Digital Commons Network^™

Child Sacrifices: The Precarity Of Minors’ Autonomy And Bodily Integrity After Dobbs, Teri Dobbins Baxter

Scholarly Works

In Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the Supreme Court held that there is no constitutional right to abortion. The decision has had a devastating impact on people seeking abortions in many states, and it will have an even more profound effect on the rights and lives of minors. Pregnant minors face greater risks than pregnant adults when they are forced to continue a pregnancy that can harm their physical and mental health and their educational and financial futures. Very young minors are incapable of consenting to the sexual acts that result in pregnancy, but many states require even these …

Aba Standard 303(C) And Divisive Concepts Legislation And Policies: Challenges And Opportunities, Sherley Cruz, Becky L. Jacobs, Karen L. Tokarz, Kendall Kerew, Andrew King-Ries, Carwina Weng

Scholarly Works

This article by six clinicians discusses the challenges and opportunities of new ABA Standard 303 (c), including the implications of and interactions between Standard 303(c) and “divisive concepts” laws and other threats to representation, academic freedom, and free speech in legal education. The article also highlights the intersection of Standard 303(c) and Standard 303(b)(3), which addresses professional identity formation; discusses opportunities to adapt current curriculum and teaching and create new curricular responses to meet the new accreditation standards and interpretations; and explores ways to resist increasing limitations and find a supportive academic community to sustain hope and resilience.

Antitrust & Ai Supply Chains, Maurice E. Stucke, Ariel Ezrachi

Scholarly Works

Will AI technology disrupt the current Big Tech Barons, foster competition, and ensure future disruptive innovation that improves our well-being? Or might the technology help a few ecosystems become even more powerful?

To explore this issue, our paper outlines the current digital market dynamics that lead to winner-take-most-or-all ecosystems. After examining the emerging AI foundation model supply chain, we consider several potential antitrust risks that may emerge should certain layers of the supply chain become concentrated and firms extend their power across layers. But the anticompetitive harms are not inevitable, as several countervailing factors might lessen or prevent these antitrust …

Telehealth Solutions For Black Maternal Health, Katherine "Yenny" Wu

Annals of Health Law and Life Sciences

No abstract provided.

Crowdsourcing Surveillance, Chaz Arnett

Faculty Scholarship

In Unreasonable: Black Lives, Police Power, and the Fourth Amendment, Devon W. Carbado illuminates how both the spectacular and quotidian forms of racialized terror, brutality, and surveillance—characteristic of enslavement—have shaped the construction of our constitutional order. He argues that the combined social normalization and legal naturalization of racial hierarchy paved the way for the development of slave patrols and other early iterations of policing where incredible acts of violence against Black bodies were made ordinary and essential. He explains how this legacy continues today with Fourth Amendment jurisprudence not simply failing to protect rights but rather licensing police violence …

How The Legal Rights Of Brazilian Indigenous People Are Inextricable From The Preservation Of Brazil’S Environment, Elizabeth Walsh

International Program Papers

The rights of Brazil’s Indigenous peoples have changed over time. Indigenous tribes went from original landowners, to enslaved people, to people protected by Brazil’s constitution but persistently marginalized. Through it all, Indigenous groups have protected Brazil’s Amazon Rainforest and Atlantic Forest, leading to healthy vegetation, biodiversity, and benefits to the global climate. This paper tracks how the rights of Indigenous groups correlate to the preservation of Brazil’s environment. Specifically, when Indigenous groups have more legally recognized land rights—as is deserved by their history, occupation of the land, and Brazil’s 1988 constitution—not only does the surrounding environment thrive, but also the …

Patent Reform As International Prestige-Seeking: Initial Insights From Brazil, Jack Brake

International Program Papers

No abstract provided.

Restorative Justice For International Traditional Cultural Expression Ownership Disputes, Sandra H. Sulzer

Michigan Journal of International Law

Traditional cultural expressions (“TCE”), which include dances, songs, and pottery, and traditional knowledge (“TK”), which includes plant properties, agricultural practices, and artistic techniques, are inarguably valuable both to the groups that create them and to outsiders who wish to use or sell them. International law broadly, and intellectual property (“IP”) law more specifically, are not well-suited to protect the interests of creators of TCE and TK. A persistent pattern of exploitation of traditional expressions and knowledge has been well-documented. But responses have been dissatisfying, and sometimes begin from a place of disregarding the value of these contributions. At present, when …

2024-2025 Factbook, Tennessee. General Assembly

Factbook

This Fact Book provides an overview of the state's budget for the fiscal year.

