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Reflections From Four Decades Of Teaching, Karin Mika

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

After nearly four decades, I view the state of our discipline with both pride and optimism. What began as a marginalized program has become the model for effective teaching and professional preparation across legal education. Many schools now look to Legal Writing for the very methods that should define the curriculum as a whole. Our work continues to evolve, but it does so from a place of strength and proven influence.

The Role Of "Light Plagiarism" In Legal Writing , From A Recent Practitioner's Perspective, Donna L. Eng

UF Law Faculty Publications

Because practitioners are pressured to complete their tasks as quickly and efficiently as possible, lawyers regularly use documents previously drafted by other lawyers as a starting point for their drafting. Law students may be surprised to learn that in the modern practice of law, plagiarism is so widely accepted and encouraged. This article proposes several reasons why Legal Writing Professors should consider addressing that fact by discussing the process by which many lawyers draft documents in the real-world practice of law today.

First, the rules against plagiarism do not relate to the real-world practice of law. Unlike law students, who …

Transitioning From Being A Practicing Lawyer To A Law School Professor: Learning To Be "Teacher You", Brenda Gibson, Heather Kolinsky, Catlin Meade, Kayonia Whetstone

UF Law Faculty Publications

Across law schools, LAWR programs differ in credit hours, professors’ status, and the level of autonomy professors have in the syllabus, textbook, assignments, or deadlines. Regardless of the type of program you are entering, there are a few things that you can focus on up front when moving from practicing law to teaching law and developing Teacher You: (1) managing expectations (both yours and your students); (2) providing feedback to your students; and (3) managing your own professional development and well-being. What follows are our thoughts and suggestions for taking your first steps in becoming Teacher You.

A Theory Of Calibrated Fiduciary Duties In Firms, Robert J. Rhee

UF Law Faculty Publications

Although the laws of firms state the same traditional duty of loyalty, they diverge in expressing the duty of care and the concept of good faith. The differences are not subtle shades of refinement, but quantum contrasts of discrete legal states. The law shuffles, reclassifies, and relocates core elements of the duty of care and the concept of good faith uniquely in each form of firm. Why? Despite apparent legal divergence, a single fiduciary rule governs all forms of firms. This Article presents a theory of calibrated fiduciary duties that explains important variations in the formulation of fiduciary duty and …

Subchapter V Bankruptcy: The Advent Of A New Era Of Rescue Culture For Small Businesses, Robert J. Landry Iii

University of Baltimore Law Review

No abstract provided.

Criminalization Of Landlord/Tenant Law: Arkansas’ “Failure To Vacate” Statute, Anastacia Greene

Law Faculty Scholarship

Arkansas is not a notable state. It is often confused with Kansas or Alabama. It is difficult for most Americans to find on a map. Perhaps Arkansas has few distinctions. However, it is the only place in the country where a tenant can be thrown in jail for missing a rental payment. The legal landscape of Arkansas is unique in many ways, primarily in its old-fashioned, even archaic, view of property law.

First, this article examines the history behind the Failure to Vacate statute. Next, this article reviews the constitutional challenges that the statute has faced, and recent litigation. Then, …

Contracting For Consumer Trade Compliance, Christine Abely

Law Faculty Scholarship

Export compliance is becoming increasingly important for parties required to abide by U.S. law, including many online sellers of consumer products. These retailers' contractual terms with their customers set forth a number of provisions governing the relationship between them, including those which deal with arbitration, indemnification, disclaimer of warranties, and other issues. Many such agreements also purport to create obligations on the part of the consumer as to export control and sanctions compliance relative to the products they purchase. These contract provisions attempt to do so, however, in often markedly different ways, and with language that may leave notable gaps …

Forbidden Knowledge: School Libraries, The First Amendment, And The Right To Receive Information, Natalie H. Berg

Washington Law Review

In the past five years, numerous Republican legislators and conservative parental groups have aggressively pushed to restrict sexual content in public schools. Many school districts have adopted policies that limit what topics are covered in class, and several statewide laws have legitimized and mandated these policies. Consequently, books featuring queer themes or characters are rapidly disappearing from public school libraries. These library restrictions, or book bans, have sparked substantial controversy and litigation.

