Digital Commons Network^™

Killing Through Their Kids, Dyllan Moreno Taxman

William & Mary Law Review

In early 2024, James and Jennifer Crumbley were sentenced to over a decade in prison after their son, Ethan, shot and killed four classmates at Oxford High School in Michigan. The Crumbley parents incurred manslaughter liability by ignoring Ethan’s deteriorating mental state, gifting him the murder weapon, and failing to act on concerns about Ethan’s behavior on the day of the shooting. The Crumbleys were the first parents of a school shooter to be convicted of a homicide in American history. This Article suggests they will be far from the last. Indeed, less than one year after the Crumbley convictions, …

Theme Issue - Emerging Ip Enforcement In Online Markets And Digital Spaces, Michael Goodyear

Articles & Chapters

Editor's Note

Reforming Abolition, Daniel Fryer

Michigan Law Review

Abolition is an elusive concept, which allows people with various political views to identify with the idea. This Article unpacks some of the conceptual features that lead to its elusiveness. This imprecision has empowered some to point out the diverse—if not inconsistent—positions that self-identified abolitionists take when articulating the contemporary abolition movement’s demands. The question then becomes whether the movement could protect itself from being a rootless position with insufficient tools to guide change. I suggest that it can. Rather than getting caught up in debates about abolition’s ends, I propose that more attention be paid to abolition’s grounds. By …

Third-Party Accommodations, Doron Dorfman

Michigan Law Review

Does disability rights law impose an obligation on employers, schools, and other places of public accommodation to control the behavior of coworkers, students, or other third parties to accommodate an individual with disabilities? This Article examines that unexplored legal question and shows that the law frequently fails to protect people with disabilities from the choices and behaviors of third parties. Judges often consider these major barriers to access beyond the reach of the Americans with Disabilities Act’s reasonable accommodation mandate. This Article argues that this problem results from improperly imposing the privity paradigm, a doctrine that limits the inquiry about …

Standardization And Routine In Criminal Law, Eric S. Fish

Vanderbilt Law Review

What does it mean to adopt a holistic approach to criminal justice? This symposium treats that question as a foundational inquiry into the theory, practice, and institutional architecture of criminal law. At a time of eroding public trust, a broad recognition that mass incarceration both reflects and entrenches structural inequality, growing pressure on legal actors to account for the human costs of their decisions, and anxiety about the rule of law, revisiting the normative commitments of criminal law feels like an urgent task.

Holistic criminal justice is not a single method or intervention. It is a reorientation-a conceptual framework and …

Waiting For Godot: Thinking About Criminal Law After Mass Incarceration, Jonathan Simon Professor Of Law,

Vanderbilt Law Review

This brilliant set of close observations and careful analyses on some of the most cutting-edge issues arising in criminal law and reform of the criminal-justice system arrives at a time of great uncertainty as to the direction of change in criminal justice in the United States. After roughly a decade of reform and a significant surge in social movements criticizing the excesses of policing and punishment, the national conversation around crime has shifted back toward fear and a preference for "tough" law-and-order policies. Each one of these essays is packed with a great deal of insight and detail about very …

Criminal Punishment As A Human Right?, Saira Mohamed Professor Of Law,

Vanderbilt Law Review

In the last thirty years, criminal punishment has emerged as a primary tool in service of the protection of international human rights. The development of the field of international criminal law has transformed mass human rights violations into crimes, and the crowning achievement of the field has been the creation of the International Criminal Court. Human rights tribunals, meanwhile, also have embraced the institutions of the criminal law and, through doctrines such as the due diligence standard, have translated states' obligations under human rights instruments into duties to criminally prosecute and punish. Those who were present at the creation might …

Smu To Build Open Legal Database With Support From Ministry Of Law, Singapore Management University

SMU Press Releases and News

The Singapore Management University (SMU) will be developing Singapore’s first open empirical legal database with support from the Ministry of Law (MinLaw). Housed at SMU’s Centre for Digital Law, the three-year project will compile and release machine-readable datasets containing key statistical information about Singapore court decisions, statutes, legal scholarship and court structures. Named Singapore Open Legal Informatics Database (SOLID), the database will be freely accessible to researchers worldwide through a public website and Application Programming Interface (API), positioning Singapore alongside leading jurisdictions around the world that have invested in building up their legal data infrastructure.

“Justice Of Our Own”: Defining Success At The Red Hook Community Justice Center, Hadar Dancig-Rosenberg, Peter Dixon

Vanderbilt Law Review

This study examines how success is defined at the Red Hook Community Justice Center in Brooklyn, NYC, through a participatory, community centered lens. Moving beyond standard metrics, it articulates a locally grounded vision of success centered on empowerment, support, systemic accountability, and community trust. Drawing on the Everyday Peace Indicators approach, we convened nine focus groups and two public voting sessions with neighborhood residents, justice professionals, youth, former defendants, and family members. Participants generated and ranked 72 indicators, which we thematically clustered into six key categories reflecting the diverse contexts in which participants perceived the Center's impact: (1) rehabilitation and …

