Law Commons^™

Law School News: Rwu Day Of Law And Justice Showcases Powerful Combinations At The Statehouse 4-9-2026, Jordan J. Phelan

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Law School News: Roger Williams University School Of Law Receives Historic $4 Million Gift From Mark Mandell To Establish Premier Trial Advocacy Center 4-9-2026, Hillary Lima, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

"From Galaxies To Gloucester" Reday 2026 Undergraduate Panel, Slides 2, Tristan Hightower, Jonathan Holleran, Connor Patterson

Bryant REDay (Research and Engagement Day)

This panel showcases original undergraduate student research exploring how political institutions shape behavior, incentives, and outcomes across diverse contexts. The projects examine interest group theory as applied to the Star Wars universe, presidential rhetoric and congressional response, local political change in Gloucester, MA, and the relationship between senators’ committee assignments and financial interests. Despite varied empirical settings, they share a focus on how actors operate within institutional constraints, how power is exercised, and how political systems structure influence and accountability.

"From Galaxies To Gloucester" Reday 2026 Undergraduate Panel, Slides 1, Tristan M. Hightower, Christian Pereira, Nicholas Poulin

Bryant REDay (Research and Engagement Day)

This panel showcases original undergraduate student research exploring how political institutions shape behavior, incentives, and outcomes across diverse contexts. The projects examine interest group theory as applied to the Star Wars universe, presidential rhetoric and congressional response, local political change in Gloucester, MA, and the relationship between senators’ committee assignments and financial interests. Despite varied empirical settings, they share a focus on how actors operate within institutional constraints, how power is exercised, and how political systems structure influence and accountability.

The Hypocrisy Of The Wizards—A Proposal To Correct Incentives In Higher Education Loan Financing, Caden Benedict

School of Public Policy Capstones

This paper explores the origins of the student loan debt crisis and proposes tying university incentives to graduates' repayment plans and disclosing median earnings for degrees before students apply. Specifically, while there are numerous factors explaining why the price of education has increased dramatically since the 1970s, this paper proposes solutions that will specifically target university moral hazards by requiring universities fund: (1) the current subsidies to federal student loan repayments under income-driven plans as the House of Representatives intended before the Senate removed "risk-sharing," and (2) bankruptcy law discharge amounts. Moreover, requiring universities to disclose the median earnings of …

How Gender Impacts Mock Jurors’ Receptiveness To Aggravating And Mitigating Evidence In Capital Trials, Jolie E. Parker

Undergraduate Theses

This study examines how gender influences mock jurors’ receptiveness to aggravating and mitigating evidence in capital trials. Drawing on prior research that highlights the critical role of mitigation in reducing death sentences and persistent gender differences in death penalty attitudes, this study addresses a gap in the literature by analyzing how gender shapes responses to specific types of evidence rather than general support for capital punishment. Using a quantitative survey of 209 participants, the research analyzes Likert-scale responses measuring how various aggravating and mitigating factors impact sentencing preferences. Results indicate a weak but consistent relationship between gender and receptivity to …

Gender And Emotional Expression In The Courtroom: Mock Juror Perceptions Of Attorney Effectiveness, Emma Cantrell

Undergraduate Theses

This quantitative study examines how gender and emotional expression influence mock jurors' perceptions of an attorney's courtroom effectiveness. Using mock jurors, this study extends previous research suggesting that assertiveness and emotional displays are evaluated differently by gender. Participants were randomly assigned to view one of four closing statements in a mock burglary trial. The videos were of either a male or a female attorney delivering a passive or an aggressive argument. Participants then evaluated the attorney’s effectiveness across four categories: competence, persuasiveness, ability to instill confidence, and emotionality. Male participants generally rated female attorneys as less effective than female participants …

Art Battle: Perceptions Of Criminality In Rap Vs. Stand-Up Comedy, Abiodun A. Akinseye, Fabiana Alceste, Ashley N. Peters

Midwest Social Sciences Journal

Applied research on perceptions of rap music shows that it is viewed more negatively than other musical genres, such as rock or country (e.g., Dunbar et al., 2016). This is in part due to associations between rap and Blackness, including stereotypes about Black people in general and about rappers specifically (e.g., Reyna et al., 2009). In the United States, prosecutors will sometimes present a rapper’s lyrics as a form of confessionary evidence in the courtroom (e.g., State of New Jersey v. Vonte Skinner, 2012). The practice of using art as criminal evidence appears to be unique to the musical genre …

