Digital Commons Network^™

Recalibrating Deference In Sentencing, Meghana Nemali

Fordham Law Review

The U.S. Sentencing Commission (the “Commission”) is responsible for promoting consistency, transparency, and fairness in federal sentencing. In pursuit of this mandate, the Commission publishes the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines (the “Guidelines”), which are accompanied by official commentary. In Stinson v. United States, the U.S. Supreme Court endowed the commentary with controlling authority. However, nearly three decades later, the Court in Kisor v. Wilkie granted courts greater discretion in deciding whether to defer to the commentary. Moreover, in 2024, the Court eliminated the absolute deference regime for administrative agency determinations in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo. As a result, …

Remote Access Restrictions To Immigration-Related Court Records, Doris H. Zhang

Fordham Law Review

Journalists today often report on newsworthy federal court cases by remotely accessing the court records online. However, thanks to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 5.2(c), remote access is not available by default in immigration-related cases. To obtain any court records in immigration cases, journalists must go to the courthouse, hire someone to go on their behalf, or ask the court to exercise its discretion to lift the Rule 5.2(c) remote access restrictions. These alternatives are burdensome, hindering the ability of the press and the public to keep track of immigration cases in federal courts. Despite the burdens on the press …

Editor's Note, Emily Derrenbacker

Colorado Environmental Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Table Of Contents, Colorado Environmental Law Journal

Colorado Environmental Law Journal

No abstract provided.

On Shaky Ground: America’S Public Lands Face An Uncertain Future, John Leshy

Colorado Environmental Law Journal

No abstract provided.

The Fight For Public Rights On America’S Waterways, Mark Squillace

Colorado Environmental Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Fencing In A Technological Age: Utilizing Federal Regulatory Frameworks To Implement Virtual Fencing On Federal Public Land, Sam Johnson

Colorado Environmental Law Journal

No abstract provided.

A Précis Of Pfas Legislation In The Southwestern United States, Brenden Catt

Colorado Environmental Law Journal

No abstract provided.

People Over Paper: The Effectiveness Of International Agreements Under Treaty Capture, Eric Nicholson

Colorado Environmental Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Greening With Justice: Evaluating Denver’S Urban Green Space Policies Through An Environmental Justice Lens, Vicente Tapia

Colorado Environmental Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Peak Bagging: The Land Acquisition History And Public Access Rights That Make It Mostly Possible, Andrea Shipton

Colorado Environmental Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Trust Is Difficult To Gain, Yet Easily Broken: The Impact Of Negative Police Encounters On Police–Community Relations, Brooke J. Pirozek

Honors College Theses

Trust between law enforcement agencies and their respective communities is arguably one of the most contentious issues within contemporary criminal justice research in the United States. This is because, despite the fact that law enforcement institutions rely significantly on the public's assistance and cooperation in fighting crime and enforcing social order, there still exist negative relations between law enforcement and their communities, mainly attributed to feelings of unfair treatment, abuse of power, and a lack of accountability. This study seeks to understand the role of negative police encounters in shaping community trust and perceptions of police legitimacy, with a special …

Order Of The Coif Program, August 14, 2026, University Of South Carolina School Of Law Order Of The Coif

Order of the Coif Programs and Documents

No abstract provided.

Foreword, Jli Vol. 44 Editorial Board

Minnesota Journal of Law & Inequality

No abstract provided.

Illuminating The Errors Of State V. Muñoz And The Curtailment Of Due Process Rights When A U.S. Citizen Is Married To A Noncitizen, Kavya Mahesh

Minnesota Journal of Law & Inequality

No abstract provided.

First-Job Contract Review Cheat Sheet, Johanna Jones-Morris, Ashlee Martellacci

Teaching and Learning Resources

This cheat sheet helps first-time employees understand what to review before signing an employment contract. It highlights job duties, compensation, scheduling, employment terms, benefits, restrictive clauses, worker classification, and common red flags so that individuals can ask informed questions and recognize potentially unfair or unclear terms.

Crypto Kleptocracy, W. Robert Thomas, Jeffery Y. Zhang

Michigan Law Review Online

Many Americans are worrying about whether they will soon be living in a postdemocracy autocracy. But in the meantime, they may already be living in a crypto-fueled kleptocracy. Less than one year into his second presidential term, Donald Trump has reportedly taken his wealth to new heights by embracing, both as a businessman and a politician, the crypto industry. Trump’s family businesses are involved in minting Trump-themed meme coins, creating America- themed stablecoins, and mining crypto assets—so successfully that most of Trump’s wealth is likely now from crypto, not real estate. All the while, the Trump Administration is rolling back …

The President And The Power Grid, Alexandra B. Klass, Dave Owen

Michigan Law Review Online

There is a sharp discontinuity between the second Trump Administration’s electricity policies and those of previous presidential administrations. President Trump has directed the Department of Energy to use statutory authority designed for wartime conditions and sudden emergencies to prevent electric utilities from retiring aging coal plants. In doing so, he has elevated the president’s role in electric-grid governance and reduced the primacy of the expert regulatory agency—the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission—that Congress authorized to govern electricity markets and grid reliability.

