Digital Commons Network^™

Labour Law, Technology, And The Attack On The Rules-Based-Order, Valerio De Stefano

Conference Papers

This paper argues that current debates on artificial intelligence and algorithmic management at work are also debates about private power, managerial prerogative, and democracy. It situates recent attacks by major technology companies and their political allies on the European Union and other rule-based international institutions within a broader struggle over who should regulate technology and govern society. It contends that the anti-democratic turn of parts of the tech world is closely connected to authoritarian ideas about work, hierarchy, and obedience. The workplace is one of the principal sites where authority is exercised, surveillance normalised, and habits of subordination formed, with …

Leaving Room For Rehabilitation In The Theory And Practice Of Criminal Restitution, Jessica C. Frisina

Maryland Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Intangible Nagpra, Trevor Reed

Maryland Law Review

No abstract provided.

Wastewater Monitoring And Informed Consent: Interrogating The Research/Surveillance Binary Under The Common Rule, Morgan Cole

Maryland Law Review

No abstract provided.

Prompt Engineering For Lawyers: Blue Pill Or Red Pill: Hallucinations Risks And An Introduction To Prompt Engineering, Cliff Mckinney

Arkansas Law Notes

In The Matrix, Neo’s choice between the blue pill and the red pill is essentially a choice between a comfortable illusion and an unsettling reality. Lawyers now face a similar decision with artificial intelligence. They can take the blue pill: ignore artificial intelligence or treat it like just another search engine, continuing a comfortable illusion that the new technology may not transform the practice of law. Or lawyers can take the red pill: acknowledge that artificial intelligence will transform the practice of law and learn how to use it competently, ethically, and effectively.

This Article is for those who choose …

Crossed Wires: How Current Federal Laws And Regulations Are Inadequate At Protecting Consumers From Sophisticated Wire Fraud Schemes, Emily Brafman

University of Miami Business Law Review

The shift to digital banking has redefined the financial services industry, allowing consumers to conduct everyday transactions, such as wire transfers, at the touch of a button. However, this convenience comes at a steep price: as digital banking becomes the norm, consumers are increasingly exploited by sophisticated cybercriminals, enabled by a legal system that is ill-equipped to handle modern phishing and wire fraud schemes, ultimately draining consumer accounts. Unfortunately, existing protective measures, such as the Electronic Funds Transfer Act (EFTA) and the Uniform Commercial Code (UCC), have proven to be outdated and inadequate to address the unique risks posed by …

Which Place Governs A Placeless Place: Predicting Jurisdiction In The Metaverse, Morrease Leftwich

University of Miami Business Law Review

Oliver Wendell Holmes’s famous characterization of legal study as “prediction” takes on renewed significance as courts confront novel jurisdictional questions in blockchain cases, particularly as technological innovation accelerates and transforms the digital landscape. Among these developments is the metaverse, which combines blockchain financial technology with early visions of the internet as a distinct realm for social interaction.

Concrete problems already emerging in these immersive environments underscore the stakes: Platform‑engineered anonymity and scale make user‑to‑user harms effectively unpoliceable, what recent work calls the “veil of scale,” frustrating redress even when laws apply. Amid this difficulty in identifying bad actors, scholars have …

Bruen, Levels Of Generality, And Our Historical Tradition Of The Regulatory “Why”, Kevin K. Wang

UC Law Constitutional Quarterly

To pass Second Amendment muster under New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, gun laws encompassed by the Amendment’s plain text must align with our nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation. A challenged law comports with history and tradition when it is sufficiently analogous to historical regulations along two metrics: “how” and “why” the regulation burdens the right to keep and bear arms.