Justice Through Proximity: Theoretical Foundations And Practical Applications Of Collaborative Justice, Federica Coppola, Jarrell E. Daniels

Vanderbilt Law Review

This Article introduces a collaborative justice framework as a model for addressing crime and reimagining approaches to policymaking and legal education. The framework emphasizes the prevention and resolution of criminal matters through holistic strategies that confront the structural and social determinants of crime and victimization including poverty, systemic inequality, trauma, unjust policies, and institutional neglect while also promoting broader systemic change. At its core is the active engagement between legal system actors especially decisionmakers such as judges, prosecutors, and policymakers and legal system impacted individuals and communities, fostering a more equitable distribution of decisionmaking power between justice providers and justice …

The Reasonable Officer And The Disabled Subject, Jamelia N. Morgan

Vanderbilt Law Review

Police violence against disabled people is a  fundamental problem of policing. Whether through so called wellness checks, quality of life policing, or coercive state civil commitment procedures, disabled people are often on the receiving end of intrusion, violence, and rights violations by law enforcement. Yet, so, too, is everyone else. That disabled people are similarly, and yet uniquely, vulnerable to intrusion, violence, and rights violations by law enforcement might seem like just another group to add to the list of groups harmed by policing and police violence. However, the focus on disability does not merely bring to the forefront problems …

Anti-Holistic Algorithms, Itay Ravid

Vanderbilt Law Review

This Article presents a critical tension in modern criminal justice between holistic criminal justice aspirations and algorithmic governance: whether the holistic rehabilitation and reintegration project can survive technological determinism. As criminal legal systems embrace algorithmic risk assessment tools as solutions to address recidivism, this Article reveals a profound epistemological concern: the fundamental incompatibility between viewing offenders as whole persons capable of transformation and reducing them to statistical probabilities within computational matrices. By doing so, it demonstrates how algorithmic mediation fundamentally alters and potentially destroys the holistic message itself.

In establishing this argument, the Article advances in two stages. It first …

A Fear About Holistic Justice, Farhang Heydari

Vanderbilt Law Review

It is a great irony of our criminal system that the enforcement of our criminal laws has long had aspects of lawlessness. Although criminal statutes define impermissible conduct by members of the public, they generally offer little guidance for state actors enforcing them.' Officers can choose which offenders to cite or arrest and which to let go. Prosecutors can choose which charges to pursue and what pleas to offer. Executives select whom to pardon and how to allocate enforcement resources. Some see the discretion vested in government actors as a virtue-- a safety valve in a system that punishes too …

Plan-B Activist Defense: Defending Animal-Rights Activists In Courtrooms Hostile To Political Argumentation, Hadar Aviram

Vanderbilt Law Review

In recent years, several animal rights activists faced criminal charges for rescuing animals from factory farms. The standard legal approach in these cases has been relying on the necessity defense, which has a long history in cases of civil disobedience and ideologically driven crime. Animal law scholarship on this topic tends to focus on explaining why the defense applies to open rescue. However, as recent trials have demonstrated, actual courtrooms in rural counties tend to be hostile to the necessity defense, and judges can and do rely on Supreme Court precedent to keep it out of the courtroom.

This Article's …

Beyond Autonomy: Rethinking Deception In Sexual Assault Law, Marie Manikis

Vanderbilt Law Review

This Article focuses on recent developments in Britain in which courts have recognised gender deception as a sexual assault by using an autonomy based argument to define deception/fraud that vitiates consent in sexual offences. This Article argues against the defensibility of a framework that criminalizes deception on the basis of an ill defined autonomist based understanding as opposed to a more restrictive standard. It proposes that any adopted standard should incorporate social context and be reflexive of the ways that the state has contributed to these contexts, namely the social conditions under which the deceit takes place as well as …

Law Library Blog (November 2025): Legal Beagle's Blog Archive, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Law Library Newsletters/Blog

No abstract provided.

Child-Taking Justice And The Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative, Diane Marie Amann

Scholarly Works

The focus of this article is the 2022–2024 Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative undertaken the U.S. Executive Branch. The article chronicles this three-year process, which included sessions with survivors and their descendants, and which resulted in a two-volume report, in an apology by President Joe Biden, and in designation of a national memorial at one of the most notorious school sites. This article examines the initiative as an example of “child-taking justice”; that is, as a process of what is called “transitional justice”, done in an effort to redress the takings of children from their community, followed by efforts to …

Llms Are Bad Judges. So Use A Classifier Instead., Jack Kieffaber, Kimo Gandall, Steven Foster, Kenny Mclaren

SMU Law Review Forum

Large Language Models suffer from prompt variance—meaning they’ll give you totally different legal answers depending on how you phrase your question. Jonathan Choi demonstrated this recently when he asked ChatGPT five legal questions, each rephrased 2,000 times, and watched as the bot spat out different answers every time. When you tell somebody that AI is going to replace the judge, the lawyer, and the legal system in the next twenty years, Choi’s article has become the go-to rebuttal; it’s the crown jewel of the “AI bad” genre.

