Digital Commons Network^™

Suing The Ghost In The Medical Machine, Jason R. Cheek

SMU Science and Technology Law Review

Devices that autonomously diagnose medical conditions, with no human interaction, have arrived. These self-operating systems incorporate artificial intelligence (AI), and include machines that diagnose preventable blindness, as well as some that write radiology reports. These devices feature AI-integrated software to make diagnosis decisions traditionally made by humans who have received extensive medical training. Soon, AI-driven devices will autonomously make treatment decisions.

What happens when these autonomous medical systems harm a patient? At the moment, most would expect product liability law to provide a path to recovery. But AI oftentimes uses multiple complex inputs and approaches, including statistical probabilities, to reach …

What The Wild West Can Teach Us About Space Exploration, Kody George

Journal of Air Law and Commerce

Currently, the laws governing property in outer space are inadequate and underdeveloped, yet space exploration by private entities is rapidly growing. In this legal vacuum, private companies’ actions heavily influence, and in some cases, provide the basis for, legal precedent. The policies that for-profit corporations prefer are different from those that most government actors will prefer and are much different from those that support the common heritage of mankind doctrine. Rewarding entrepreneurship, innovation, and investments by governments, while balancing the interest all mankind has in outer space is why this Article proposes a tiered, patent land system that would grant …

Beyond Hipaa: The Ftc’S Expanding Role In Digital Health Privacy Enforcement, Sandhya Srinivasa

SMU Science and Technology Law Review

Consumer digital health platforms have become an increasingly prominent feature of modern health care, collecting and storing sensitive health information directly from users. Yet most of these applications operate outside the scope of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), creating a significant regulatory gap in the protection of personal health data. This case note examines how the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has stepped into that gap by leveraging Section 5 of the FTC Act and the Health Breach Notification Rule (HBNR) to police privacy and data security practices among non-HIPAA-covered digital health platforms. Focusing on three landmark enforcement …

Incapacitating The Immigration Courts, Jennifer Lee Koh

SMU Law Review

Amidst the dizzying array of developments taking place under the banner of mass deportation, the second Trump Administration is engaged in a sustained effort to fundamentally transform the country’s immigration courts by incapacitating them. Although the immigration courts have long been the subject of extensive criticism, they also seek to function as neutral forums in which the Department of Justice adjudicates the removability of noncitizens and certain types of immigration relief, governed by due process principles. Rendering those courts unable to perform their functions could potentially give rise to a more fundamental deterioration of even the semblance of due process …

Effects Of Expropriation Of Private Real Estate For Public Benefit In Saudi Law And Islamic Law, Hayat Mohammadali Hassan Nimir

Theses and Dissertations

The expropriation of private real estate for public benefit represents one of the most sensitive and complex legal issues, as it directly intersects with the protection of individual ownership rights while simultaneously addressing the demands of public interest and state development. This research provides a comprehensive analytical study of the legal framework governing expropriation in Saudi Arabia, examining both historical and contemporary legislation, while assessing its consistency with the objectives of Islamic Sharia, which grants strong protection to ownership rights but allows their restriction under strict conditions to serve genuine public needs.

The dissertation explores the theoretical foundations of property …

Striving To Thrive: Balancing Digital Health Innovation And Patient Protection Under Thailand’S Legal Framework, Thidarat Liamsomboon

Theses and Dissertations

The digitalization of health care has fundamentally transformed how health care services are accessed, delivered, and experienced worldwide. Telemedicine, artificial intelligence–assisted diagnostics, electronic health records, wearables, and mobile health applications are no longer novelties, but have become a substantial part of a modern clinical practice. Although these technologies offer great prospects for making health care more accessible, reducing administrative burden, and improving the quality of care, they also pose significant legal and regulatory challenges. The rate of technological development has far outpaced Thailand’s existing legal frameworks for regulating medical practice, professional accountability, and patient protection. This regulatory “lag” has generated …

Facilitating Mortgage Modification To Save Homes And Mitigate Lender Losses, Julia Patterson Forrester Rogers

