Law Commons^™

Reevaluating Regional Law Reform Strategies After Dobbs, Jamie Abrams

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

This article studies the triad of 2016 social media campaigns known as “#AskDr.Kasich,” “#askbevinaboutmyvag,” and “#PeriodsforPence.” While these campaigns, each located in the regional mid-South, were motivated by restrictive state abortion bills, they uniquely positioned menstruation and women’s bodies at the center of their activism—not abortion alone. They leveraged, as a political fault line, the contradiction of these states’ governors’ perceived disgust relating to basic women’s reproductive health, relative to their patriarchal assuredness in regulating and controlling women’s bodies.

In so doing, they tapped into meaningful disruptions in the geographies, religiosities, and masculinities of abortion politics. These campaigns achieved regional …

The Law Of Friends, Ezra Rosser

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

A serious law professor would not write an article about the TV show Friends, but having just written a book and an article, I’m on a “break.” Besides, I’m not that serious a law professor. And Friends is as good a topic as any. For those of us of a certain age—too young to have watched M.A.S.H. when it came out and old enough to remember watching broadcast TV and not just through a streaming service on a device—Friends was and is a big deal. It both captured a particular moment in history and helped make that moment.

Looking back …

America’S New Death Sentence: Lack Of Action To Protect Incarcerated People From Covid-19 Amounts To Cruel And Unusual Punishment, Jane Manwarring

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

Laddy Curtis Valentine is a 69-year-old man suffering from high blood pressure, hypertension, nerve damage from a stroke, atrophy and weakness in the upper-left extremity, and limited ability to grip with his left hand. Richard Elvin King is a 73-year-old man with diabetes, high blood pressure, chronic kidney failure, hyperlipidemia, and kidney disease. Mr. Valentine and Mr. King are just two of the 1,132 men imprisoned in the Wallace Pack Unit (“the Pack Unit”) in Grimes County, Texas. Like Mr. Valentine and Mr. King, approximately 800 incarcerated men housed in the Pack Unit are over the age of sixty-five, and …

Penelitian Hukum Berperspektif Sosiolegal Pada Ranah Digital: Satu Tawaran Metodologis, Lidwina Inge Nurtjahyo

The Indonesian Journal of Socio-Legal Studies

Technological developments have brought people, capital, goods, ideas, and even laws into mobility. During the Covid-19 pandemic, technology made mobility possible. Adaptation to pandemic situations occurs by changing physical interactions into interactions in the digital space with the help of technology. These changes also bring consequences to changes in the way of society's law. For example, digital transactions no longer require the presence of a customer or online trials. The challenge that arises then is how to find the method to conduct legal research during the pandemic situation. One of the options presents is socio-legal research conducted digitally. The focal …

Queering Bostock, Jeremiah A. Ho

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

I. INTRODUCTION

Regarding queer identities, the enduring misconceptions about sexual and gender identities underscore precisely why queer lived experiences are critically salient for understanding and remedying instances of discrimination. Without substantively acknowledging the lived experiences of discrimination, one danger is that the dominant establishment more easily retains the posture of redressing discrimination as a means for preserving a discriminatory status quo. For instance, where anti-subordination approaches might better detect and address the inequalities of a marginalized groups lived experiences than anti-classification approaches, scholars have noted that the establishment’s choice to maintain anti-classification approaches allows the status quo to reify its …

Second-Trimester Abortion Dangertalk, Greer Donley, Jill Wieber Lens

Articles

Abortion rights are more vulnerable now than they have been in decades. This Article focuses specifically on the most assailable subset of those rights: the right to a pre-viability, second-trimester abortion. Building on Carhart v. Gonzales, where the Supreme Court upheld a federal ban on a safe and effective second-trimester abortion procedure, states have passed new second-trimester abortion restrictions that rely heavily on the woman-protective rationale—the idea that the restrictions will benefit women. These newer second-trimester abortion restrictions include bans on the Dilation & Evacuation (D&E) procedure, bans on disability-selective abortions, and mandatory perinatal hospice and palliative care counseling …

The Kids Are Alright? The Need For Kidfluencer Protections, Ana Saragoza

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

Introduction

“Maybe guys have your hand on the toy but remember the camera. Leah, I can’t see your face babe, we gotta [sic] see it a little bit.” Nine-year-old identical twins Leah and Ava Clements are comparatively new to influencing, having started at the age of seven. Now at age nine, the twins have over one million followers on Instagram. The twins can earn upwards of ten thousand dollars per sponsored post. The Instagram influencer marketing business is estimated to be valued between five and ten billion dollars. Just as successful are minors who secure equally lucrative sponsorships for product …

