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Made In The Usa: A Prison Of Our Own Emissions: Examining The Carbon Footprint Of Mass Incarceration From A Global Perspective, Raina Machisen

William & Mary Environmental Law and Policy Review

Part I will address the concept of Mass Incarceration and carbon footprints. Part II will describe and compare the current energy consumption level of the United States’ prisons and carbon emissions with the United Kingdom’s prisons’ green infrastructure. Part III suggests potential prison programs that encourage both rehabilitation and carbon reduction. Part IV discusses the origins of Mass Incarceration, potential policy solutions to reduce prison populations, and the prospect of repurposing unused prisons.

This abstract has been taken from the author's introduction.

Front Matter

SMU Science and Technology Law Review

No abstract provided.

War Crime Or Ecocide? Ukraine’S Prosecution Of Environmental Crimes Committed By Russian Forces, Michael J. Kelly

Emory International Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Geneva Conventions At 75: An Argument That New Legal Authority Is Needed To Fill Critical Gaps, Sandra Hodgkinson

Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law

For seventy-five years, the Geneva Conventions have served as the gold standard of treatment for military forces that take part in hostilities. However, modern developments on the battlefield, including the rise of non-state actors in today’s conflicts, have exposed gaps in the Geneva Conventions that require new legal authority. States should pursue avenues to fill these gaps with binding new legal authority, as well as continue the development of customary international law, and soft-law projects. (Abstract from author.)

Maine Law Magazine - Issue No. 99, University Of Maine School Of Law

Maine Law Magazine

• A Letter from the Dean
• Alaskan residents granted resident tuition status at Maine Law
• ‘I wasn’t doing it alone’: Students find mentorship and direction in Maine Law’s 3+3 Program
• A Place to Call Home: Three journal symposium addresses housing crisis in Maine and beyond
• Maine Law community honors founding Dean Edward Godfrey’s lasting legacy
• How Maine Law’s Economic Justice Fellowship is Shaping the Next Generation of Advocates
• New fellowship broadens scope and reach of Maine Law’s Refugee and Human Rights Clinic
• The Clinics at Maine Law: Renamed to Reflect Our Expansive Reach
• Prisoners’ Assistance Clinic - Providing Much Needed Access …

Ground Rules: Giving Meaning And Effect To Key Contested Terms In The California Racial Justice Act, Bazelon, Lara, Redbird, Dr. Beth, Yan, Belle

Santa Clara Law Review

The California Racial Justice Act (RJA), which applies to all pretrial, trial, and post-conviction defendants,

prohibits any state actor from relying upon racial bias to seek or obtain a conviction or sentence against a defendant. In a state where racial disparities in incarceration have been growing for decades, the law, which became retroactive in 2024, has the power to create a sea of change across California criminal institutions. Using the power of state constitutional law and relying upon the principles of comity and federalism, the California Racial Justice Act explicitly rejects the intent-to-discriminate standard set by the U.S. Supreme Court …

Empirical Analysis Of Racial Disparities In Policing, Premkumar, Deepak, Lofstrom, Magnus, Hayes, Joseph, Martin, Brandon, Cremin, Sean

Santa Clara Law Review

Racial disparities within the criminal justice system continue to be a pressing issue, especially after the recent passage of California’s Racial Justice Act, which allows for a broader set of legal challenges based on racially disparate treatment. In this article, we analyze data for almost four million stops by California’s fifteen largest law enforcement agencies in 2019, examining the extent to which people of color experience searches, enforcement, intrusiveness, and use of force differently from white people. Black Californians are more likely to be searched than white Californians, but searches of Black civilians reveal less contraband and evidence. Black people …

"The Only Place I'M Allowed In The City Is Court": Racial Capitalism, Gentrification, And The Criminalization Of Homelessness In Missoula, Montana, River Rafferty

Scripps Senior Theses

This thesis dissects how gentrification, homelessness, and criminalization intersect and influence one another, using Missoula, Montana's recent urban camping ban as a case study.

