Digital Commons Network^™

Ai Pirated My Art And Birthed Infringing Works, And Other Metaphors That Confound Copyright Law, Michael D. Murray

Akron Law Review

No abstract provided.

Platforms, Power, And The Public Square: The Debate On Editorial Rights In The Age Of Social Media, Donovan Smith

St. Thomas Law Review

Social media has taken a hold on society and continues to tighten its grip; its influence is undeniable. Today, billions of people all over the world use social media for news, weather updates, communication, commerce, and self-expression every day. With the increasing dependence on social media, it is essential that the civil liberties and fundamental rights of social media users remain protected. Over the last decade, censorship of users and content on social media has become a key political talking point, especially when coupled with concurring events like elections and global pandemics. But is any of this censorship even allowed? …

The Trial Of Socrates, Jonathan Van Patten

Faculty Publications

In many important ways, the trial of Socrates was not just the trial of the century, nor even the trial of the millennium. It predated the trial of Jesus, which is important for many other reasons, but Socrates’ contribution to how we think about justice and the rule of law is without equal. This Article explores the ways that this fifth-century B.C. trial, located geographically on the margin of what came to be known as the West, is at the center of what makes us a civilization. It is not simply about the drama, nor the politics of free inquiry, …

Could Nbcuniversal's Peacock Streaming Of Nfl Games Be Heading Towards Antitrust Violations Like Those Facing Live Nation And Ticketmaster?, Pamela B. Urlacher

Marquette Sports Law Review

No abstract provided.

Ai Can't Adlib: Theorizing An Improvisation Carveout In The Work For Hire Doctrine, Audrey Pope

IP Theory

AI-generated actors and digital replicas are an increasingly pressing concern in the filmmaking industry. While this technology is only one of the myriad ways that generative AI is set to change Hollywood, debates about its use reflect a throughline in debates about AI generally: Can this technology do a convincing, much less desirable, job of what humans have done before? This Article argues that, at least in one particular context, the answer is no. It focuses on the art of adlibbing. It explains the unique position of improvisation within copyright law and proposes one mechanism—a carveout in the work for …

My Friend Dan Subotnik, Harvey Gilmore

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Trial Of Socrates, Jonathan K. Van Patten

South Dakota Law Review

In many important ways, the trial of Socrates was not just the trial of the century, nor even the trial of the millennium. It predated the trial of Jesus, which is important for many other reasons, but Socrates’ contribution to how we think about justice and the rule of law is without equal. This Article explores the ways that this fifth-century B.C. trial, located geographically on the margin of what came to be known as the West, is at the center of what makes us a civilization. It is not simply about the drama, nor the politics of free inquiry, …

Why Washington’S Attempt To Force Priests To Violate Core Tenet Of Faith Was Doomed To Fail, Joseph Cammarota

Student Works

No abstract provided.

Human Or Machine? Evaluating Authorship In The Age Of Generative Ai, Risauris Sanz-Garcia

Nova Law Review

No abstract provided.

Copyright Eligibility For Ai Works Under United States Law, Roger V. Skalbeck

Law Faculty Publications

This article examines copyright eligibility for works that incorporate generative AI elements under United States law, explaining that such works may be protected only to the extent they contain human-authored expression.  This expression can appear as creative selection, arrangement, editing, or other expressive contributions, while unedited or autonomously generated AI output is not copyrightable. The article highlights how the U.S. Copyright Office’s registration and review system, through disclosure requirements, refusals, and public registration records, creates meaningful evidence about boundaries of copyright protection for AI-assisted works. The article contrasts this U.S. registration framework with other legal systems, including European jurisdictions such …

Judging Art: Copyright, Creativity, And The Meaning Of Art In The Eyes Of The Law, Scott J. Sholder

Marquette Intellectual Property & Innovation Law Review

This Article examines how copyright law defines creativity and authorship in an era of rapidly evolving artistic expression, with particular emphasis on generative artificial intelligence. Tracing the development of U.S. copyright law from its constitutional foundations through modern case law, the author explores the legal standards governing originality, fixation, human authorship, and the idea-expression dichotomy. The Article analyzes how these principles have been applied to both traditional and emerging forms of art, including conceptual, performance, appropriation, digital, and AI-generated works. It also examines recent guidance from the U.S. Copyright Office and evolving judicial decisions addressing the copyrightability of AI-assisted and …

Virtual Harm, Real Consequences: Constitutional Justifications For Criminalizing Ai-Generated Child Pornography, Adam Abdin

FIU Law Review

Advances in artificial intelligence (AI) have enabled the creation of hyper-realistic child sexual abuse images without any real child involved. These AI-generated depictions pose a unique challenge: they replicate the most pernicious form of pornography—child pornography—while potentially being claimed as “speech” immune from regulation. This paper argues that it is both constitutionally permissible and morally imperative to criminalize AI-generated child pornography. This article presents two doctrinal pathways to justify a ban. First, such content can be treated as unprotected speech under existing First Amendment exceptions. Courts have long held that child pornography and obscenity lie outside First Amendment protection, and …