Prospects And Pitfalls: Confronting Sexual Harassment In The Legal Cannabis Industry, Alexis N. Smith, Griffon Toronjo Pivateau

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

I. Introduction

In the last decade, the legal cannabis industry emerged as a fast-growing and complex new market. Legal cultivation of the cannabis plant promises to create tremendous economic opportunities. Further, the new market hints at significant social consequences. Numerous women have entered the field as entrepreneurs, advocates, and employees. Early reports indicate a much higher percentage of women within the cannabis industry than the agricultural industry in general.

Nevertheless, women face challenges and obstacles. The cannabis industry bears the characteristics of a start-up entity, but this entity resides within a market skewed by the federal law banning the cultivation …

Dignity Takings In Leviathanic Immigration Proceedings, Christopher Mendez

The Scholar: St. Mary's Law Review on Race and Social Justice

Current immigration law in the United States is rife with racially motivated biases necessitating immediate correction. Among the many problems with current law, constitutional rights are withheld from a large populace. This article reflects upon the history of immigration law in the United States, noting key decisions which have formed the status quo. This article also proposes remedies such as the cessation of infringement by government agents on the property rights that affected immigrants have on their own bodies and a modern-day amnesty reflective of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986. This article also introduces Bernadette Atuahene’s concept …

The Past, Present, And Future Of Rural Northern New England: A Study Of The Demographics Crisis And How It Affects The Rural Lawyer Shortage, Christopher Chavis

Maine Law Review

Like most of rural America, Northern New England is facing a shortage of lawyers in its rural spaces. The three states are facing an aging bar and demographic trends that indicate that this will only continue. The situation is already dire. The Northern New England states currently rank among the oldest states in the country and there are counties where young lawyers are an almost extinct species. The current trends are not unprecedented. As one of the first areas to industrialize, New England saw its young people leave the countryside early and start to flock to growing cities. As the …

Rural Practice As Public Interest Work, Hannah Haksgaard

Maine Law Review

As the rural lawyer shortage continues to grow, rural states and communities must find new ways of attracting law students and graduates to rural practice. This Article explores incentives based on conceptualizing rural private practice as public interest work. Rural lawyers provide public interest lawyering through pro bono cases, mixed practices, community service, and even through providing fee-paid services in rural communities. The Article asserts that law schools and rural communities can capitalize on this view to recruit new lawyers and argues that federal loan forgiveness programs should be expanded to cover rural lawyers.

Shared Deliberations: Learning From The Voices Of Social Justice Lawyers On Their Aspirations, Challenges And Roles, Ian Head

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Lawyers in the U.S. who attempt to advocate for social justice issues, often on behalf of those communities most targeted by government institutions and oppressive legal systems, have unique perspectives into the challenges of using the law to create transformative change. This thesis examines the voices of over a dozen attorneys fighting not only on behalf of their clients, but also wrestling with how to best use a set of legal tools not meant for dismantling systems of power. Listening to how these legal advocates navigate their roles inside a system of laws created to consolidate rather than distribute power …

A Constitution For The Age Of Demagogues: Using The Twenty-Fifth Amendment To Remove An Unfit President, Paul F. Campos

Publications

This Article argues that, properly understood, the 25th Amendment is designed to allow the executive and legislative branches, working together, to remove a president from office when it becomes evident that the person elevated to that office by the electoral process is manifestly unsuited for what can, without exaggeration, be described as the most important job in the world.

It argues further that the first two years of Donald Trump’s presidency have provided a great deal of evidence for the proposition that President Trump has in fact demonstrated the requisite level of fundamental unfitness for the office that would justify …

Techno-Optimism & Access To The Legal System, Tanina Rostain

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

For legal technologists, apps raise the prospect of putting the law in the hands of disadvantaged people who feel powerless to deal with their legal problems. These aspirations are heartening, but they rest on unrealistic assumptions about how people living in poverty deal with legal problems. People who are poor very rarely resort to the law to solve their problems. In the situations when they do seek solutions, they confront educational and material impediments to finding, understanding, and using online legal tools effectively. Literacy is a significant barrier. More than 15 percent of all adults living in the United States …

Tort Reform With Chinese Characteristics: Towards A Harmonious Society In The People's Republic Of China, Andrew J. Green

San Diego International Law Journal

This Article presents an analysis of tort law in China specifically focusing on personal injury tort law. It provides a general background on the role of tort law in society, and then it analyzes the specific laws, regulations, and cases that form the personal injury tort regime, covering both historical and recent laws. The article then explores the forces in society and politics that seem to be behind the new legal rules. It concludes by drawing attention to several steps that may be taken as part of further reform.