One glaring ambiguity leftover from Bruen is the level of generality at which courts, when analogizing between laws past and present, must frame a regulation’s “how” and “why”—an issue of major consequence. Characterizing the “how” …

The Body At The Mercy Of The State: Sama V. Hannigan And The Fragmented Right To Refuse Across State Lines, Mallory Yeates

UC Law Constitutional Quarterly

Courts have long recognized bodily autonomy as a core constitutional value. Yet, doctrine governing reproductive healthcare tells a different story. Sama v. Hannigan exposes the fragility of the right to refuse medical treatment, particularly for incarcerated patients whose claims must survive the demanding standard of qualified immunity. When physicians removed Carrie Rahat Sama’s ovary despite her explicit refusal, her constitutional claim failed because no precedent with sufficiently similar facts had previously condemned such conduct. This case reveals how the “clearly established” prong of qualified immunity can foreclose redress for blatant violations of autonomy.

This Note argues that the viability of …

United States V. Skrmetti: On Realism, Reason, And Hope, Marc Spindelman

UC Law Constitutional Quarterly

No abstract provided.

Reimagining Compassionate Release: A Lexicon For Change, Tom Nicklin, Sarah L. Cooper

Akron Law Review

No abstract provided.

Adjudicating 35 U.S.C. § 112(A): The "Person Of Ordinary Skill In The Art" Conundrum And How To Address It, Matthew T. Simmons

Texas A&M Law Review

A viable alternative for adjudicating issues under 35 U.S.C. § 112(a) of the Patent Act is needed due to the difficulties of trying these issues to a lay jury. Congress agreed when it enacted the America Invents Act (“AIA”), which created alternative proceedings for challenging patent validity post-grant, including post-grant review (“PGR”) and inter partes review (“IPR”). In theory, PGR proceedings permit the Patent Trial and Appeal Board of the United States Patent and Trademark Office to adjudicate whether one or more claims of a patent are valid on § 112 grounds. In practice, history has shown that the limitations …

Hester's Dubious Roots And Legacy: Open Fields Doctrine Under Scrutiny, Laura K. Donohue

Texas A&M Law Review

For over a century, open fields doctrine has shaped Fourth Amendment law, denying people the right to be secure on their own property. Its impact has steadily expanded, with the result that, by some estimates, the government can now engage in warrantless surveillance of some 96% of private land and buildings regardless of fences, postings, the distance from public roads or byways, or the use to which the property is put. An originalist approach throws the doctrine into disarray: at the time of the Founding, common law protected the curtilage, which extended to the fields, barns, storehouses, and other buildings …

"The Silence Of The Farms": Suppressing Speech And Trampling Transparency To Shield Big Ag, Erin Okuno

Texas A&M Law Review

Do you really know where your last meal came from and whether it was safe to eat? Most people are not aware of the often appalling conditions at agricultural production facilities (aptly known as “factory farms”), including worker injuries and abuse, contaminated food, and environmental pollution, as well as the horrific ways in which the animals are kept, raised, and slaughtered. In the face of these concerning conditions and alarmingly frequent food recalls—including millions of pounds of contaminated meat—it would seem prudent to increase transparency at factory farms, but historically, they have operated behind a shield of secrecy due to …

Regulating Data Monetization, Peter Ormerod

Texas A&M Law Review

Companies today generate hundreds of billions of dollars each year by collecting massive amounts of information about human activity and wringing predictive insights from it. The scale of these influence activities is stunning: your driving habits dictate your car insurance rates, buying the wrong thing will increase your borrowing costs, and the information ecosystem you inhabit is finely tuned for keeping your attention available to the highest bidder.

States have recently enacted new consumer privacy laws that confer on individuals a series of generally applicable rights over their personal information. But this approach has proven ineffective at disciplining firms’ data …

A Revolution Of Rational Civility, Honorable Douglas S. Lang

St. Mary's Journal on Legal Malpractice & Ethics

This Article addresses a blind spot in the theorizing and debate over originalist interpretation: the implications of rules of legal ethics.  For the few originalist theorists who take the practical side of originalism seriously, attorneys’ rules of professional conduct are almost entirely absent from the discussion.  Incivility is at epidemic proportions in our society.  That condition is unacceptable.

