Digital Commons Network^™

Private Equity, Public Utility, Kristen Van De Biezendos, Melissa Powers

Faculty Scholarship

The explosion of investment in artificial intelligence and cryptocurrencies has spurred a data center boom, with politicians jostling to attract companies to build data centers in their states. The potential financial windfall from these data centers has also attracted the attention of private equity firms, which are seeking to capitalize on the potential riches to be made in supplying these projects with electricity by buying regulated public electric utilities. These utilities are unusual in our capitalist system, in that they are subject to both state and federal regulation regarding their duties to serve the public and the amount they can …

Platform Privileges: A Framework For How Antitrust Law Should Police Digital Platforms’ Use Of Material Non-Public Information, Eric H. Siemens

Missouri Law Review

Where the Gilded Age Rockefeller oil monopoly once spurred antitrust reforms in the United States, the tech giants of Silicon Valley have ignited a similar frenzy for reform in legislators and populist scholars today. The unprecedented and rapid growth of digital platforms such as Google, Apple, Facebook, and Amazon has forced policymakers to confront the question of whether traditional antitrust law is sufficient to deal with the new-age giants. This has spurred calls on both sides of the political aisle for increased antitrust enforcement, leading Missouri Senator Josh Hawley to go as far as to argue that “[t]he Big Tech …

Money Over Everything: Reimagining Health Care Enforcement, Jacob T. Elberg

Missouri Law Review

Annual press releases from the Department of Justice trumpet billions of dollars in annual recoveries and optimism that its health care enforcement regime deters even more fraud than it addresses. Yet DOJ’s consistent recoveries can be seen as a sign that fraud continues unabated. While some scholars have questioned the deterrent value of the government’s model of enforcement through civil settlements, little attention has been given to what may be the most important aspect of DOJ’s effort—its focus on money both as the sole measure of harm and the sole means of deterrence.

Humanity Is Evolving Its Consciousness: The Role Of Archetypal Energies As Guides During An Unfolding Weeding Out And Alignment Process, Carroy U. Ferguson

Psychology Faculty Publication Series

Humanity is evolving its consciousness at individual and collective levels.  Given these seemingly tumultuous times, as of this writing (January 2026), to make such a statement may sound like a strange thing to say.  However, I suggest that if you are alive today and if you are reading these words, these are the very times for which you were born—to assist Humanity as it evolves its consciousness with your unique gifts, whatever they may be.  That is, this period of our individual and collective human being-ness may be characterized as an unfolding period of weeding out and alignment with the …

Eugenics And The Carceral State: Progressive-Era Reform & The Creation Of The Modern Criminal Justice System, Laura I. Appleman

Missouri Law Review

No abstract provided.

Fighting The Black Snake: The Dapl And The Case For Indigenous Environmental Stewardship, Kenny Moll

Student Theses 2015-Present

This thesis analyzes the current scope of environmental injustice on Native lands in the U.S. Specifically it examines The Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) and its impacts on the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe of North Dakota. Western colonialism and capitalism have dominated North American ecosystems since their forcible introduction hundreds of years ago, causing the commodification of natural resources and leading to injustices such as that of the “Black Snake.” However, the story of The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s resistance will be analyzed through the framework of Indigenous philosophy and environmental justice. Chapter 1 analyzes the implementation of the DAPL and …

Algorithmic Management At Work: Collective Rights And Eu Regulatory Responses, Mariapaola Aimo, Laura Tebano

Comparative Labor Law & Policy Journal

This article provides a comprehensive analysis of the evolving European regulatory framework concerning Artificial Intelligence and Algorithmic Management in the workplace, focusing on the protection of workers’ collective rights. It first examines the Artificial Intelligence Act, arguing that its product-oriented and risk-based approach inadequately addresses workplace power imbalances. Although employment-related AI is classified as “high risk,” the Artificial Intelligence Act merely grants workers’ representatives a right to information, without ensuring consultation, and reveals a democratic deficit in the implementation phase, where technical standards are shaped by private interests. We then argue that traditional information-and-consultation mechanisms offer limited protection and are …

The Role Of Mass Media In Reportig Natural Disastersn: A Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis Of Gunther-Kress Photojournalism Of The Great Eastern Japan Disaster In The Yomiuri Shinbun Daily 11-13 March 2011, Moh Gandhi Amanullah, Faruk Faruk, Budi Irawanto

International Review of Humanities Studies

This article examines the role of the Japanese newspaper Yomiuri Shinbun in covering the great East Japan disaster on March 11-13, 2011. This study uses a quantitative and qualitative approach, with content analysis methods and Gunther-Kress multimodal critical discourse analysis methods on 98 photos published by the newspaper. The results show that the newspaper published a special edition twice, with photos that did not show photos of the deceased victims, creating a distance between the reader and the subject. Most of the photos were taken from a distance, indicating a lack of interaction and showing that the victims did not …