The Best Interests Of The Child In Judicial Perspective: Morocco And Chile As Case-Studies (1990-2020), Susana Sanz-Caballero

Children's Legal Rights Journal

Is there a common understanding in the judiciary process about what “the child’s best interests” are, regardless of geographic location or legal order? In every nation, when disputes impacting minors arise, judges emerge as the final adjudicators. Judges, as final adjudicators, appear to be in the best possible position to determine a child’s best interests and apply the notion fairly and appropriately. However, the concept of a child’s “best interests” is far from uniform, varying across cultures and individual family dynamics. It is an invaluable exercise to review the national case law of different countries to test whether the concept …

The Role Of Foster Care: How Foster Parent Intervention Affects The Child Welfare System, Olivia Mcgrath

Children's Legal Rights Journal

"Every child is entitled to a caregiver who can support the family's efforts toward a successful reunification." The National Training and Development Curriculum for Foster and Adoptive Parents provided by the Children's Bureau clearly states the rights of a child in foster care. A child removed from their biological family's home deserves the efforts of the child welfare system, their biological parents, and their foster parents to work toward returning the child to their home. "Foster to adopt" is a misleading term that contradicts the role of a foster parent. Federal and state legislation defines the primary goal of foster …

The Impact Of Affirmative Action Implemented In Brazilian Universities: Increased Racial Self-Identification Among Brazilians, Natalie Isayan

International Program Papers

No abstract provided.

The Adult Rights-Bearing Archetype And How It Stifles Young People’S Equal Protection, Catherine E. Smith

Scholarly Articles

American constitutional law is defined by a rights-bearing archetype that prioritizes adults—and the Equal Protection Clause is no exception. The Supreme Court has recognized children as constitutional persons and proclaimed that “neither the Fourteenth Amendment nor the Bill of Rights is for adults alone,” but courts mostly see autonomous, rational, individualistic, income-generating grown people as rights-bearers. For the first time, this article reveals six adult-rights-bearing analytical traps that limit children’s equal protection, and proposes jettisoning the rigid Carolene Products test in favor of a nascent youth-based framework. Instead of shoehorning children’s rights into a web of laws and principles designed …

Marine Protected And Conserved Areas: Beneficial Uses Of Artificial Intelligence, Kyla Lucey

Catholic University Journal of Law and Technology

The ocean is an invaluable tool to the survival of humankind and “produces half of the world’s oxygen, absorbs and sequesters one third of the carbon dioxide human activities emit, provides protection from extreme weather events, and provides a source of food and livelihoods.” Without it, communities would suffer, animals would die off, industries would disappear, and the world would be much worse off. The recommendations made here reflect the growing concern the world has adopted regarding the climate crisis. This concern is warranted as many animals have already disappeared, plants are dwindling, and the once wild areas of the …

Renewing Products Liability With Semen, Anita Bernstein

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Ersatz Of The Plain-Meaning Rule Of Statutory Construction In Sackett V. Epa (Ii), Dana Neacsu

Duquesne Law Review

This essay uses the United States Supreme Court second decision in Sackett v. EPA,¹ or Sackett (II), to stress the obvious: judges are tasked with decoding the nation's laws for everyone's understanding. Or, in the words of John Marshall: "It is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is."² Later that century, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. further clarified that judicial duty: "Thereupon we ask, not what this man meant, but what those words would mean in the mouth of a normal speaker of English, using them in circumstances …

Artificial Intelligence Models May Not Have Owners, Devin Owens

Akron Law Student Publications

While new artificial intelligence models see unprecedented investment, serious questions exist about the ownership of the models themselves under existing intellectual property structures. AI models, as compilations of information created largely autonomously by algorithms from sets of training data, may not be suited for the subject matter and inventorship/authorship requirements of traditional patent and copyright protection. The literature assumes that trade secrecy will protect AI models, which are largely kept secret on remote servers away from direct inspection by users, but model extraction attack methods known since 2016 are effective in copying any AI model that can be queried. This …

Existential Advocacy: Lawyering For Ai Safety And The Future Of Humanity, John Bliss