This Comment examines state laws restricting public school libraries in Texas, Florida, and Iowa, arguing that these library restrictions violate the First Amendment on multiple grounds. Additionally, it …

Making Youth Matter, Kimberly Ambrose

Washington Law Review

Gun violence is the leading cause of death for children and adolescents in the United States. The harm caused by this public health crisis falls disproportionately on Black and Brown youth. While it is broadly accepted that children are less blameworthy than adults for their criminal behavior, what does this mean when they have access to and use guns? The Supreme Court held that youth matters when juveniles face life without parole sentences because children are different from adults—they fail to appreciate risks and consequences; are more impulsive; more susceptible to peer and family influence; less able to remove themselves …

Another Broken Promise: The Mmiwg2s Crisis And The Violation Of The Federal Indian Trust Obligation, Marley Forest

Washington Law Review

Indigenous Women, Girls, and Two-Spirit people go missing and are murdered at rates nearly ten times the national average in the United States. This disproportionate epidemic of violence has been labeled the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, and Two-Spirit (MMIWG2S) crisis. Several factors exacerbate this crisis. First, European colonizers used violence against Native people, especially women and Two-Spirit people, as a tactic of control and domination since first contact in the 1600s. Second, nearly two hundred years of legislative actions and case law have effectively stripped Native Nations of all criminal jurisdictional power over crimes committed on their land …

Entre Hogares Y Fronteras: Trayectorias Migratorias Y Acceso A Los Derechos De Trabajadoras Paraguayas De Casas Particulares En La Ciudad Autónoma De Buenos Aires, Lizeth Victoria Rocha Rocha

Argentina: Social Movements and Human Rights

Hay una gran concentración de migrantes paraguayas que trabajan en el sector del servicio de casas particulares en la Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires. A pesar del marco legal de igualdad de Argentina, las experiencias y trayectorias migratorias de estas mujeres siguen sin ser suficientemente estudiadas, en particular en lo que respecta a las desigualdades sistemáticas a las que se enfrentan. Este estudio ofrece una pequeña visión de la exploración de este tema. Se centra en las experiencias de cuatro mujeres paraguayas que han trabajado en casas particulares de Buenos Aires en los últimos cinco años. Al analizar sus historias, …

Rethinking Courtroom Presence In The Virtual Era, Jenia Iontcheva Turner

Indiana Law Journal

Technological innovation has made virtual appearances by criminal defendants increasingly common. These appearances have advanced efficiency but also raised questions about the scope of both the right and the duty of defendants to be physically present in court. Should judges, for example, be allowed to hold virtual arraignments, even if a defendant wishes to appear in person? Can defendants opt for virtual appearances at will? While courts are beginning to address these questions, they have yet to develop a coherent framework to evaluate when virtual appearances are constitutional and appropriate. This Article seeks to contribute to this project by examining …

Breaking The Echo Chamber: Market Failures In The Social Media Information Market And The Need For Reform, Aleco M. Hamrick

Indiana Law Journal

Traditionally, the information market is centrally controlled. Once information consumption transitioned from the physical world to the digital world, the barrier of entry to the information dissemination market was reduced from printing presses and distribution networks to a smartphone and an internet connection. Ostensibly anyone can distribute any idea at any time. This strains the traditional information governance model that has dominated the information market for centuries; where epistemic authorities once controlled both the streams of information and the kinds of information that entered them, now social media companies exert limited control over information streams and no control over what …

The Stewart Lecture In Labor And Employment Law: Employment And Identity, Matthew T. Bodie