French-Indonesian Speech Sound Interference In Quality Comparison Of Otter And Descript’S Automatic Transcription, Muhamad Raihan Maulana Putra Mulya, Myrna Laksman-Huntley

International Review of Humanities Studies

Since COVID-19, Zoom has become the primary distance communication platform integrated with automatic transcription tools such as Otter and Descript. However, meetings involving non-native French speakers can generate sound interference that reduces transcription accuracy. This study compares the automatic French transcription quality of both tools in corporate online meetings affected by interference from native Indonesian speakers. The data consists of online meeting recordings of Indonesian speakers in French based on the textbook, Affaires.com. The analysis applies Weinreich’s (2010) interference theory, Le Querler’s (1994) word class theory, Word Error Rate, and Tholly et al.’s (2025) severity levels of automatic French transcription …

From The “Paris Of The East” To Modern Phnom Penh: Colonial Legacies In Cambodian Urban Planning, Jin Ke, Ade Solihat

International Review of Humanities Studies

Phnom Penh was once known as the “Paris of the East,” serving as a major urban center in Indochina during the French colonial period. Colonial authorities shaped the city through functional zoning, planned street networks, and European-style architecture, all of which reflected hierarchies of power embedded in urban space. Despite the extensive destruction caused by the Khmer Rouge regime and subsequent postwar reconstruction, traces of colonial urban planning and architectural heritage remain clearly visible in the contemporary development of Phnom Penh. This study adopts a literature-based approach combined with historical analysis, spatial analysis, and architectural case studies to examine how …

Habitat Destruction: The Where Of Biodiversity Law, Andrew W. Torrance Ph.D., Bill Tomlinson Ph.D.

Akron Law Review

The existence of appropriate habitats is essential to the continued existence of all species with which humans share the Earth. However, humans are currently enacting changes around the globe--anthropogenic environmental disruption--that threaten the habitats of many species. In this article, we first summarize existing habitat-related law in various countries, including legal designation of areas for protection (e.g., national parks), laws that enable conservation organizations to purchase but not utilize development rights, and international treaties such as the Convention on Biological Diversity or the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands of International Importance. We then propose a suite of novel approaches …

Modes Of Liability For Ai-Enabled Crimes In International Criminal Law, Antonio Coco

International Law Studies

As artificial intelligence (AI) technologies become increasingly embedded in human activity, the question of individual accountability for AI-enabled international crimes grows more pressing. This article examines how established doctrines of individual criminal responsibility under international criminal law—particularly the modes of liability recognized in the Statute of the International Criminal Court and in the jurisprudence of international criminal tribunals—may be applied to human actors who interact with AI systems in the commission of core international crimes. Through four hypothetical scenarios, the article explores varying forms of human involvement—from programming to deployment—and assesses whether existing modes of liability, such as perpetration, instigation, …

Mental Health And Conflicts: A Handbook For Empowerment, Dan Berstein

DRI Press

Mental health needs are universal. About half of us will end up having a diagnosable mental health issue at some point during our lives, and we all know what it is like to have a bad day. We also understand conflicts are hard and they often bring out the worst in us. There are simple ways to be ready for when mental health needs arise during conflicts. This handbook introduces different mental health perspectives, dispels common stereotypes, and provides tools for empowering mental health communication. This book is designed to help laypeople as well as professionals across all kinds of …

Bankruptcy Judging After Williamson, Vincent S.J. Buccola

BYU Law Review

This Essay asks how bankruptcy judges ought to orient their substantial, statutory discretion in business reorganization cases. The motivating observation is that bankruptcy law enacts a kind of forced integration of productive assets. To shed light on the contemporary problems that bankruptcy judges face, I thus look to two classic approaches to the economic theory of the firm—from Oliver Williamson and from Oliver Hart. I conclude that nonjudicial institutions have largely surmounted the problems to which their theories point, leaving a different, and probably narrower, set of issues to worry about. Bankruptcy judges who have a notion that their job …

When The Rules Burn: A New Approach To Governmental Discretion In Firefighting Operations, Nathan Li

University of Chicago Legal Forum

The Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA) broadly waives the federal government’s sovereign immunity, but the discretionary function exception (DFE) preserves immunity for acts grounded in judgment or choice. A doctrinal tension arises from the Supreme Court’s instruction in Berkovitz v. United States that the DFE does not apply when a directive “specifically prescribes a course of action.” In high stakes contexts such as wildfire suppression, government actors sometimes deviate from such mandatory directives to make split-second, policy-driven decisions. Yet, in most cases, courts still treat these violations as discretionary acts protected by the DFE, often without explaining how this outcome …

False Claims, Real Threats: Cybersecurity Noncompliance And The False Claims Act’S Materiality Standard, Charlotte Bairey

