The purpose of this article is to analyze certain state AI …

Incorporating Restorative Justice Into Black-Letter Criminal Law, Shirin Bakhshay

Journal of Legal Education

No abstract provided.

"Will The Circle Be Unbroken": The Role Of Law School Centers In Advancing Restorative Justice Theory, Practice, And Education, Deborah Thompson Eisenberg, Toby Treem Guerin

Journal of Legal Education

No abstract provided.

Pedagogies In The Meantime: Reflections On Adr And Restorative Justice In U.S. And Canadian Legal Education, Amy J. Cohen, Daniel Del Gobbo

Journal of Legal Education

No abstract provided.

Like Holding Up A Mirror: How I Learned To Teach Restorative Justice, Susan Abraham

Journal of Legal Education

No abstract provided.