This Article argues for each of us, lawyers and everyone in all walks of life, to take action and not merely offer lip service to push back against incivility.  We must repel incivility.  This “push back” is not compelled alone by written …

Brief Of The American Immigration Lawyers Association And Immigration Law Scholars As Amici Curiae In Support Of Respondents, Lindsay Nash

Amicus Briefs

Amicus curiae brief submitted by the American Immigration Lawyers Association and immigration law scholars in support of the respondents in Mullin v. Doe and Trump v. Miot before the Supreme Court of the United States. The brief argues that the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) statute strictly limits the Executive Branch's authority to terminate TPS designations and requires continuation of protection unless the statutory conditions justifying designation no longer exist. The amici further contend that TPS serves a critical humanitarian function by protecting individuals from removal, detention, and loss of work authorization while conditions in designated countries remain unsafe.

Racial Bias In Jury Selection: The Fundamental And Pragmatic Issues With Batson Challenges, Abigail Lindsey

Arkansas Law Review

In April of 2024, the District Attorney of Alameda County in California revealed evidence of “serious misconduct” by several prosecutors who oversaw a murder trial in 1993, in which the jury found a Black man guilty and sentenced him to death. The evidence of misconduct included the prosecutors’ trial notes. The notes that have been released suggest the prosecutors struck potential jurors from the jury pool because they were Jewish—the notes include: “I liked him better than any other Jew but no way.” The District Attorney is now looking into the county’s other death penalty cases, some of which took …

Joint Representation Of Spouses And Romantic Partners: Ethical Considerations For Estate Planners, Elizabeth R. Carter

Arkansas Law Review

Attorneys routinely represent married couples jointly in estate planning matters. Joint representation of married couples—and, increasingly, unmarried romantic partners—is a routine practice for most estate planners. This practice was not always so widely accepted. Beginning in the 1990s, scholars, attorneys, and interest groups successfully advocated for the widespread acceptance of joint representation in estate planning. In a joint representation, the attorney represents both individuals in a collaborative form of representation where confidences and goals are shared between both clients and the attorney. Proponents of joint representation in the estate planning setting argue that it reduces costs, is more consistent with …

What The Free-Roaming Cats Dragged In: Regulatory Concerns With Privatized Local Services, Jonathan Korger

Northwestern University Law Review

The United States entrusts local governments to provide citizens with a wide range of public services, and animal control makes up a small but essential piece of these local responsibilities. In recent years, American localities have largely privatized how they manage the nation’s growing free-roaming cat population, relying primarily on animal-loving volunteers and a controversial practice called trap-neuter-return (TNR). Academics have long debated the merits of privatization, but TNR raises a novel question: how should local governments think about regulating a privatized public service when altruism, instead of profits, motivates the service deliverer? This Note argues that TNR demonstrates the …

Should Judicial Opinions Be Read Like Statutes?, Margaret H. Lemos

Northwestern University Law Review

Should judicial opinions be interpreted with an eye to their purpose, context, or the intent of their authors, or should interpreters focus on the ordinary meaning of the text? Opinions present the same sorts of interpretive puzzles as other legal texts, and yet they have been omitted from the debates over interpretive methodology that dominate the fields of constitutional and statutory interpretation. The omission is no accident: the Supreme Court has stated repeatedly—and with increasing frequency in recent years—that judicial opinions are not to be read like statutes. Yet neither courts nor commentators have explained why the principles that ground …

Living To Die: Life Imprisonment Without Remission Or Parole In India, Preeti Pratishruti Dash, Rushil Batra

Articles

This article critically examines the Supreme Court of India’s use of life imprisonment without the possibility of remission or parole (LWORP) as a sentencing alternative to the death penalty. While the Constitution Bench in V Sriharan v Union of India (2015) upheld the constitutionality of such sentences, it did not articulate principled standards governing their imposition. This article argues that the absence of such standards has produced a vacuum in LWORP sentencing. To substantiate this claim, we analyse fifty-three Supreme Court judgments delivered between 2016 and 2024 in which death sentences were commuted to LWORP. The analysis reveals widespread inconsistency …