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

Homeowners in financial distress or whose homes have been damaged by natural disaster may avoid foreclosure if their lender agrees to modify the loan to reduce payments. Commercial loans may also be modified to avoid foreclosure or in response to changed circumstances or changing market conditions. Although loan modifications are generally beneficial to both borrowers and lenders, barriers to modification exist. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) has addressed some of the roadblocks to residential loan modifications by regulating the procedures that mortgage servicers must follow in dealing with delinquent borrowers, but the CFPB and its regulations are at risk …

Front Matter

Journal of Air Law and Commerce

No abstract provided.

Are Trains In Space Legal? Examining Problems With A Multilateral Space Resource Management Regime And Public-Private Partnerships, Maitland Rames

Journal of Air Law and Commerce

As governments plan to expand into outer space and private parties continue to participate in space operations, the Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, Including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies (Outer Space Treaty) has the potential to inhibit any ambitions for all but the most basic exploratory missions. That is because Article II of the Outer Space Treaty forbids national appropriation in space, which calls into question the legality of any infrastructure and land use in space. This uncertainty has far-reaching implications for the future economy of space. Fortunately, …

Regulating Space-Based Solar Power: Challenges Under Both Space Law And Energy Law, Anne-Sophie Martin, Steven Freeland

Journal of Air Law and Commerce

Space-based solar power (SBSP) is emerging as a potential catalyst for global decarbonisation, driven by advances in wireless power transmission, in-orbit assembly, and photovoltaic technologies. Programmes such as the European Space Agency’s SOLARIS initiative, China’s planned megawatt-scale demonstrator, and private projects including Constant Aperture Solid State Integrated Orbital Phased Array and Caltech’s Space Solar Power Project illustrate the shift from theoretical models to operationalisation. SBSP offers continuous, weather-independent renewable energy capable of complementing terrestrial solar, wind, and hydro generation, enhancing grid stability, energy security, and progress toward the UN Sustainable Development Goals. It also supports future space activities by providing …

Values Primacy & Total Governance Through Activism, Carliss N. Chatman, Sergio Alberto Gramitto Ricci

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

In the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder, public companies swift-ly pledged sweeping equity commitments—only to abandon them under political and market pressure. These reversals were not aberrations. They were opportunistic, performative, and reactionary marketing responses. They expose a governance regime in which stakeholder interests are structurally reversible because they remain doctrinally optional, lacking the institutional interlock needed to create binding accountability across stakeholder roles.

This Article explores how stakeholder power is already embedded in corporate governance through interlocking initiatives grounded in shared values. Stakeholder activism—boycotts, proxy votes, viral campaigns—is not merely expressive; it is an overlooked form of governance. Drawing …

Front Matter

SMU Law Review

No abstract provided.

Preface, Abigail Parnell

SMU Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Trump Administration’S Racial Dragnet: Immigration Enforcement In Los Angeles, Kevin R. Johnson

SMU Law Review

President Trump’s mass deportation campaign selected as one of its early targets Los Angeles, California, and its large Latina/o community. Comprising roughly half of the city’s population, Latina/os are being stopped, questioned, and rounded up by roving Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) patrols. A legal challenge claimed that the patrols are engaging in unlawful racial profiling on a mass scale. The litigation responds to the widespread belief among Latina/os that the Trump Administration is unduly, if not exclusively, relying on race in targeting people for questioning about their immigration status.