Choi’s absolutely right that LLM’s are bad judges. And, if every AI was …

The Contracts Clause Can Be Enforced Via Section 1983, Period: The Nonexistent Circuit Court "Split”, Timothy M. Harris

SMU Law Review Forum

The Federal Circuit Courts are apparently split on whether 42 U.S.C. § 1983—which provides a civil cause of action for constitutional deprivation of rights— applies to actions brought under the Contracts Clause in article 1 of the U.S. Constitution. The “split” has existed since 2017 and a new case out of the Sixth Circuit seeks to end that constitutional discrepancy via cert petition. The case, however, is a suboptimal vehicle for ending this circuit court stalemate.

The Sixth and Fourth Circuits have held that Section 1983 does not apply to actions brought under the Contracts clause. The Ninth Circuit has …

A Blunt Reality: How § 922(G)(3) Of The Gun Control Act Violates The Second Amendment Rights Of Marijuana Users, Christian Z. Macdonald

SMU Law Review Forum

Over 98% of Americans live in a state that has some form of legal marijuana, with over half of Americans having used the drug at least once. The United States also has a strong historical tradition of individual gun ownership for the purposes of self-defense, with gun ownership currently at its highest level in decades. In this modern era of both rising gun ownership and marijuana usage, could it truly be the case that any American who uses cannabinoids forfeits her presumptively protected constitutional right to firearm possession? The answer depends upon whether 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(3) unconstitutionally infringes on …

Environmental Regulations And The Exploitation Of Deep Seabed Minerals : A New Era For The“Mining Code” Of The International Seabed Authority (Isa)?, Mikyla D'Antoinette Frederick-Winter

World Maritime University Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Trips And Its Futures, Peter K. Yu

Faculty Scholarship

The Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS Agreement) was adopted on 15 April 1994, along with the estab-lishment of the World Trade Organization (WTO). With the WTO’s recent celebration of its thirtieth anniversary, it is high time we explore what the future will hold for this agreement. This chapter begins by revisiting the past to examine whether the TRIPS Agreement would be adopted if it were negotiated today. The chapter then discusses whether WTO members will undertake a major overhaul of this agreement in the future. Taking note of the fast-evolving international norm-setting environment and …

Assembly-Line Public Defense, David S. Abrams, Priyanka Goonetilleke

Faculty Scholarship

Each year, millions of Americans rely on public defenders to fulfill their Sixth Amendment right to counsel. Despite being the linchpin of the criminal justice system, public defense remains both underfunded and understudied. This Article provides empirical analysis to contribute to a critical question: How should public defender systems be structured?

Criminal justice advocates, scholars, and the American Bar Association strongly favor vertical representation in public defense. Under this model, a single public defender represents a defendant throughout their case, from their initial appearance through sentencing. The alternative approach—horizontal representation—operates like an assembly line: Different attorneys handle each stage of …

The Forgotten Weapon: Section 891 And The Origins Of U.S. Retaliatory Tax Policy, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah, Gianluca Mazzoni

Articles

The original version of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (P.L. 119-21) included section 899, which would have imposed retaliatory taxes on individuals and corporations from countries that apply “discriminatory or extraterritorial” taxes to U.S. corporations, defined specifically to include digital services taxes and the undertaxed profits rule of pillar 2.

However, on June 26 Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced that a compromise was reached on the UTPR, and as a result, section 899 was removed from the OBBBA. Now that section 899 is gone, section 891 is the most important part of the United States’ legislative armory against “discriminatory …

Bridging The Expectations Gaap In Financial Reporting, Neal F. Newman

Faculty Scholarship

The true nature of auditing publicly traded companies’ financial statements has been somewhat of an enigma to the general public. Due to this mystery, an “expectations gap” has formed between the public expectations of auditors’ roles and what the auditor actually does in their analysis of financial statements. Auditors are an extremely important piece of the financial reporting puzzle because they determine whether or not a company’s financial statements are a fair and accurate reflection of the company’s financial position, a determination that can be a major influence on how the financial strength of a company is perceived. Newman’s Article …

Cisg (2025 Survey), Wayne R. Barnes

Faculty Scholarship

This survey article discusses cases during the prior year, which are decided based on one or more provisions of the United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods (CISG). The CISG is a United Nations treaty that provides a uniform international sales law. It was adopted in Vienna in 1980 and went into effect in 1988. The CISG governs contracts for the international sale of goods between businesses located in different countries that have ratified the treaty. It has been adopted by 95+ countries, including major trading nations like the United States, China, and most European countries. …

Enhancing Nigeria’S Compliance With International Maritime Anti-Corruption Framework, Usman Abdulrahman

World Maritime University Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Protecting Seafarers' Rights : A Comparative Analysis Of The Mlc, 2006 As Amended, And The Ethiopian Seafarers Collective Agreement, Asfaw Siyum Balcha

World Maritime University Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Wreck Removal : Assessing Nigeria’S Compliance With The Nairobi Wreck Removal Convention 2007, Richard Oritsejomayo Iyinbo

World Maritime University Dissertations

No abstract provided.

An Assessment Of The Legal Framework For Prosecuting Iuu Fishing In Nigeria, Lydia Salla Kadiri

World Maritime University Dissertations

No abstract provided.