The Public Trust In Public Art: Property Law's Case Against Private Hoarding Of “Public” Art, Hope M. Babcock

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Private hoarding of important works of art is a phenomenon that has caused their disappearance from public view. The loss of this art undermines republican values like education, community, and citizenship, and therefore should be resisted. This Article explores various legal tools to prevent this from happening, including doctrines and laws that protect artists’ rights in their work, but which offer the public little relief. Turning to two well-known common-law doctrines—public dedication and public trust—to see whether they might provide a solution, the author favors the latter because it is nimbler and better suited to the public nature of important …

The Loving Story: Using A Documentary To Reconsider The Status Of An Iconic Interracial Married Couple, Regina Austin

Faculty Scholarship at Penn Carey Law

The Loving Story (Augusta Films 2011), directed by Nancy Buirski, tells the backstory of the groundbreaking U.S. Supreme Court case, Loving v. Virginia, that overturned state laws barring interracial marriage. The article looks to the documentary to explain why the Lovings should be considered icons of racial and ethnic civil rights, however much they might be associated with marriage equality today. The film shows the Lovings to be ordinary people who took their nearly decade long struggle against white supremacy to the nation’s highest court out of a genuine commitment to each other and a determination to live in …

Are Anti-Bullying Laws Effective?, Ari Ezra Waldman

Articles & Chapters

Since 2010, when several high profile bullying-related suicides brought bullying and cyberharassment into the national consciousness, all 50 states have passed laws that address bullying among the nation’s youth. This essay is the first in a series of three projects on federal, state, municipal, and individual school approaches to bullying. There are only 4 published studies on the relationships between law and bullying rates. This Essay adds several features to the discourse. It offers a comprehensive analysis of the contents of state anti-bullying laws, using a 16-item list of guidelines from the United States Department of Education as a frame. …

. . . And Law?, John Henry Schlegel

Contributions to Books

Published as Chapter 18 in Searching for Contemporary Legal Thought, Justin Desautels-Stein & Christopher Tomlins, eds.

The locution “law and . . . (some other discipline)” implicitly asserts the primacy of legal doctrine and institutions narrowly conceived for coming to understand phenomena in which law takes a part. The ordinary story of American legal theory – formalism then realism then contemporary legal thought – can be understood to repeat the triumphalism implicit in “law and . . .” Of course, the story of American legal theory could possibly be read differently -- as a series of responses to the inability …

Stages Of Constitutional Grief: Democratic Constitutionalism And The Marriage Revolution, Anthony Michael Kreis

All Faculty Scholarship

Do courts matter?Historically, many social movements have turned to the courts to help achieve sweeping social change. Because judicial institutions are supposed to be above the political fray, they are sometimes believed to be immune from ordinary political pressures that otherwise slow down progress. Substantial scholarship casts doubt on this romanticized ideal of courts. This Article posits a new, interactive theory of courts and social movements, under which judicial institutions can legitimize and fuel social movements, but outside actors are necessary to enhance the courts’ social reform efficacy. Under this theory, courts matter and can be agents of social change …

Stages Of Constitutional Grief: Democratic Constitutionalism And The Marriage Revolution, Anthony Michael Kreis

Anthony Michael Kreis

Trust: A Model For Disclosure In Patent Law, Ari Ezra Waldman

Articles & Chapters

How to draw the line between public and private is a foundational, first-principles question of privacy law, but the answer has implications for intellectual property, as well. This project is the first in a series of papers about first-person disclosures of information in the privacy and intellectual property law contexts, and it defines the boundary between public and non-public information through the lens of social science — namely, principles of trust.