University of Chicago Legal Forum

This Comment examines the challenges of applying the False Claims Act’s (FCA) materiality standard to cybersecurity noncompliance by federal contractors. Although the Department of Justice’s Civil Cyber-Fraud Initiative seeks to hold government contractors accountable for misrepresenting their adherence to federal cybersecurity standards, courts have inconsistently applied the “holistic” framework for determining materiality established by the Supreme Court in Universal Health Services v. Escobar. Cybersecurity-related FCA claims face unique obstacles when it comes to showing materiality because noncompliance is widespread, national security interests complicate the government’s payment decisions, and government agencies may continue contracting with noncompliant entities out of necessity. This …

Killer Heat: The Disaster Fema Refuses To Own, Robert R.M. Verchick

University of Chicago Legal Forum

Extreme heat, also known as a “heatwave,” is by far the leading weather-related cause of death in the United States.1 In 2023, extreme heat took 2,300 lives—more than all the deaths attributed to hurricanes, earthquakes, tornadoes, droughts, wildfires, winter storms, and floods combined. Harms from extreme heat, which are especially severe in disadvantaged communities, will only increase as the climate continues to break down. Despite these facts, in more than 70 years of comprehensive disaster response, no president has ever declared a “major disaster” based on extreme heat, nor has the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) ever recommended he do …

Vaccines For Pandemics: Lessons From Covid-19 For H5n1 And Beyond, Alison Mccarthy, Michael S. Sinha

University of Chicago Legal Forum

The COVID-19 pandemic brought unprecedented challenges to vaccine development and distribution. Never before has a vaccine been developed so quickly and distributed so rapidly. But compared to past pandemics and public health crises—like polio or even the more recent H1N1 pandemic—the United States government’s COVID-19 vaccine strategy depended greatly on the private sector.

COVID-19 vaccines were credited with saving millions of lives worldwide, but private companies reaped these rewards, retained their patent rights, and profited from the vast and pressing need for their vaccines. Now, five years later, not every company views its vaccine work as a success. Financial hits …

Liability For Disaster Risks, Daniel A. Farber

University of Chicago Legal Forum

A growing body of law addresses liability for harms caused by disasters. The bases for liability are diverse: common law torts, statutes covering specific risks, and takings doctrine. Litigation can involve government or private defendants, while the disaster could be anything from an oil spill to a flood. This Article maps this complex legal terrain and discusses three cross-cutting themes in disaster liability. One theme is the action/inaction distinction, which can create a perverse incentive to postpone or forego mitigation efforts. The second theme involves the interplay between legislatures and courts in designing and implementing liability rules. The final theme …

Health Care Financialization, Erin C. Fuse Brown, Hayden Rooke-Ley

Journal of Health Care Law and Policy

No abstract provided.

Adaptable Ai Apprentices: Law Practice Sidekicks, Henry H. Perritt, Jr.

University of Miami Law Review

Two case studies involving motorcycle-accident negligence and administrative law in the context of drone regulation violations explore the transformative potential of generative AI in legal practice. Four AI engines—DeepSeek, Claude, ChatGPT, and Grok—were asked to analyze transcripts of client interviews by identifying legal claims and assessing their strengths and weaknesses.

The results demonstrate that current AI technology effectively processes natural-language client interviews, identifies viable legal theories, and assesses claim strengths and weaknesses in both tort and administrative law contexts. The AI systems demonstrated proficiency in parsing legal theories and citing relevant statutes and administrative regulations, though case citations were frequently …

Coming Disruptions In Corporate Law, Douglas Sarro, Edward J. Waitzer

All Papers

Corporate law’s dynamism precludes bold predictions about its future. Instead, we set out to highlight principles relevant to its trajectory and frame looming, unresolved issues. In that vein, artificial intelligence and other digital technologies raise considerable new opportunities for directors to enhance their oversight and for shareholders to be better informed and make more meaningful use of their governance rights. At the same time, the potential for wide-scale automation of corporate activities via these technologies amplifies corporate power and resulting risks of harm, adding new urgency to past prescriptions for rethinking the relationship between corporate and other areas of law …

Brief Of Amicus Curiae Gregory Klass In Support Of Respondents In Veolia Water Technologies, Inc. V. Antero Treatment Llc, No. 2025sc21 (Colo. Jan. 20, 2026)., Gregory Klass

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In September, 2025, the Colorado Supreme Court granted certiorari in Veolia Water Tech. v. Antero Treatment to resolve the following question: “Whether the economic loss rule bars a fraud claim when the parties were in a contractual relationship, the fraud claim seeks the same relief as the plaintiff’s contract claim, and the fraud concerns the defendant’s performance under the contract.”