Gender-Based Violence And Botswana's Constitutional Failure To Protect Women's Rights, Cameron Mcdonald

Immigration and Human Rights Law Review

Gender-based violence (“GBV”) remains a pervasive human rights issue throughout Botswana. When it comes to gender equality, Botswana’s dual constitutional and customary legal system is a paradox. Despite its commitment to equality and nondiscrimination, Botswana’s Constitution allows customary courts to discriminate freely to preserve traditional practices that disadvantage women. These traditional practices affect women’s right to property, inheritance, marriage, legal representation, and personal safety. Customary law continues to constrain women’s right to economic autonomy and access to justice, leaving many women dependent on the men who abuse them. As a result, many Batswana women experience structural discrimination in both their …

Silencing Liberty: Why Curtailing Noncitizens' Speech Is Un-American, Erin Gray

Immigration and Human Rights Law Review

Since the October 7, 2023, attack on Israel thousands of students across the world protested Israel’s involvement in the war on Gaza. Many of these protests occurred at American universities. When President Trump returned to the White House in 2025, he publicly threatened to and deport noncitizen students who participated in these protests. Following through with his promise, President Trump revoked multiple students’ visas after they participated in some form of Pro-Palestine advocacy. This Article explores whether President Trump’s actions are constitutional under the First Amendment. Ultimately, this Article concludes that President Trump violated the First Amendment by targeting noncitizen …

The Myth Of The Immigrant As A Criminal: Rhetoric, Otherness, And The Legal Construction Of Danger, Katerina Fernandez

Immigration and Human Rights Law Review

The figure of the “criminal immigrant” occupies a central place in contemporary U.S. immigration discourse, shaping public perception, enforcement priorities, and legal doctrine. Yet a substantial body of empirical research consistently demonstrates that immigrants—both documented and undocumented—commit crimes at lower rates than native-born citizens. This Note examines why the narrative of immigrant criminality persists despite this evidence and how it influences the development and operation of immigration law. It argues that “immigrant” functions not only as a legal category but also as a socially constructed marker of Otherness, encompassing perceived differences in race, language, culture, and religion. Through this lens, …

The Expanding Digital Border: Ai, Surveillance, And The Fight For Justice, James Chesser

Immigration and Human Rights Law Review

As artificial intelligence transforms the mechanisms of immigration control, the modern border has become a digital filter—one governed less by geography and more by code. This Article examines the legal, technical, and ethical implications of AI-driven systems now central to global border enforcement, including biometric surveillance, algorithmic risk scoring, and predictive profiling. It explores how states use these technologies not only to manage irregular migration, but to compete for global talent—constructing migration regimes that reward capital and compliance while eroding transparency, due process, and equality.

Through an international and comparative lens, the piece highlights the expansion of algorithmic decision-making across …

Addressing Legal Uncertainties In Article Versions And Institutional Copyright Policies To Support Immediate Public Access To Federal Grant-Funded Publications, Yuanxiao Xu

Copyright, Fair Use, Scholarly Communication, etc.

New federal public access policies—mandated by the 2022 OSTP Memo and already adopted by several key federal grant-making agencies—require authors funded by federal grants to deposit peer-reviewed publications for immediate public access. This paper explains how grant- receiving institutions and their affiliated authors can dispel legal uncertainties and comply with the new public access policies. Section I delineates how valid prior licenses enable public deposit of manuscripts notwithstanding later publishing agreements transferring copyright to the journals. Section II discusses the different versions of a manuscript created during the publication process. Section III describes the different types of third-party contributions incorporated …

Udział Społeczeństwa W Inwestycjach W Elektrownie Jądrowe W Świetle Sprawiedliwości Energetycznej, Artur Tyński, Bartłomiej Kupiec

internetowy Kwartalnik Antymonopolowy i Regulacyjny (internet Quarterly on Antitrust and Regulation)

Artykuł analizuje udział społeczeństwa w procesie inwestycyjnym dotyczącym elektrowni jądrowych w Polsce w kontekście sprawiedliwości energetycznej. Autorzy przedstawiają teoretyczne podstawy partycypacji obywatelskiej oraz powiązanie sprawiedliwości proceduralnej i uznania z akceptacją społeczną inwestycji jądrowych. W artykule omówiono aktualny stan prawny i praktykę udziału społecznego, wskazując na ograniczenia obecnych mechanizmów konsultacji i niedostateczne wdrożenie rozwiązań zwiększających transparentność i wpływ obywateli na decyzje. Przeanalizowano również przypadki panelu obywatelskiego w Republice Korei oraz praktykę konsultacji społecznych przy planowaniu pierwszej polskiej elektrowni jądrowej. W części końcowej przedstawiono rekomendacje de lege ferenda na rzecz wzmocnienia udziału społeczeństwa i realizacji zasady sprawiedliwości energetycznej w krajowych regulacjach.