Patent law’s “public use” bar confronts the question of whether legal protection should extend to information previously disclosed to a small group of people. I present evidence that shows …

The Place Of Policy In International Law, Oscar Schachter

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

Agenda: A Celebration Of The Work Of Charles Wilkinson: Served With Tasty Stories And Some Slices Of Roast, University Of Colorado Boulder. Getches-Wilkinson Center For Natural Resources, Energy, And The Environment

A Celebration of the Work of Charles Wilkinson (Martz Winter Symposium, March 10-11)

Conference held at the University of Colorado, Wolf Law Building, Wittemyer Courtroom, Thursday, March 10th and Friday, March 11th, 2016.

Conference moderators, panelists and speakers included University of Colorado Law School professors Phil Weiser, Sarah Krakoff, William Boyd, Kristen Carpenter, Britt Banks, Harold Bruff, Richard Collins, Carla Fredericks, Mark Squillace, and Charles Wilkinson

"We celebrate the work of Distinguished Professor Charles Wilkinson, a prolific and passionate writer, teacher, and advocate for the people and places of the West. Charles's influence extends beyond place, yet his work has always originated in a deep love of and commitment to particular places. We …

South African Marriage In Policy And Practice: A Dynamic Story, Michael W. Yarbrough

Publications and Research

Law forms one of the major structural contexts within which family lives play out, yet the precise dynamics connecting these two foundational institutions are still poorly understood. This article attempts to help bridge this gap by applying sociolegal concepts to empirical findings about state law's role in family, and especially in marriage, drawn from across several decades and disciplines of South Africanist scholarly research. I sketch the broad outlines of a nuanced theoretical approach for analysing the law-family relationship, which insists that the relationship entails a contingent and dynamic interplay between relatively powerful regulating institutions and relatively powerless regulated populations. …

Is Government Really Broken?, Cary Coglianese

Faculty Scholarship at Penn Carey Law

The widespread public angst that surfaced around the 2016 presidential election in the United States revealed that many Americans believe their government has become badly broken. Given the serious problems that continue to persist in society—crime, illiteracy, unemployment, poverty, discrimination, and more—these beliefs in a government breakdown are understandable. Yet a breakdown is actually far from self-evident. In this paper, I explain how diagnoses of governmental performance depend on the perspective from which current conditions in the country are viewed. Certainly when judged against a standard of perfection, America has a long way to go. But perfection is no meaningful …

The High Cost Of Transferring The Dream, Kim Brooks

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

This paper is part of a larger project where I use the facts in tax decisions to reveal something about who we are. It looks through a small window into the lives of the people who find themselves caught between our collective and their individual expenditure aspirations. More specifically, it explores the circumstances in which individuals find that their outstanding tax debts pose a threat to their ability to maintain ownership of their home. In this paper I use the facts of tax cases for two ends. First, I am interested in disrupting legal knowledge hierarchies. We choose cases to …

The Power Of The Body: Analyzing The Corporeal Logic Of Law And Social Change In The Arab Spring, Zeina Jallad, Zeina Jallad

Zeina Jallad

The Power of the Body:

Analyzing the Logic of Law and Social Change in the Arab Spring

Abstract:

Under conditions of extreme social and political injustice - when human rights are under the most threat - rational arguments rooted in the language of human rights are often unlikely to spur reform or to ensure government adherence to citizens’ rights. When those entrusted with securing human dignity, rights, and freedoms fail to do so, and when other actors—such as human rights activists, international institutions, and social movements—fail to engage the levers of power to eliminate injustice, then oppressed and even quotidian …

Less Enforcement, More Compliance, Emily Ryo

Emily Ryo

A common assumption underlying the current public discourse and legal treatment of unauthorized immigrants is that unauthorized immigrants are lawless individuals who will break the law—any law—in search of economic gain. This notion persists despite substantial empirical evidence to the contrary. Drawing on original empirical data, this Article examines unauthorized immigrants and their relationship to the law from a novel perspective to make two major contributions. First, I demonstrate that unauthorized immigrants view themselves and their noncompliance with U.S. immigration law in a manner that is strikingly different from the prevalent view of criminality and lawlessness found in popular and …

The End Of Law Schools, Ray Worthy Campbell

Ray W Campbell

Law schools as we know them are doomed. They continue to offer an educational model originally designed to prepare lawyers to practice in common law courts of a bygone era. That model fails to prepare lawyers for today’s highly specialized practices, and it fails to provide targeted training for the emerging legal services fields other than traditional lawyering.

This article proposes a new ideology of legal education to meet the needs of modern society. Unlike other reform proposals, it looks not to tweaking the training of traditional lawyers, but to rethinking legal education in light of a changing legal services …