This scholar’s amicus brief addresses four questions under Colorado law: (1) Does an exploratory contract to determine whether a transaction is desirable prevent liability in tort for fraud in the inducement of the principal contract? (2) What is the significance …

Adversarial Comparativism: The Role Of Emotion In United States–China Comparative Law Projects, Matthew S. Erie

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

Contemporary comparative law operates across a landscape riven by protectionism, nationalism, and securitization, all of which complicate comparative law projects. Nowhere is this more evident than in the U.S-China relationship, the most important bilateral relationship in the world. Despite economic “delinking,” the U.S. and Chinese legal systems are interacting more than ever; however, how this interaction works is poorly understood. This Article proposes “adversarial comparativism” to explain this dynamic. It is an approach to comparative law and politics that includes different modalities: competition, aggressiveness, transactionalism, misunderstanding, opportunism, and gaslighting. Many of these are underpinned by emotion. As such, while this …

Patent Pending: How The Current Patent Utility Requirement Hinders Biotechnological Innovation, Madison Drlik

Journal of Law and Health

The legal system is always playing catch up to adapt to new legal landscapes, doctrines, and technology; however, patent law needs help to compete with biotechnological research in the race towards innovation. Biotechnological research in the realm of human health and medicine often involves the use of therapeutic drugs. The field of healthcare biotechnology takes biological systems and processes and generates novel, creative solutions to a number of human health conditions. However, the translation process for a new drug, therapy, or process is long and expensive which requires investors to help the researchers and scientists move their creations from inception …

Ai-Enabled Decision-Support Systems In The Joint Targeting Cycle: Legal Challenges, Risks, And The Human(E) Dimension, Jessica Dorsey, Marta Bo

International Law Studies

Israel’s military campaign in Gaza as well as ongoing conflicts in Ukraine, Yemen, Iraq, and Syria include the reported military use of AI-enabled decision-support systems (AI-DSS) within the joint targeting cycle (JTC). These tools use AI techniques to collect and analyze data, provide information about the operational environment, and make actionable recommendations with the aim of aiding military decision-makers in evaluating factors relevant to legal compliance, such as taking precautions and ensuring proportionality in attacks. These systems are often touted as being simply a human aid and, as such, have flown largely under the radar regarding regulation as they are …

Unlocking The Benefits Of Transparent And Reusable Science For Climate Risk Management, Adam B. Pollack, Lisa Auermuller, Casey D. Burleyson, Jentry Campbell, Madison Condon, Courtney Cooper, Matteo Coronese, Sönke Dangendorf, James Doss-Gollin, Prabhat Hegde, Casey Helgeson, Robert E. Kopp, Jan Kwakkel, Corey Lesk, Justin Mankin, Robert E. Nicholas, Jennie Rice, Samantha Roth, Vivek Srikrishnan, Moira Scheeler, Nancy Tuana, Chris Vernon, Mengqi Zhao, Klaus Keller

Faculty Scholarship

People around the world seek climate risk information to guide their decisions. For instance, projections about future flood risk inform where households choose to live, how lenders manage credit risks, and which communities receive federal funding. Yet data limitations and fundamental validation challenges raise important concerns about the reliability of such projections. The principles of transparency and reusability help address these concerns by enabling scrutiny of assumptions and methods, development of foundational data and tools, and consistent application of evaluation standards. While there is ongoing debate about how much transparency commercial climate risk services should provide, many expect noncommercial actors …

Algorithmic Editors: Section 230, Big Tech, And The Need For Clarity, Richard Gruters

Seton Hall Law Review

No abstract provided.

A Case Comment On Cryogas Equipment V. Inox India, Eashan Ghosh

Indian Journal of Law and Technology

Composite claims for copyright and design have long posed conceptual difficulties under Indian law. A pointed attempt by the Supreme Court in Cryogas Equipment v Inox India (‘Cryogas’) to resolve these difficulties, therefore, is of considerable interest.

In this Comment, I examine Cryogas in detail. I find that, despite adopting a schematic approach that is promising on the surface, Cryogas offers little assistance in untangling the constituent portions of copyright-design claims. For one, its test for telling apart artistic works from designs is entirely self-referential and requires a pre-existing understanding of what outputs statutorily constitute ‘artistic works’ and …

The Evidence Machine: Rethinking Admissibility And Privacy In India's Ai Surveillance State, Samyukta Ramaswamy

Indian Journal of Law and Technology

The proliferation of artificial intelligence (‘AI’) surveillance technologies that utilise machine learning (‘ML’) capabilities to gather and process information to derive insights about individuals has transformed the surveillance landscape by enabling governments and private entities to engage in increasingly pervasive monitoring and data-driven profiling. In India, this transformation is compounded by the presence of executive-controlled surveillance mechanisms under the legal framework of the Telecommunications Act 2023, the Telecommunications (Procedures and Safeguards for Lawful Interception of Messages) Rules 2024, and the Digital Personal Data Protection Act 2023, amongst others, which authorises wide-ranging data interception and dragnet surveillance while exempting government agencies …