It argues that racial capitalism, as a hermeneutic, structures the logics of Missoula's Ordinance 3747 and that gentrification, as a manifestation of racial capitalism, creates a structural imperative for the criminalization of homelessness. In addition, it asserts that local community organizations such as the Missoula Tenants Union and the Missoula Unhoused Neighbors Union offer viable alternatives to the current carceral organization of public policy, orienting space in the city toward what Ruth Wilson Gilmore terms abolition …

Trauma-Informed Judicial Practice Meets Therapeutic Jurisprudence: Compassionate Written Judgments In Child Protection Cases, Shelley Kierstead

All Papers

Society has become acutely aware that trauma arises from many life events and manifests in a range of physical and psychological symptoms. The legal community is increasingly recognizing that clients living with trauma effects would be much better served with trauma-informed services. While much of the emerging literature in the legal field focuses on lawyers’ work, there is growing recognition that judges can also play a role in responding effectively to trauma.

In child protection cases, trauma frequently exists at different yet related levels – for the child who is the subject of protection proceedings, and for one or more …

An International Law Of The Emotions, Emily Kidd White

All Papers

Talk of the emotional or affective turn in international law is relatively recent though it tracks and echoes several other critical methods movements, including the turn to history, in the study of international law and, so too, a two-decade long wave of law and emotions research in several domestic legal systems. The affective turn in international law in several instances aims to critique a post-Cold War optimism that held out the promise that a rules and reason-based international order would work to abate war, and secure peace, prosperity and efficient capital flows. As outlined by the editors of this volume …

Prosecuting Families, Anna Arons

Faculty Publications

Hundreds of thousands of parents are prosecuted in the family regulation system each year. Their cases are investigated by family regulation agencies and prosecuted by lawyers employed by the government—family regulation prosecutors. Like police and prosecutors in the criminal legal system, this family regulation prosecutorial team wields immense power, particularly over race–class subjugated communities. Yet even as scholarship on criminal prosecutors and on the family regulation system has proliferated, the role of family regulation prosecutors has gone underexamined and undertheorized.

This Article offers a critical examination of the role of these family regulation prosecutors. Drawing on a variety of primary …

The Criminal System Under Racial Capitalism, Sandeep Singh Dhaliwal

Faculty Publications

In 2021, major segments of the business lobby converged around a consensus for criminal system reform. As the United States experienced historic levels of labor market tightness, business groups argued for removing “barriers” to employment that system-involved people face. Just a few months later, the orientation of business to the criminal system was decidedly more mixed. By March 2022, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the country’s most powerful business lobby, had stepped to the forefront of the national moral panic around retail theft, launching a vigorous campaign to defend and even strengthen criminal punishment across the country.

Anchoring its analysis …

What’S Left Of The New Deal State?, Sandeep Singh Dhaliwal

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

A vast body of scholarship situates itself in the New Deal era. Another extensive collection explores the history of criminal justice in the United States. To date, however, there has been little effort to bring these conversations together. New Deal Law and Order, written by legal historian Anthony Gregory, fills this conspicuous gap. Gregory remarkably narrates the New Deal era through the lens of President Franklin Roosevelt’s “war on crime” (p. 1), challenging how we think about both the New Deal’s legacy and the foundations of the modern security state.

In recent years, scholars have called on their …

Unveiling Secrecy: A Qualitative Analysis Of The Breonna Taylor Grand Jury Proceedings, Taylor Bettis

Theses and Dissertations--Psychology

Grand juries have faced heightened scrutiny in recent decades following high-profile cases involving police use of lethal force against Black civilians. In 2020, Police officers killed Breonna Taylor while executing a search warrant at her home. Despite widespread public outcry, it remains unclear how prosecutors failed to indict the officers involved on charges directly related to her death. Guided by critical race theory, procedural justice, and theories of authority, the current project used reflexive thematic analysis to examine the Breonna Taylor grand jury proceedings. We identified two main themes: structural influences and narrative influences. Structural influences examine how prosecutorial authority, …