Living To Die: Life Imprisonment Without Remission Or Parole In India, Preeti Pratishruti Dash, Rushil Batra

Articles

This article critically examines the Supreme Court of India’s use of life imprisonment without the possibility of remission or parole (LWORP) as a sentencing alternative to the death penalty. While the Constitution Bench in V Sriharan vs Union of India (2015) upheld the constitutionality of such sentences, it did not articulate principled standards governing their imposition. This article argues that the absence of such standards has produced a vacuum in LWORP sentencing. To substantiate this claim, we analyse fifty-three Supreme Court judgments delivered between 2016 and 2024 in which death sentences were commuted to LWORP. The analysis reveals widespread inconsistency …

America Has A Problem: How The Student Criminalization Nexus Helps Maintain America's Modern Caste System, Kaela Allen

Northwestern Law Journal des Refusés

No abstract provided.

Impurity And Immigration: The Case Of Pro-Biafran Igbo Activists In Japan, Nnamdi M. Jogwe

Northwestern Law Journal des Refusés

No abstract provided.

Citizenship As Control: Lessons From Athenian Democracy And Modern U.S. Immigration Practices, Máire Sullivan

Northwestern Law Journal des Refusés

No abstract provided.

Advice For Incorporating Ai Tools Into Your Legal Practice, Celia Bigoness, Robert A. Mackenzie, David J. Reiss

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

We have been speaking with many lawyers and law students about using generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools in their legal practice. We are struck by the fact that many of them have not been experimenting much, if at all, with the tools that are available to them - although many acknowledge that their clients are increasingly integrating generative AI into their businesses. We have been integrating a lot of these tools into our own professional lives, and here are some tips to help lawyers and law students get comfortable with AI tools that can help them, in big ways and …

Ai's Double Edged Sword: Fighting Against Synthetic Csam, Shekhinah Adra Green

Cybersecurity Undergraduate Research Showcase

The rapid advancements in generative artificial intelligence has introduced new challenges in the production and distribution of synthetic child sexual abuse material (CSAM). AI has the capabilities of creating highly realistic imagery and videos, which  raises serious legal and ethical concerns, increasing the risk of harm, exploitation, and revictimization.

This paper discusses the legal improvements needed in order to lower the change of legal loopholes, how digital forensic analyst use advanced tools to identify and investigate synthetic material, and different methods to start the reduction of synthetic CSAM.

Fool's Gold: The Stibnite Gold Project, Critical Minerals, And The Public Health Perils Of Antiquated Hardrock Mining Laws, Faith Quigley

Idaho Law Review

The proposed reopening of the Stibnite Gold Mine in Idaho has been heralded as a model for the future of modern hardrock mining. This project has received national interest in light of the growing domestic demand for critical minerals essential to climate-friendly energy technologies and national security. But beneath its green branding lies a deeper legal and public health crisis. Operating under the General Mining Law of 1872—a relic of frontier-era resource exploitation—the Stibnite Gold Project exemplifies how an outdated legal framework continues to enable environmental and human harm. While policymakers tout the domestic necessity of critical minerals, the Stibnite …

Facing The Accused: The Confrontation Clause And Protecting Child Victims Of Sexual Abuse, Raquel Pearson

Idaho Law Review

The Sixth Amendment’s Confrontation Clause provides individuals the right to confront witnesses testifying against them. For decades, Idaho case law has grappled with the delicate balance between protecting victims of sexual assault and upholding defendants’ rights to cross examine their accusers. This delicate balance is further exacerbated when sexual assault cases involve minors, particularly in deciding whether victim statements implicate the Confrontation Clause. The Idaho Supreme Court considers the totality of the circumstances when evaluating whether a defendant’s right to confront a witness has been violated, but the standard for when the Clause is triggered remains unclear.

This Note seeks …