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

Lawyers have played a central role in a wide range of social movements aiming to provide legal voice to marginalized communities. How might this tradition of social-change lawyering apply to the protection of future generations— a population that cannot advocate for themselves? This is a pressing question in the movement to mitigate “existential risk,” which refers to events that would foreclose a meaningful existence for future generations either through human extinction or irreversible trajectories of human suffering. Over the past two decades, an Oxford-based academic community has been researching existential threats that could arise from emerging technology, such as advanced …

Operational Terms, United States Army

United States Army: Field Manuals

Operational Terms, United States Army Field Manual FM 1-02.1

Good Work: Developing A Flourishing-Based Account, Paul Blaschko, Claire Murphy

Notre Dame Journal of Law, Ethics & Public Policy

No abstract provided.

Surveilling Disability, Harming Integration, Prianka Nair

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Don't Fear The Reaper? How Generative Artificial Intelligence Is Changing The Landscape Of Posthumous Communication Technology, Samuel Hoy Brown Vii

American University Law Review

Death and life. Yin and yang. The beginning and the end. But what if the end was only the beginning for those we leave behind?

Advancements in generative artificial intelligence technology have paved the way for “real” conversations with the people we really love. Companies across the globe are tapping into the $100 billion posthumous communication industry through the development of algorithms, chatbots, and in some instances, fully immersive virtual reality experiences with those no longer with us. As our society grapples with understanding the implications of artificial intelligence both generally and in the bereavement process, what may be seen …

Sovereignty, Survival And Climate Justice: Legal And Political Frontiers Of The Blue Pacific Continent, Dame Meg Taylor

American University International Law Review

Grotius Lecturer Dame Meg Taylor and Distinguished Discussant Julian Aguon provided the Twenty-Sixth Annual Grotius Lecture on Wednesday, April 3, 2024 at 5:00 p.m.

Utilizing Public Lands As An Incubator For Innovation In The Modern Consumer Economy, Brenton Villasenor

Loyola Consumer Law Review

No abstract provided.

Algorithmic Financial Regulation: Limits Of Computing Complex Adaptive Systems, Shuping Li

American University Business Law Review

This article examines the potential of and limits to the use of machine learning for financial regulation. Ideally, if we could fully understand the financial system and agree on long- and short-term regulatory goals, we would be able to write code that carries out the computation that extracts proper representations from the data and makes correct regulatory decisions. We cannot do this yet because of limited sources of data, the bias brought by human beings and algorithmic models, and the difficulty of improving uninterpretable models. Furthermore, since law is a combination of merits and facts, there are difficulties in establishing …

Deconstructing Concepts About Nature: An Alternative Perspective For Ecofeminism Based On The Rights Of Nature, Leslie Terrones

PEEL Student Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Democracy And “Elite” Education: Lessons From Another Corner Of The World, J. Mark Ramseyer, Yoshitaka Fukui

Notre Dame Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

The Innocence Standard: Supreme Court Nominees And Sexual Misconduct, Lisa Avalos

Connecticut Law Review

Should the United States Senate allow judicial nominees who have been credibly accused of sexual misconduct to be seated on the Supreme Court? How should we handle these allegations when they arise during the vetting process? Despite the importance of these questions, lawmakers have failed to address them.

The contentious Clarence Thomas hearings in 1991 featured testimony from Professor Anita Hill and did much to raise Americans’ awareness about the prevalence of sexual misconduct in the workplace. Although Professor Hill subsequently called for the Senate to implement a process for addressing future sexual misconduct allegations against Supreme Court nominees, her …

Gender Identity And Birth Certificates: The Surrogacy Nexus, Richard F. Storrow

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

This Article confronts and responds to the weaponization of birth certificates in recent controversies around gender identity by drawing parallels between gender identity and intentional parentage. A juxtaposition of gender identity with parentage identity reveals that they share the common underpinning of self-identification, raising the question why birth certificates are permitted to reflect one’s parentage identity but, as has been suggested in numerous controversies involving transgender litigants, not one’s gender identity. This Article argues that, for the same reasons that a surrogacy arrangement permits the parties to it to define for themselves who are the legal parents of the child …

Developments At The United Nations International Law Commission On Sea-Level Rise, Claudio Grossman Guiloff

American University International Law Review

This article examines some of the challenges presented by the phenomenon of sea-level rise in relation to international law with a focus on the analysis undertaken by the Study Group on Sea-Level Rise (“Study Group”) of the United Nations International Law Commission (“ILC”).