For years, courts and political leaders have roundly condemned racial …

Re-Rethinking Asian Exclusion And Color-Blind Immigration, Gabriel J. Chin

SMU Law Review

During Reconstruction, as Congress debated the place of African-Americans in U.S. society, it evaluated how the principles it articulated would apply to Chinese-Americans. Rather than adopting a race-neutral jurisprudence, it began identifying the ways in which the law could be deployed to deny Asians economic and political opportunities, and the right to immigrate. Ultimately, a joint network of federal and state laws denied Asians the right to naturalize, to own land, and to immigrate. In a rare win, a divided Supreme Court held that the children of Chinese people born in the United States were citizens by virtue of the …

The New Assault On Plyler V. Doe, Cori Alonso-Yoder, Gabriel Sanchez

SMU Law Review

The second Trump Administration has disregarded a history of bipartisan support in avoiding immigration enforcement actions in schools. Certain states have acted to further target children at school—advancing measures to exclude many from public education based on immigration status. While the Supreme Court in Plyler v. Doe affirmed the state and national interests in educating students regardless of status, the Heritage Foundation has called on states to pass legislation to overturn that decades-old precedent. While no state has yet adopted these measures, many states have tried, marking a new attack on the precedent in Plyler.

This Article builds on …

Second-Class Asylum, Third-Country Danger, Michael Kagan

SMU Law Review

The Trump Administration has aggressively pursued a policy of deporting people who have been found to be in danger of persecution or torture in their countries of origin to third countries. It has primarily impacted people who have two types of what may be called second-class asylum, namely withholding or deferral or removal. This Article examines the structural problems posed by second-class asylum as defined in the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA). The INA’s collection of tiered protected status for people in danger in their countries of origin was always illogical, though its incoherency was more manageable before 2025, when …

What Constitution? The Dual State Theory In Immigration Law & Practice, Elizabeth Keyes

SMU Law Review

Immigration law in the second Trump Administration has created profound disorientation and dissonance, where some legal matters proceed in largely familiar ways, and others seem to occur in an entirely new dimension. This Article avails itself of Ernst Fraenkel’s Dual State theory to examine this dissonance. It argues that a duality exists in U.S. immigration law today between the federal courts and the administrative immigration system. In Fraenkel’s terms, constitutional challenges to immigration policies and individual habeas cases demonstrate important features of the Normative State, one that is consistent with the Rule of Law. By contrast, the administrative system—comprising the …

Second Looks For Sentencing Equality, Joshua D. Weiss

SMU Law Review

This Article challenges a persistent assumption about the relationship between so-called “second look” laws and sentencing disparities. Courts, the United States Sentencing Commission, and scholars tend to assume that increasing judicial discretion to reduce previously imposed sentences on an individualized basis results in increased sentencing disparities. But this assumption is based on a limited focus on disparities caused by judges and fails to account for disparities caused by other institutional actors, especially prosecutors.

This Article examines the relationship between disparities and second-look laws by focusing on one such law: the federal reduction in sentence (RIS) statute, commonly referred to as …

Embryonic Option-Hood, Elissa Philip Gentry, Mackenzi Barrett, W. Kip Viscusi

SMU Law Review

A frozen embryo represents not merely a potential human life but a deferred decision to trigger this potential. Parties value this opportunity for deferral because it allows them to retain the option to attempt conception after any uncertainty about future events or desires has resolved. Failing to recognize this “option value” of embryos has resulted in confusion over the best approach to allocating ownership of embryos and calculating damages for reproductive harms. This Article provides a novel paradigm showing that embryos should be treated as neither persons nor mere property; instead, a significant portion of their value is in their …

The Pregnancy Draft, Meghan M. Boone

SMU Law Review

By severely limiting or outright banning abortion, states are requiring pregnant people to perform reproductive labor in the service of the state’s own interests. Unwilling pregnant people are compelled, through the force of law, to continue their pregnancies—to perform a task that is difficult, dangerous, and fundamentally alters their life’s course. The state justifies overcoming the pregnant person’s unwillingness by prioritizing its own interests in the continuation of the pregnancy—articulated at various times as an interest in potential life, the protection of health or the integrity of the medical profession, or the prevention of discrimination.

There is only one other …

Front Matter

Journal of Air Law and Commerce

No abstract provided.