Standardizing Exoneration Compensation Statutes, Farina Barth

Journal Articles

Wrongful convictions plague the American criminal justice system and leave lasting, unimaginable harm on the innocent. Since 1989 through February 2025, the National Registry of Exonerations reported 3,658 exonerations: a total of 32,750 years behind bars that were lost. An exoneree, once labeled a defendant, becomes a victim. To right this wrong, some states aim to make a wrongfully convicted citizen whole through compensation. However, in examining the evidence of wrongful conviction compensation, a pervasive issue is uncovered in the American compensation system: victims of wrongful incarceration are deeply undercompensated due to statutory drafting. For those states with compensation statutes, …

On The Wax: How Prosecutors Weaponize Rap Lyrics At Trial, Jasmine Ross

City University of New York Law Review

In the last few years news headlines have been filled with stories of high-profile trials in which celebrity rappers like Young Thug, Tekashi 6ix9ine (now “6IX9INE”) and Bobby Shmurda have been confronted by prosecutors with lyrics they wrote. Of course, the use of rap lyrics in these trials is no accident. Since the 1990s criminal defendants who happen to pen rap lyrics are increasingly likely to have their lyrics admitted against them at trial. This is happening all over the country—in federal and state courts—at every stage of criminal proceedings. This Note will focus on the use of rap lyrics …

Federal Compassionate Release Principles: Defining The Contours Of Analyses Under The “Other Reasons” Bucket, Hannah Jacobs

American University Law Review

The U.S. Sentencing Commission’s new policy statement regarding 18 U.S.C. § 3582(c)(1)(A) informs federal judges’ sentence reduction analyses. The statement expands the extraordinary and compelling reasons for which district courts may grant compassionate release under the statute’s “Other Reasons” provision. A proper application of this catchall provision requires striking a balance between the broad judicial discretion codified in that provision and the flexibility, certainty, and fairness principles Congress and the Sentencing Commission intended to shape modern compassionate release. This discretion is bound by statutory, policy, and prudential considerations, including fidelity to the totality-of-the-circumstances framework and a case-by-case approach to individual …

Smith-Doheny Legal Ethics Award, Notre Dame Law School

Student, Faculty, and Staff Awards

The Smith-Doheny Legal Ethics Writing Competition

The annual writing competition is open to all U.S. and Canadian law school students. Entries should be concerned with any issue within the general category of legal ethics. Entries must be original, unpublished work, a minimum of 5,000 words and a maximum of 15,000 words, inclusive of footnotes. Coauthored essays may be submitted. Submissions will be judged by a panel of faculty of the Notre Dame Law School. A monetary prize will be awarded to one winning entrant.

Art. Iii-Gpt, Nick Mckinley

Catholic University Journal of Law and Technology

This article recommends the development and deployment of an Artificial Intelligence (AI) large language model (LLM) tool by and for the federal judiciary. LLMs are revolutionizing legal practice, and judges should accordingly be familiar and in regular practice with LLM technology. LLMs can greatly assist the courts by increasing operational efficiency and public access to justice. Particularly, LLMs can improve efficiency in legal research, legal writing, and administration. LLMs present limitations or potential problems in the form of prompt dependency and harmful bias, limitations of data in their training sets, privacy and confidentiality, and the production of false or fabricated …

Reentry Realities: Examining The Role Of Aftercare Programs In Supporting Justice-Involved Youth, Lynda Girven

Honors Undergraduate Theses

The current study examined if aftercare and reentry programs helped to reduce recidivism among youth who have been involved in the juvenile system, and specifically, youth released from residential placement facilities. Different components of aftercare programs were also examined, such as the inclusion of mentoring or family support, how many services were offered, and if the program followed the Risk-Need-Responsivity (RNR) model. Through completing a systematic review of studies published since 2008, five studies met the inclusion and exclusion criteria. All five studies found that the youth who received services through aftercare programs were less likely to reoffend than youth …

