Law Commons^™

Finding Luis: A Creative Nonfiction Account Of Law & Society, Jason M. Leggett

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This essay explores the contradictions in legal theory and human experience through creative nonfiction. Its main purpose is to argue that a truly just society requires acknowledging the profound influence of individual narratives on the law. This is supported by blending personal narratives, critical analysis, and philosophical inquiry to reveal the gap between codified law and lived realities for marginalized individuals. This unique Legal Poetics methodology employs a series of six vignettes, such as the author's and Luis's shared experiences with traumatic brain injury and the denial of justice, as data. By integrating autoethnography, law as narrative, and performativity theories, …

Humanity Is Evolving Its Consciousness: The Role Of Archetypal Energies As Guides During An Unfolding Weeding Out And Alignment Process, Carroy U. Ferguson

Psychology Faculty Publication Series

Humanity is evolving its consciousness at individual and collective levels.  Given these seemingly tumultuous times, as of this writing (January 2026), to make such a statement may sound like a strange thing to say.  However, I suggest that if you are alive today and if you are reading these words, these are the very times for which you were born—to assist Humanity as it evolves its consciousness with your unique gifts, whatever they may be.  That is, this period of our individual and collective human being-ness may be characterized as an unfolding period of weeding out and alignment with the …

The Brady Materiality Standard, Brandon L. Garrett, Adam M. Gershowitz

Faculty Scholarship

The Brady doctrine requires prosecutors to disclose all favorable and material evidence to the defense. To effectuate that rule, the U.S. Supreme Court has defined materiality as a “reasonable probability” that the evidence would have affected the outcome at trial. But apart from that definition, the Court has resisted offering any further guidance to lower courts. While far too little is known about how Brady materiality claims are actually adjudicated, there is strong evidence that courts often reject Brady claims involving withheld evidence on the grounds that the evidence was not significant enough to be material.

To examine how Brady …

Confession Contamination And Dna Exonerations, 1989-2025, Brandon L. Garrett

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

When Words Flow Like Water: How The Enbridge Line 3 Pipeline Environmental Impact Statement Failed To Prevent Hydrogeologic Harm In Minnesota, Carly Gutzmann

Journal of Earth and Life Science

For the aquifers of Minnesota, the environmental impact statement (EIS) was a promise of protection that never left the page. An environmental impact statement is meant to be an aid in the decision making process in order to ensure that projects consider potential environmental harms that may occur. However, they are often used instead as another regulatory box to check, rather than as active considerations when planning. As such, a project plan can be flawed from the start—if project developers only consider environmental impacts after they have already put considerable time, effort, and funding into their project as-is, they may …

Policy Recommendations And Ways Forward, Rachel Locke, Jocelyn Getgen Kestenbaum

Book Chapters

This chapter discusses how the transformative ideas presented by the contributors can be applied in concrete and meaningful ways to policy, practice, and research. The chapter begins with a discussion of principles that were both crucial to the articulation of the recommendations and are similarly crucial to any proposal to address identity-based mass violence. The human-centered values of this volume demand a focus not only on outcomes but also on process, as these principles attest. The chapter then focuses on practical areas of action, from capacity building to funding to shifting narratives, and more. This chapter shifts from prescriptive policy …

System Disparities: Racial Criminalization And The Risk Of Coerced And False Confessions In Youth, Cynthia J. Najdowski

Psychology Faculty Scholarship

Black youth may be even more vulnerable than other youth to admitting to crimes they did not commit in the context of police interrogations. In support, analysis of data from the National Registry of Exonerations indicates that 65% of people who were wrongfully convicted on the basis of false confessions they gave when under 18 years old are Black, whereas only 14% of the U.S. population is Black. In this chapter, I seek to understand the overrepresentation of Black youth in samples of juvenile false confessors by examining the cultural stereotype about Black criminality in relation to both investigators and …

The Influence Of Adverse Childhood Experiences On Female Violent Offending: A Scoping Systematic Review, Alexis M. Wolgemuth

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

Female-perpetrated violence has exhibited concerning data trends in recent years. Prior scholarship indicates that past victimization and trauma in childhood, known as adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), are highly prevalent among women offenders. However, the research concerning ACEs and violent females is scattered. This thesis provides a scoping literature review using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) updated 2020 guidelines. A systematic database search was conducted using Academic Search Complete, SAGE Journals, Springer Nature Link, and HeinOnline to identify relevant peer-reviewed journal articles. Inclusion and exclusion criteria are established, focusing on studies published after January 2015. These …

Book Review: Automobiles, Cultures And The Question Of Law, Stephen M. Young

Journal of Law and Mobility

Unsettling Colonial Automobilities: Criminalisation and Contested Sovereignties is a compelling interdisciplinary and multileveled study that sits at the intersection of law, criminology, settler colonial studies, and cultural analysis. The authors are well-suited to this task. They include Professors Harry Blagg, with expertise in First Nations community-engaged criminology; Thalia Anthony, from legal and carceral studies; Wiradjuri scholar Juanita Sherwood, who studies Indigenous health and community research; and Kieran Tranter, an expert in cultural legal theory. Together, they offer a layered interrogation of how the motor vehicle and automobility shape the settler colonial ordering of Australia.