Not Quite Fit To Fly: A Reflection On Due Process And Agency Rulemaking In The Faa’S Approach To Pilot Certification, Emily Ryter

Journal of Air Law and Commerce

Judicial and legislative involvement in agency rulemaking is a relevant and particularly salient topic. The authority of an agency to make sound policy with flexibility and discretion often comes into conflict with the judiciary’s duty to prevent arbitrary regulations, which lack solid evidence or convincing rationale. Considering that more than three million passengers fly every day, it is no surprise that establishing a robust certification process for pilots is among the Federal Aviation Administration’s top priorities. The courts and the Legislature have also recently made notable strides to exert more control over the standards for medical certification. In July, the …

Preserving A Liturgical Identity: The Liturgical And Musical Heritage Of Roman Catholic Apostolic Women Religious In The United States Of America, Andrew G. Jennings

Doctor of Pastoral Music Projects and Theses

This thesis examines the liturgical and musical heritage of Roman Catholic apostolic women religious in the United States and argues that their contributions represent a significant yet understudied dimension of American Catholic life. As many communities face declining numbers, the preservation of their liturgical and musical traditions becomes increasingly urgent. Using an interdisciplinary methodology that combines historical research, liturgical theology, pneumatology, phenomenology, narrative inquiry, and qualitative interviews, the study explores how women religious have shaped and preserved communal identity through liturgy, music, and apostolic ministry.

The research traces the historical development of apostolic women religious from their emergence in the …

Front Matter

SMU Law Review

No abstract provided.

Managing Deportation: How Docket Control Replaced Substantive Relief In Immigration Courts, R. Linus Chan

SMU Law Review

In the modern deportation era, immigration courts saw their ability to grant relief from deportation undergo significant restrictions, constraining individualized discretion in favor of "categorical" denials. Congress dramatically curtailed the discretionary tools available to immigration judges, with the latest being the pair of immigration reforms from 1996, shifting the locus of individualized decision-making away from the courts and toward enforcement officers and prosecutors. Immigration courts lost discretion in being able to decide who could formally be granted status and stay in the United States when facing deportation through various restrictive eligibility requirements written into the law.

This Article argues that …

Fda After Loper Bright, Erika Lietzan

SMU Law Review

Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, which overruled the Chevron, U.S.A. v. Natural Resources Defense Council decision from 1984, tells us that a court should determine the meaning of all statutory provisions for itself, rather than deferring to the views of the federal agencies that implement those provisions. But the overruling of Chevron may have less of an impact on the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) than conventional wisdom supposes. Most challenges to FDA action do not concern its statutory interpretations. And the agency prevailed in most cases involving statutory interpretation before the Chevron doctrine took hold. After 1984, …

Characterization And Control Of Rod-Like Soft Robots, Tianrui Li

Mechanical Engineering Research Theses and Dissertations

Micro-scale robotic systems have garnered significant interest for applications in micromanufacturing and biosensing, yet quantitative design rules linking geometry, stiffness distribution, and magnetic actuation to locomotion performance at low Reynolds number remain limited. This thesis investigates magnetically actuated rod-like soft robots composed of hydrogel filaments with embedded micro-magnets and tunable hard:soft length ratios. Four- and eight-magnet swimmers with hard:soft ratios ranging from 1:1 to 2.5:1 and 4:3:1 are fabricated using a simple molding-and-insertion process and tested in water and silicone oil. A triaxial Helmholtz coil system generates rotating magnetic fields from 1 to 10 Hz, and a custom image-processing pipeline …

Ames, The Seventh Amendment, And The Honest Belief Trap Tautologizing Title Vii, Amos N. Jones

SMU Law Review Forum

A widely covered Sixth Circuit decision on July 29, 2025, against a tenured African American female law professor at the University of Michigan has dramatically materialized in the face of the unanimous decision of the Supreme Court of the United States only weeks earlier in Ames v. Ohio Department of Youth Services, decided on June 5, 2025. The Court had just eliminated another basis for employment-discrimination case dismissals, centering its original-textualist interpretative mode under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and buttressing plaintiffs’ Seventh Amendment rights to trial by jury. Meanwhile, the Michigan panel in Beny …

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 …