Indiana Law Journal

Work shapes our identities, and our identities shape our work. The tension between personal identity and work identity drives popular culture, as seen in shows like Severance and The Bear, and it frames our conceptions about who we are and what gives our lives meaning. In many respects the law has assumed a clear separation between work lives and personal lives, divvying up control and responsibility over these realms on that basis. But the divide, never absolute, has blurred considerably through technological change, legal developments, and social expectations, resulting in a more pervasive employer presence in both our workspaces …

Assessing Market Efficiency In Corporate And Securities Litigation, Charles Korsmo, Minor Myers

Indiana Law Journal

In recent decades, courts have increasingly looked to trading prices as evidence—often conclusive evidence—in high-stakes corporate law disputes over a company’s fair value. This development has been especially dramatic, and consequential, in Delaware. Where a stock trades in an efficient market, the logic goes, the prevailing trading price can be used to resolve any disputed issue of valuation. But this expedient comes with an unavoidable question: When is a market “sufficiently efficient” for a court to rely on it as a measure of value?

 Federal courts have long experience evaluating the relative efficiency of trading markets in the context of …

The Endorsement Test’S Early Years, 1983–1985: Notes From The O’Connor Files, Jay Wexler

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

One of Justice Sandra Day O’Connor’s signature contributions to U.S. constitutional law was the endorsement test, a subtle but critically important reformulation of the Court’s then prevailing approach to applying the Establishment Clause that focused on the message sent by government action supporting religion and the potentially harmful effects of that message on religious minorities and the political community. Now that the current Court has discarded the endorsement test, leaving the government freer than ever to support religion in a variety of ways, we should expect to see the harms that Justice O’Connor cared about become increasingly widespread and prevalent. …

Laboratories Of Judicial Ethics: A Comparative Analysis Of Judicial Conduct Commissions In Tennessee, Rhode Island, And North Carolina, And Their Implications For Regulating The U.S. Supreme Court, Johnny Galloway

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

It is hardly necessary to recite the recent ethics controversies that have embroiled the Supreme Court. In the last several years, several revelations have rocked the Supreme Court and led members of Congress, President Joe Biden, and the public to question the Court’s ethical standards and impartiality. Whether the Court’s partiality and imprudence are real or perceived, recent developments like these have spurred calls for a binding code of ethics to be either adopted voluntarily by the Court or imposed involuntarily by congressional action. Given the fierce debate over ethics regulation of the U.S. Supreme Court, it is noteworthy that …

The Esg Paradox: Systemic Resistance And The Crisis Of Corporate Governance, Tawia Ansah

William & Mary Environmental Law and Policy Review

This Article examines a recent lawsuit between ExxonMobil Corporation and its shareholders that contested the definition of “ordinary business operations” under Rule 14a-8 of the Securities & Exchange Act of 1934. Through the lens of Niklas Luhmann’s systems theory particularly his concept of “operational closure,” the analysis reveals how corporate resistance to ESG initiatives reflects deeper systemic patterns in late capitalist governance.

ESG frameworks emerged as a challenge to neoliberal corporate governance, promising to address mounting environmental and social concerns. However, the neoliberal model has responded by both absorbing ESG through “greenwashing” and rejecting its more transformative elements—a pattern that …

Justice In Colorado: Achieving Animal Plaintiffhood Through The State's Common Law, Mason Liddell

William & Mary Environmental Law and Policy Review

The common law of Colorado embraces all of the premises necessary to conclude that non-human animals are legal persons who may bring suits on their own behalf. All that is necessary is for a case to bring those premises together. The state endorses a Hohfeldian understanding of rights and duties, meaning the two concepts are necessarily corollaries. So, humans’ existing statutory duty to avoid being cruel to animals entails that those same animals have a right to be free from cruelty under state statute. Then, premised on a long line of legal philosophy and the state’s understanding of “legal personhood,” …

The Overlooked Case Of October Term 2023: Implications Of Sec V. Jarkesy On Environmental Law, Hayden Miller