This review is comprised of three …

Reimagining Justice: Transformative Justice Analysis In Adult Felony Cases, Marisa Tramontano

Open Educational Resources

In this sociology final project, students take the role of a sociologist working with a public defender and analyze the records and social history of a client facing sentencing for a felony. They write a report for a judge explaining how structural factors and sociological concepts illuminate the case, then recommend responses that include alternatives to incarceration. A reflective essay examines the limits of the available information, ethical considerations, and how the project shaped their understanding of justice.

The Steelerville Case: Applying Criminological Theory To Crime And Police Morale, Shamus Smith

Open Educational Resources

Students use a fictional town’s economic decline and rising crime to evaluate at least two criminological theories and their implications for policy. Role-playing as consultants, they develop research-supported recommendations to reduce crime and improve police morale.

Women’S Exposure To Incel Content, Perceived Safety, And Gender-Based Violence Risk In The United States, Deja Bledsoe

Criminology & Criminal Justice Theses

The rapid proliferation of incel-related content across digital platforms has raised concerns about online misogyny and its potential impact on women’s perceived safety. However, less is known about how exposure to such content shapes women’s perceptions of risk and emotional responses in everyday digital environments. This study examines the relationship between exposure to incel-related content and women’s perceived risk of gender-based violence and safety-related anxiety. Guided by strain theory, social control theory, hegemonic masculinity, and intersectionality, the study employs an anonymous cross-sectional online survey of women aged 18 and older. Quantitative analyses were conducted to assess whether exposure to incel-related …

Male Disposability, Law, And Feminism, Edward Cantu

Faculty Works

This article explores scientific evidence that societies care more about the welfare and safety of females than that of males, and that this dynamic of "male disposability" is deeply entrenched in culture, and thus in law. The recognition and integration of male disposability theory would mean an evolutionary leap in modern theorizing about gender and the law, but it is ignored. Why? Feminist theory dominates current academic gender discourse. Far from appreciating the explanatory power of male disposability theory, feminist theorists are often invested in theorizing gendered problems in ways that mischannel compassion away from men and toward women. The …

Data Rights For Workers, Pauline Kim, Rachel Leavitt

Scholarship@WashULaw

Workers are subject to immense amounts of data collection on the job, and the algorithmic management tools built with that data can produce negative effects, including deskilling jobs, unstable work hours, reduced wages, and dangerous and degrading working conditions. Workers thus have significant interests how their data are collected and used, and yet they have been excluded from nearly all the recently enacted or proposed data protection laws. Their exclusion stems from data protection’s roots in privacy law and theory, which primarily focused on consumers as data subjects. Current data protection laws, even if expanded to cover workers, would provide …

The Limits Of "Punishment", Benjamin Levin

Scholarship@WashULaw

“Punishment” is an all-important category in criminal legal thought. Conventional scholarship adopts a narrow definition and focuses on justifying penal sanctions. Much critical work, in contrast, seeks to expand the category—defining more practices and institutions as “punishment.” In this Article, I argue that the focus on purposes of punishment and on what constitutes punishment distracts from a larger theoretical and practical issue—much of what the criminal system does probably isn’t punishment as such. Certainly, a carceral sentence is punishment. But what about a curfew requirement for a defendant awaiting trial? What about a restriction on gun ownership post conviction? What …

Beyond Digital Pessimism: How A Focus On Trust Can Enhance Eu Digital Law, Neil M. Richards, Woodrow Hartzog, Claire Boine, Lea Despotis

Scholarship@WashULaw

Lawmakers looking to foster technological innovation on the European market are adopting laws they hope will promote consumer trust in digital products. Their strategy can be broken down into three components. First, they aim to empower consumers to choose how much data they want to share with companies through an express consent framework. Second, they seek to avoid harms from digital products through product safety law such as adapting the Product Safety Regulation to digital products or adopting the AI Act. Third, they endeavor to prevent manipulation of consumers through digital means.