Why Capitalism Needs Democracy And Democracy Needs Capitalism, Luigi Zingales

Fordham Law Review

No abstract provided.

Navigating Sustainable Burial In Southern Nevada, Kristen Gibson

Calvert Undergraduate Research Awards

Navigating Sustainable Burial in Southern Nevada investigates the accessibility of environmentally conscious end-of-life options for individuals throughout the region. Sustainable burial practices, including green burial, water cremation, and natural organic reduction, provide alternatives to traditional burial and cremation methods. Research was conducted through an analysis of Nevada statutes, local reporting, funeral service resources, and public discussions related to sustainable burial. The research revealed that although Nevada expanded legal recognition of sustainable burial by legalizing natural organic reduction, public access to clear information and available services remains limited. These findings informed the creation of a choose-your-own-adventure booklet designed to translate legal …

The Last Human Question: Generative Ai's Existential Threat To Consensus And Law, Joshua Fairfield

West Virginia Law Review

The true risk of artificial intelligence (“AI”) is not that the toasters will rise up. It is that AI will be competent to perform human tasks and indifferent to human welfare. The risk is that we will be outcompeted by generative automated processes that create output similar to ours (although never the same, as this Article explains), but which need none of the outputs of the economy for food, shelter, or human flourishing. Further, a more precise and existential description of the threat is that generative AI will disrupt and crowd out humanity’s evolutionary superpower, our ability to generate agreement …

Ai And Law Milestones: From Top-Down To Bottom-Up Computational Models Of Legal Reasoning (And Back), Kevin Ashley

West Virginia Law Review

This Article introduces five research and development milestones in the field of Artificial Intelligence and Law and then discusses how large language models (“LLMs”) and generative AI (“GenAI”) are affecting each of them. The milestones include legal expert systems, lessons learned in computationally modeling legal rules and statutes, knowledge-based models of legal argument, machine learning models that classify case texts and predict outcomes, and the design and evaluation of legal applications of LLMs and GenAI. These milestones illustrate how top-down knowledge-based computational models of legal expertise have rapidly given way to bottom-up models based on machine learning. Knowledge-based models explicitly …

A View Under The Hood: Duquesne Kline's Law And Computing Program, Wesley M. Oliver, Katherine L.W. Norton, Martin Mckown, David Horrigan

West Virginia Law Review

No abstract provided.

Training New Lawyers With And For Generative Ai: A Semester-Long Experiment Scaling Clinical Friction In The Doctrinal Classroom, Frank W. Volk

West Virginia Law Review

No abstract provided.

Augmented Advocacy: Ethical Constraints And Regulatory Gaps In Ai-Driven Legal Practice, Molly M. Rowlands

West Virginia Law Review

The rapid advancement of artificial intelligence (“AI”) and particularly generative AI (“Gen AI”) is reshaping the legal profession in unprecedented ways. AI-powered tools enhance efficiency, improve accuracy in legal analysis, and expand access to justice by automating research, contract review, litigation support, and predictive analytics. However, these benefits come with significant ethical, regulatory, and procedural challenges, including competency concerns and AI “hallucinations,” data confidentiality risks, algorithmic bias, and the environmental impact of AI-driven computing. This Note critically examines the evolving role of AI in legal practice and evaluates the inadequacies of existing regulatory frameworks—such as Rule 11 of the Federal …

Forever Young: Student Employee Unionization In Higher Education, William A. Herbert

Publications and Research

This article presents history and data about unionization among graduate and undergraduate student employees in the United States. It demonstrates that student employee unionization is not a new phenomenon and is part of a second curriculum for higher education students, which provides first-hand experience in workplace representational democracy and citizenship, including maintaining a majority coalition and making hard necessary compromises

The Energy And Environmental Footprint Of Ai, Michael P. Vandenbergh, Ethan I. Thorpe, Jonathan M. Gilligan