The Evolution Of Surveillance And The Decline Of Privacy, Alan J. Geyer

Honors Undergraduate Theses

This study directly examines how surveillance law and technology have evolved in the United States and how privacy rights have declined correspondingly. The study specifically focuses on how advancements in surveillance technology have overstepped the boundaries of Fourth Amendment protections and analyzes whether these provisions are adequate for protecting citizens in the modern technological era. The study explores newly employed methods of technological surveillance, such as facial recognition, data collection, and automated license plate readers. It focuses on how government surveillance programs have reshaped legal and ethical understandings of privacy. The changes in surveillance and technology have been analyzed by …

Legislating Literacy: The Need For Reading Reform In The United States, Lia M. Williams

Roger Williams University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Front Matter

SMU Science and Technology Law Review

No abstract provided.

Debugging The Trademark Laws Part Ii: Criminal Penalties For Trafficking In Counterfeit Microelectronics, Patricia E. Campbell

SMU Science and Technology Law Review

Counterfeit microelectronics have been a persistent problem in government and industry supply chains for many years. Counterfeit electronic parts (e.g., integrated circuits, transistors, capacitors) pose serious risks to human health and safety, harm the economy, and jeopardize national security. Trafficking in counterfeit goods and services was first criminalized in 1984, and Congress has acted on several occasions to increase the corresponding penalties. Nevertheless, the trade in counterfeit microelectronics continues to evolve to meet market demands, and relatively few criminal cases have been brought for trafficking in counterfeit microelectronics. While several factors may contribute to this apparent lack of enforcement, the …

The Artificial Intelligence Trolley Problem: Governance In The Post-Chevron World, James M. Cooper, Kashyap Kompella

SMU Science and Technology Law Review

This Essay addresses a growing Constitutional challenge in public governance: the increasing delegation of consequential decisions to algorithmic systems that encode value trade-offs between liberty and security, equity and efficiency, and expression and control, without visibility, legal justification, or institutional oversight. We view this hidden normative choice an example of the “Artificial Intelligence (AI) Trolley Problem.” Like the classic moral dilemma, it involves unavoidable sacrifices among competing goods. Unlike its philosophical counterpart, however, algorithmic trade-offs occur silently. They are embedded in data proxies, optimization logic, and model design, and insulated from scrutiny by claims of technical neutrality. This Essay argues …

Ignored By The Legislature, Failed By The Courts: The Uncertain Path Toward Relief For Youth Sex Offenders In Illinois, Lindsay Nicholas

Public Interest Law Reporter

No abstract provided.

Disposability And Survival: The Legal And Social Marginalization Of Black Transwomen, Rachel Still

Public Interest Law Reporter

The criminalization of Black transwomen emerges not as an incidental consequence of law but as a deliberate, structural process intertwined with a long history of racial, gendered, and class-based oppression. From the horrors of slavery to contemporary policing, the state has consistently defined and regulated Black trans bodies through a lens of disposability. This article explores the historical and contemporary forces that contribute to the marginalization and criminalization of Black transwomen, emphasizing how race, gender, and socio-economic status intersect to create a landscape of legal violence that continues to shape their lives and deaths.

The experiences of Black transwomen reveal …

Table Of Contents

Public Interest Law Reporter

No abstract provided.

Disbelief As Doctrine: People V. Addimando And Evidentiary Barriers To Justice In The Law Of Self-Defense, Rachel Still

Public Interest Law Reporter

No abstract provided.

More Than Miscommunication: Rethinking Interpretation At The Asylum Office, Pooja R. Dadhania, Hillary Mellinger

Faculty Scholarship

The United States requires asylum applicants to provide their own interpreters for their interviews at the Asylum Office, barring exceptional circumstances. Applicants can face significant hurdles in finding suitable interpreters, who play a critical role in giving them a voice in the asylum process. Inaccurate interpretation can have serious ramifications such as denial of an applicant’s asylum claim. Despite the critical need for meaningful language access in the asylum process, interpretation at the Asylum Office remains understudied. This article represents a first attempt at bringing the scholarly and practitioner communities together to rethink interpretation at the Asylum Office, with the …