Mandatory Cooperation Under International Law, Evan J. Criddle, Evan Fox-Decent

Faculty Publications

Humanity in the twenty-first century faces serious global challenges and crises, including pandemics, nuclear proliferation, violent extremism, refugee migration, and climate change. None of these calamities can be averted without robust international cooperation. Yet, national leaders often assume that because their states are sovereign under international law, they are free to opt in or out of international cooperation as they see fit. This book challenges conventional wisdom by showing that international law requires states to cooperate with one another to address matters of international concern – even in the absence of treaty-based obligations. Within the past several decades, requirements to …

When Machines Collude: Rebooting Antitrust Law For The Age Of Algorithmic Markets, William K. Knight

Emory Law Journal

Increasingly, our lives are being dominated by algorithms. From social media feeds to credit scoring, algorithms play a major role in our day-to-day lives, whether we recognize it or not. An emerging issue in the modern technology landscape is the potential for algorithms to cause anticompetitive harm to free markets. As pricing algorithms become more advanced and more widespread, they could facilitate collusive arrangements in a manner that bypasses antitrust laws, thereby adversely impacting consumers through higher prices. American competition law, primarily governed by the Sherman Antitrust Act, suffers from glaring deficiencies and ambiguities that remain unresolved, leaving it manifestly …

Cecil Maxwell Deason Collection, University Of Alabama School Of Law

Manuscript Collections

This collection contains personal papers and photographs from Alabama state trial court judge and assistant solicitor Cecil Maxwell Deason from his times serving in the Pacific theatre of WWII, on the bench in Jefferson county, and in the solicitor's office.

Fluid Agency In Ai Systems: A Case For Functional Equivalence In Copyright, Patent, And Tort, Anirban Mukherjee, Hannah H. Chang

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Modern Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems exhibit fluid agency in multi-step workflows: lacking human-like consciousness or culpability, yet they display behavior that is (i) stochastic (probabilistic and path‑dependent), (ii) dynamic (co‑evolving with user interaction), and (iii) adaptive (able to reorient across contexts). These properties generate valuable outputs but collapse attribution, irreducibly entangling human and machine inputs. Doctrines that assume traceable provenance—authorship, inventorship, and liability—fracture under this unmappability, yielding ownership gaps and moral “crumple zones.”This Article argues that only functional equivalence stabilizes doctrine under unmappability: Where provenance is indeterminate, legal frameworks should treat human and AI contributions as equivalent for allocating rights …

Making The Law Work: Protecting Classical Ballet Choreographers' Artistic Legacies Through Copyright And Estates Laws, Alice Darakhchava

Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Privatising International (Organizations) Law, Melissa (M.J.) Durkee

Scholarship@WashULaw

This essay explores the increasing role of private commercial actors within international organizations (IOs) and the implications for international law. Once conceived as state-centred institutions, IOs now routinely involve corporations, trade associations, and philanthropic foundations in lawmaking, policy-setting, financing, and implementation. These actors participate through multiple channels: as observers, delegates, stakeholders, funders, and partners. While private involvement has historical precedents, its contemporary scale and formalization mark a significant transformation in global governance. International law, however, offers little guidance on the boundary between public and private authority, leaving legitimacy concerns unresolved. To evaluate privatization, the article identifies two competing logics: a …

Dancing On The Edge Of Copyright: Why Copyright Law Should Protect Short Dance Routines, Tianai Song

Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal

The note argues that the Copyright Act should be amended to extend legal protection to short dance routines, regardless of their complexity or duration. This expansion aims to prevent the unauthorized appropriation of distinctive movements and ensure that creators, particularly those from Black and marginalized communities, are fairly recognized and compensated.

Authorship Nonsense, Jessica Litman

Articles

Copyright law’s primary device for promoting progress is to bestow rights on the authors of works. Rights vest automatically and last for a very long time. Authors’ choices to retain, license, or transfer those rights fuel opportunities to communicate the works to their audiences. The copyright system’s mechanisms for determining who authored works (and therefore automatically obtained copyright rights) should be both accurate and reliable, since misidentifications will undermine the law’s working as intended.

This article examines authors’ creation of works and copyright law’s handling of authorship disputes. Many works result from creative collaboration. Although the copyright statute incorporates mechanisms …

Don't Be A Drag, It's Not Obscene: Examining The Use Of The Word "Obscene" To Ban Drag Shows, Stephanie Perez

Chicago-Kent Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Supreme Court's Gay Rights-Religious Liberty Contortions, Andrew Koppelman

Chicago-Kent Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Mansion That Disney Built: Revitalizing Antitrust Enforcement In The Film Industry, Drew Chandler

BYU Law Review

The Paramount Decrees, for over sixty years, barred the major film studios from anticompetitive practices like vertical integration and block-booking. The Department of Justice’s decision to sunset the Decrees in 2020 came prematurely, with the movie industry today rocked by major mergers, the advent of streaming, the pandemic, lessened output due to industry strikes, and changing consumer tastes. True, the industry has changed since 1948, but those very changes call for regulatory intervention to avoid repeating the problems of the past.