In this essay, we argue that while laudable, …

Apportioned Direct Taxes, Conor Clarke, Ari Glogower

Scholarship@WashULaw

The Constitution requires that Congress apportion any “direct” tax among the states by population. This once-dormant provision is now the most important constitutional limitation on Congress’s taxing power. Last year, in Moore v. United States, the Supreme Court seriously considered, for the first time in decades, whether to invalidate an Act of Congress as an unapportioned direct tax. While the law survived, Moore has opened a new era in which scholars and policymakers must again take apportionment seriously. Yet the apportionment requirement remains poorly understood.

This Article provides a new perspective on apportionment by examining how Congress and Treasury …

Space Enterprises As International Lawmakers: Nudges, Pledges, And Other Bottom-Up Modalities, Melissa (M.J.) Durkee

Scholarship@WashULaw

Private entities are influencing the development of international space law. Space enterprises need regulatory certainty and consistent standards to attract capital and develop their plans for space. Yet, states have lagged in their capacity to make multilateral international space law in traditional public fora. Private entities have responded to this legal lag by attempting to create, develop, and nudge international space law in commerce-friendly ways. This chapter surveys a variety of modalities by which commercial actors can affect the development of international law, offers several examples of how commercial lawmaking efforts

How International Organizations Regulate Lobbyist Access, Melissa (M.J.) Durkee

Scholarship@WashULaw

This chapter explores how international organizations (IOs) regulate lobbyist access through participation frameworks rather than traditional lobbying laws. While no unified international lobbying regime exists, IOs use rules on NGO 'consultation' and 'engagement' to structure access. These rules, rooted in historical practices like the UN's Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) accreditation system, prioritize representativeness and legitimacy over transparency and accountability. As lobbying increasingly targets international forums, concerns about undue influence (the 'lobbying critique') and insufficient stakeholder inclusion (the 'access critique') have driven divergent reforms: some IOs, like the World Health Organization, have adopted stricter controls; others, such as the GAVI …

Taking Legality Seriously: What The Major Questions Doctrine Is — And Isn't, Andrea Scoseria Katz, Ofra Bloch

Scholarship@WashULaw

The Major Questions Doctrine (MQD), a controversial recent innovation of the Roberts Court that applies stricter scrutiny to “major” actions taken by federal agencies, has faced criticism for being atextual, unprincipled, and nakedly ideological. But this critique misses the fact that the doctrine has near-exact analogues in many other legal systems, where it is an established tool for reining in executive overreach. This Article argues that, while the MQD reflects valid rule-of-law concerns, as applied, it lacks theoretical clarity, consistency and limits. More importantly, the Court itself lacks a theory of what the MQD is. We provide an answer grounded …

Privatising International (Organizations) Law, Melissa (M.J.) Durkee

Scholarship@WashULaw

This essay explores the increasing role of private commercial actors within international organizations (IOs) and the implications for international law. Once conceived as state-centred institutions, IOs now routinely involve corporations, trade associations, and philanthropic foundations in lawmaking, policy-setting, financing, and implementation. These actors participate through multiple channels: as observers, delegates, stakeholders, funders, and partners. While private involvement has historical precedents, its contemporary scale and formalization mark a significant transformation in global governance. International law, however, offers little guidance on the boundary between public and private authority, leaving legitimacy concerns unresolved. To evaluate privatization, the article identifies two competing logics: a …

Advanced Introduction To Family Law In The Us, Susan Frelich Appleton

Scholarship@WashULaw

This Elgar Advanced Introduction provides key insights into family law in the US. In the midst of consequential changes wrought by the US Supreme Court, this book traces the evolution of the field from its origins in the law of domestic relations to the more modern regime of family law.

Key features include:
● Integrates state law, federal law, legal scholarship, and literature from other disciplines.
● Identifies the regulation of sex and the policy of keeping dependency private as family law''s principal enduring features.
● Surveys different topics in family law including: marriage, nonmarriage, and dissolution; pregnancy; parentage; and …

Abolishing The Family, Susan Frelich Appleton, Albertina Antognini

Scholarship@WashULaw

Family law scholarship is replete with calls for reform. Yet gender-, race-, and class-based inequalities within and across families remain intractable. So what if, instead of reforming the family, we abolish it?

Abolishing the family might sound like a startling idea for a family-law analysis, especially after decades of efforts to expand the legal understanding of “family.” But the proposal is hardly new. In this Article, we lay the groundwork for integrating family abolitionist ideas, which have until now mostly taken place outside of law, into family law scholarship.