William & Mary Environmental Law and Policy Review

In the summer of 2024, the Supreme Court published its opinion in SEC v. Jarkesy. In Jarkesy, the Court held that certain administrative cases must be adjudicated through Article III courts with juries instead of administrative law tribunals. The case involved fraud charges against George Jarkesy, Jr., an investment manager. After a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) investigation, the agency alleged that Jarkesy had violated the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. Subsequently, SEC Administrative Law Judges (ALJs) levied civil penalties against Jarkesy for securities fraud. On appeal, the Court held that securities fraud under the Securities Exchange Act …

United States Response To 2025 Questionnaire, Philippa Loengard

Kernochan Center for Law, Media, and the Arts

ALAI-USA is the U.S. branch of ALAI (Association Littèraire et Artistique Internationale). ALAI-USA was started in the 1980's by the late Professor Melville B. Nimmer, and was later expanded by Professor John M. Kernochan.

Front Matter, North Carolina Journal Of Law & Technology

North Carolina Journal of Law & Technology

No abstract provided.

Can Ai Empower The Rule Of Law?, Eleftheria Papadaki

North Carolina Journal of Law & Technology

No abstract provided.

Understanding The Duty Of Competence For Attorneys Using Generative Ai, Anna Conley

North Carolina Journal of Law & Technology

No abstract provided.

Scientific Muse And Misuse: Reevaluating Authorship Attribution And Liability Allocation In The Generative Ai Age, Inbar Cohen Ganot

North Carolina Journal of Law & Technology

No abstract provided.

Future Crime: A Theoretical Foundation For Designing Effective Cybercrime Laws In The Age Of Ai And Ransomware, Thi Ha Do, Niloufer Selvadurai

North Carolina Journal of Law & Technology

No abstract provided.

Law As A Tool Of Empire: A Transhistorical Comparison Of Mandate Palestine And Ancient Rome, Will L. Hisle

Armstrong Undergraduate Journal of History

Through a comparative analysis of Law and Identity in Mandate Palestine by Assaf Likhovski, and A Legal History of Rome by George Mousourakis, this essay demonstrates that law was crucial to the expansion of empire. When read in tandem, these monographs provide a transhistorical framework for viewing law outside of itself, as a mechanism of colonial and imperial domination.

The Splintering Of American Public Law, Marco Basile

University of Chicago Law Review

Constitutional tradition has never mattered more for arguing about what the Constitution means. Yet the very idea of a constitutional tradition presents a shape-shifting target. Rather than an entirely distinct body of law, early U.S. constitutional law mixed and blurred with the law of nations in a broader category of “public law” that, unlike other forms of law, sought to govern the sovereign state itself through not only legal institutions but also political structures and actors outside courts.

This Article argues that U.S. constitutional law and international law diverged after the Civil War when courts came to apply them differently …

In Search Of A Judicial Taking, Coby Goldberg

University of Chicago Law Review

In Stop the Beach Renourishment v. Florida Department of Environmental Protection, a plurality of the Supreme Court held that the Takings Clause applies to the judiciary as it does to any government actor. In the more than fifteen years since, none of the sixty courts to consider judicial takings claims have found a judicial taking. This Comment provides the only comprehensive analysis of the judicial takings case law since Stop the Beach in order to determine why no court has found a judicial taking. Based on this analysis of the case law, this Comment suggests that finding a judicial taking …

Not Born A Democracy: Constitutional Preconditions, Martha Minow

William & Mary Law Review

Beneath growing perceptions of constitutional crisis and democratic fragility in the United States lies a fundamental conundrum. Critical preconditions for effective self-government are either weak or missing in action, and our constitutional system, at least for now, stands in the way of actions to strengthen or build those preconditions. This Article focuses on three essential predicates for constitutional democracy that face jeopardy: education, reliable news, and security against lethal violence. As basic as these elements may be, repeated efforts to secure a federal constitutional right to education have failed in the courts. Because of a confluence of legal, technological, and …