For example, Disney’s recent merger and acquisition activity, together with the dominance of its in-house streaming service Disney+, is …

Law As Performance: Sovereignty, Legal Indeterminacy, And The Chinese Private Security Industry, Alexandrya Pouliot

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines how the legal indeterminacy of international law facilitates state evasion of accountability through the use of private military and security companies (PMSCs) as proxies in extraterritorial operations. Focusing on China’s deployment of PSCs to safeguard Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) projects, it argues that ambiguities within the doctrines of attribution and responsibility under the Articles on the Responsibility of States for Internationally Wrongful Acts (ARSIWA) create a permissive legal environment that enables states to outsource coercive functions without incurring formal liability. Drawing upon Hobbesian Realist theory, Carl Schmitt’s concept of the sovereign exception, and insights from Critical …

Privacy As Professional Identity, Einat Albin

Comparative Labor Law & Policy Journal

This article explores an important course of action to safeguarding privacy in the workplace, grounded in the professional identity of workers and their corresponding moral and ethical duties towards clients or patients. Described as “privacy as professional identity,” this concept is developed through two key contributions. First, the article argues that workers who are ethically and legally obligated to protect the confidentiality and privacy of their clients or patients — such as psychologists and lawyers — also inherently safeguard their own personal privacy. This argument is substantiated through illustrative examples and anchored in theoretical frameworks concerning the right to privacy. …

The Power Of Public Vision In Adr, Courtney Verbick

Cardozo Journal of Conflict Resolution (CJCR) Blog

Mediation, a form of alternative dispute resolution (“ADR”), resolves disputes outside of court with a neutral third party that facilitates negotiations. Its confidentiality promotes fairness, neutrality, and candor. This is appealing to parties when litigation could result in bad publicity, and is common in labor disputes, especially during union strikes, where open dialogue is essential.

The print edition of the issue has also been released. This post was originally published on the Cardozo Journal of Conflict Resolution website on November 24, 2025

The Fearless Decision And The Future Of Race-Conscious Charities, Chenglin Liu

Cleveland State Law Review

Historically, courts tended to differentiate between invidious discrimination against racial minorities and benign discrimination against whites in the context of affirmative action movements. With the social movements galvanized by the conservatives and the change of composition of the Supreme Courts and lower courts, the feasibility of race-conscious measures aimed at helping minorities is substantially reduced. The conservatives’ win in Fearless, coupled with the Trump Administration’s attacks on DEI, have produced a self-censoring effect on charitable organizations. Because of these threats, race-conscious charities will have to modify their practices to become more “inclusive” or face legal challenges from conservatives.

Surviving The Post–Biafran War By Navigating The Igbo People's Igba-Boi Apprenticeship Model Of Entrepreneurship, Chiemela Victor Amaechi, Ugo Pascal Onumonu, Salmia Binti Beddu, Ikechi Mgbeoji

Articles & Book Chapters

After the Nigerian Civil War, the Biafrans started from scratch through trades, mostly adopting the igba-boi apprenticeship system in Nigeria. This paper examines the impact of the igba-boi entrepreneurship system in post-Biafra for the survival of the Igbo identity. Historical–analytical and documentary methods were adopted in this investigation, through primary and secondary sources. This study found different phases of the igba-boi- apprenticeship model, which was adopted in entrepreneurship by the Igbos to survive after the war. This study found that economic towns in Eastern Nigeria, like Aba, Owerri, Enugu, Nnewi, Onitsha and Awka, have enhanced economic development. Also, it found …

2025 Annual Justice Festival Program, Caudill College Of Arts, Humanities, And Social Sciences

Justice Festival at Morehead State University

The program for the 5th Annual Justice Festival held on November 18, 2023 on the campus of Morehead State University.

First Amendment Exceptions To Otherwise Valid Laws: A Doctrinal And Meta-Doctrinal Perspective, Richard H. Fallon Jr.

Northwestern University Law Review

When do the First Amendment’s Free Speech and Free Exercise Clauses require exceptions to generally valid laws? Recently, the Supreme Court has upheld a number of such exceptions, which excuse some speakers and religiously motivated actors from legal duties that apply to others, including in prominent cases under antidiscrimination statutes and emergency pandemic regulations. By contrast, other landmark cases––such as United States v. O’Brien and Employment Division v. Smith—insist that First Amendment exceptions should be rare.

In analyzing the fraught and confusing issues that surround First Amendment exceptions, this Article makes four main contributions. First, it conceptualizes claims to …