This Essay places these actions in historical context. It recounts the executive branch’s role in electricity policy during the first …

Statistical Analysis Of Evidence In Criminal Cases, Giuliana Leon Carrillo

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Ideally, the evaluation of relevant forensic evidence must corroborate the hypotheses that the prosecution and/or the defense holds regarding the commitment of a crime. Therefore, optimal forensic evidence would be the one that can be found all the time under the same circumstances, and cannot be found otherwise, making the forensic scientist able to evaluate this evidence given the hypotheses provided. Nevertheless, this is hard to find, as ideal evidence being only a concept.

In this project, the probabilistic interpretation of relevant forensic evidence investigated in criminal cases with the aid of Wigmore charts and Bayesian networks was proposed. Using …

An International Framework For Marriage Promotion, Jessica Tueller

Faculty Articles

Governments across the globe lately have been raising the alarm about declining marriage rates and adopting a wide variety of measures to increase these rates. This article presents a framework, distilled from human rights law, for assessing whether such measures are in keeping with States’ international obligations to eliminate all forms of coercion and discrimination in their policies and practices concerning diverse family structure and composition. The framework draws clear boundaries between measures that are permissible under human rights law and measures that are prohibited by human rights law. It also provides a tool for evaluating marriage-promotion measures that, although …

In Service Of The State: Foreign Financing, Infrastructure, And Imperialism In Tsarist Russia, Christopher A. Hartwell, Paul Vaaler, Boris Vinogradov

Articles

Russia’s imperialism in the nineteenth century has been far less scrutinized than other episodes of great power colonization, but the Tsar’s expansion into the Caucasus was indeed an ongoing imperial project. The movement of Russian troops and settlers was only feasible with the creation of a large railway network, an undertaking for which the Tsarist regime lacked adequate funding. In response, the regime developed a system of state guarantees and incentives to attract foreign investors looking for higher returns and willing to finance railways serving the imperial project. We illustrate this point with a case study of Paris-based Crédit Lyonnais …

2026-2027, Benjamin N. Cardozo School Of Law

Student Handbooks

No abstract provided.

The Disability History Of Brown V. Board Of Education, Britney Wilson

Articles & Chapters

In 1952, two years before the Supreme Court of the United States decided Brown v. Board of Education, Black deaf students in Washington, D.C., who had been prohibited from attending the local school for white deaf students and forced to go to school in Maryland, won the right to be educated in their hometowns in Miller v. Board of Education of District of Columbia. Brown is heralded as one of the most important racial justice cases of all time. It overturned Plessy v. Ferguson's longstanding "separate but equal" mandate and ruled that the segregation of students based on race violates …

Front Matter

SMU Law Review

No abstract provided.

What Beginning Law Students Learn When Ai Gets Personal, Kristina Swanson

Journal Articles

From the Introduction

While legal writing and research professors wrestle with artificial intelligence (AI)'s impact on the skills we teach, one thing is clear: beginning law students cannot discern whether AI answers to legal questions are correct. AI-generated responses to legal questions sound right and are designed to bolster the beleaguered law student's confidence. Deliberately programmed to hook customers, AI-generated answers often begin by praising the brilliant question and expressing electronic empathy for the difficulty the student may have had answering it. The end result: students with the wrong legal answer and misplaced confidence.

Odious Debt And The Legal Mechanisms Of Imperialism, Jaylen Spears

Emory International Law Review

No abstract provided.

Broken Lands And Trusts: The Omnipresence Of The Natives’ Land Act Of 1913 And The Persistence Of Its Inequity, Emily Venkatesan

Emory International Law Review

The hallmark of all colonial and ex-colonial states is the preservation of racial hierarchy where a minority of white colonizers reserve complete control over the political, social, and economic landscape of a colonized nation. One of the most powerful exercises of this colonial oversight is the use of western property law to strip native landowners of their property interests and redistribute that land to white colonizer for economic and social power. Access and ownership of land is crucial for maintaining the colonial state. Land provides social and economic leverage in the hands of the indigenous nation, but strengthens the colonial …

Treating Social Media Corporations As Quasi-State Actors To Address The Use Of Artificial Intelligence In Content Moderation, Michael T. Tiu Jr.

Emory International Law Review

Corporations have become powerful actors in the international system. They have the potential to disrupt the protection of values that states have been performing for decades. One of these values–freedom of expression–has been the recipient of impact of emerging technologies owned by corporations. Social media platforms have become new governors of expression. Content moderation rules cause adverse impacts on freedom of expression. The vagueness of certain criteria and the inconsistency of their application have led to censorship of speech which would have been protected offline. This situation is exacerbated by the use of artificial intelligence in content moderation, owing to …

Developing A Framework For The Direct International Responsibility Of Nonstate Armed Groups: A Model From Africa, Andrew Feinstein

Emory International Law Review

No abstract provided.

Keynote Speaker Remarks From Ambassador Clint Williamson, Clint Williamson

Emory International Law Review

No abstract provided.