Michigan Journal of Environmental & Administrative Law

Artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to create major economic and social benefits, but also to rapidly escalate electricity demand and its associated environmental impacts. Information availability has been a cornerstone of environmental law for half a century, and this Article argues that providing information to individual, corporate, and other users about the electricity demand and environmental impacts of AI can reduce those impacts without delaying development of the technology. Little is known about how different large language models (LLMs) compare on these metrics, though. To address whether users have access to the information necessary to address this shortcoming, the …

Property Taxes And Educational Inequality: How Funding Structures Perpetuate Social Class Divides In San Antonio, Texas, Kristanna Martinez, Camila Ore

Posters - 2026

The U.S education system relies heavily on property taxes, creating an unhealthy dependence where property value dictates the quality of education depending on the school district

• In the historical case Edgewood v. Kriby, the Texas Supreme Court ruled that the reliance on local property taxes for school funding was unconstitutional, as it violated the state requirement that all children receive a “thorough and efficient” education. The court ruled that every district must be provided the same ability to obtain educational funds regardless of their local property wealth. • The purpose of this study is to examine if the 2025-2026 …

Armed Conflict: Addressing Violations Against Children's Human Rights, Noelia Torres Guillen

Posters - 2026

• Research question: How has armed conflict violated children's human rights, and how have international legal frameworks been effective in addressing these violations?

• The CRC sets the standard international definition, which defines a child as every human being below the age of eighteen years

• There are six grave violations: Killing and maiming of children, the recruitment or use of children as soldiers, sexual violence, abduction, attacks against schools and hospitals, and denial of humanitarian access for children.

• Argument (thesis): Although there are several legal instruments implemented to protect children's human rights during armed conflict, children are still …

An Austrian Approach To Accounting Regulation: How Policy Intervention Distorts The Market For Assurance Services, Kyan Howe

Student Scholarship

This thesis applies the causal-realist method of the Austrian School of Economics to the market for assurance services in the United States. The central argument is that post-crisis accounting regulation has systematically distorted the incentive structures of independent public accounting firms in ways regulators do not predict and cannot fully control. Financial crises, properly understood through Austrian Business Cycle Theory, originate in monetary distortions rather than market failure. Post-crisis regulatory responses nonetheless target the profession rather than the underlying distortion, introducing rules that alter the institutional constraints within which auditors exercise professional judgment.

The thesis develops a judgment-based equation of …

Three Paths To Justice: Comparing Feminist Strategies Against Gender-Based Violence In East Asia, Ashley Chon

The Dialogue

No abstract provided.

Beyond The Individual: Exploring Structural Explanations Of Homelessness Through Thematic Analysis Of Extant Research, Madison R. Mcclain

Senior Theses

This thesis examines how homelessness is defined, explained, and addressed within contemporary U.S. research using Critical Race Theory (CRT) and Intersectionality as guiding frameworks. Through a qualitative, deductive thematic analysis of 16 peer-reviewed articles, this study identifies six key themes related to structural causation, policy governance, measurement practices, racial inequality, dominant narratives, and intersecting systems of disadvantage. Findings reveal that while structural explanations of homelessness are widely acknowledged, they are inconsistently defined and often insufficiently theorized. Institutional systems primarily function to manage rather than resolve homelessness, while measurement practices and definitions actively shape who is recognized and prioritized. Additionally, structural …

“He Should Be Primaried, And I Will Lead The Charge Against Him”: An Autopsy On The Decline Of Grassroots Organizing And Rhetoric In A Monetized Democracy, Chiara H. Baez

Research and Creativity Symposium

Protest movements in the US have been steadily declining, unable to keep up with changing rhetoric and societal expectations regarding First Amendment free speech. Seemingly overnight, protests have lost the ability to directly input the people’s voice into policymaking. Grassroots protest movements are being priced out of the political participation that was once accessible to them by Political Action Committees (PACs), and politicians are favoring pollsters’ skewed data over the public opinion expressed in organized protest. This has created a systemic barrier, halting the voice of the American people. Grassroots protest movements have not disappeared from the American political landscape; …

Why Democratic Backsliding Is Legal: Judicial Legitimacy And Institutional Decay In The United States, Sherlyn Ochoa

Posters - 2026

“In the United States, democratic backsliding is not a violation of the law—it is increasingly a product of it.” Democratic change often occurs through judicial interpretation Courts shape rights, participation, and equality Focus: how judicial legitimacy allows major democratic shifts—both expansion and restriction of rights