While family abolition is in many ways a radical departure from …

Justifying The Fourth Amendment, Daniel Epps

Scholarship@WashULaw

Why does the Fourth Amendment belong in the Constitution? This question is not whether society should impose some legal restraints on government searches and seizures. Rather, why should such protections reside in our national charter, superior to other forms of law and insulated from change via ordinary majoritarian political processes? Despite major disputes about the Fourth Amendment’s content, Fourth Amendment theorists rarely ask this question. Almost all agree that the Fourth Amendment’s constitutional protections are critically important—even if no one can agree exactly what those protections are.

This Article seeks a justification for the Fourth Amendment—the reason why search-and-seizure protections …

Teaching Constitutional Law: Politics, Democracy And History, Andrea Scoseria Katz

Scholarship@WashULaw

Teaching Constitutional Law in the present era presents unique pedagogical challenges. My students arrive skeptical of the field, doubtful of the Supreme Court’s authority, questioning the relevance of legal methods in determining case outcomes, and perceiving constitutional adjudication as irreducibly political. Rather than dismiss these concerns, I argue that constitutional law professors must acknowledge them directly. Our task is not to restore naïve faith in judicial neutrality (an impossible ideal), but to present students with a vision of constitutional meaning-making—one grounded in politics, history, and democratic politics—in which they can recognize themselves as engaged participants in the future of our …

Seeing International Organizations In A Shifting Landscape: Law, Practice, And Authority, Melissa (M.J.) Durkee

Scholarship@WashULaw

This book review symposium comes at a moment of visible strain in the postwar legal order. As of this writing, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has described a "rupture" in the rules-based world order, warning that multilateral institutions and the architecture of collective problem-solving are under threat. Notably, Carney issued that warning at the World Economic Forum in Davos, before an audience of "companies and countries." The setting underscores a broader shift in global governance, in which states, firms, and philanthropic actors increasingly occupy shared institutional spaces, unsettling assumptions about law and power at the international level. The books under …

Specialization And The Permanence Of Federal Bankruptcy Law, Rafael I. Pardo

Scholarship@WashULaw

Traditional historical accounts posit that federal bankruptcy specialization in the United States first developed under the system established by the Bankruptcy Act of 1898. That view assumes that the structural and temporal conditions necessary to foster specialization did not exist under the nation’s earlier federal bankruptcy systems—those created by the Bankruptcy Acts of 1800, 1841, and 1867. This Article theorizes that federal bankruptcy specialization very likely occurred under the pre-1898 systems and marshals evidence to that effect, primarily focusing on the Bankruptcy Act of 1841 (the 1841 Act). That statute marked a critical turning point in federal bankruptcy law, shifting …

Sustainability Assurance, Andrew F. Tuch, Luca Enriques, Alessandro Romano

Scholarship@WashULaw

A robust literature examines sustainability disclosures by public corporations, but legal scholarship has largely overlooked the role of third-party assurance—or verification—of such disclosures. This is a notable omission given the extensive literature on the auditing of financial statements, a related form of assurance.

This article responds by examining the role of assurance in sustainability reporting. In keeping with the theme of this symposium volume, it draws on US and EU law. Our discussion begins in Part I with sustainability disclosures, focusing on the requirements and practices of public companies. In Part II, we introduce sustainability assurance as well as assurance …

Tariffs And The Taxing Power: Historical Lessons For Major Questions And Nondelegation, Conor Clarke, Ari Glogower

Scholarship@WashULaw

American law is grappling with basic questions about the President’s power to impose tariffs—questions concerning whether Congress can delegate this authority, and the degree to which it has. But the ongoing tariff controversy emerges against a backdrop of conflicting and shifting historical practice. Early Congresses drafted tariff statutes in painstaking detail, while some of the broadest delegations in the early Republic involved internal taxes. In the modern era, by contrast, Congress has delegated more expansive tariff powers to the President, while retaining closer control over internal taxes. How should we understand this seemingly conflicting history of practice, and its relevance …

Foreword: The Constitution And Public Finance—Why Now And Why Ever?, Conor Clarke, Eric Kubo

Scholarship@WashULaw

This paper introduces the Washington University Law Review’s 2026 symposium issue on “Taxing, Spending, and the Constitution.” We situate the symposium’s ten papers within three interconnected developments in public finance law: the Supreme Court’s recent decision on the Sixteenth Amendment in Moore v. United States; the Trump Administration’s assertions of executive control over appropriated funds; and the use of emergency and trade statutes to justify sweeping tariff authority.

We also step back to ask why constitutional issues in public finance—long treated as a technical backwater—have become such a central site of doctrinal and political conflict. We offer several explanations beyond …