Law Commons^™

Addressing Space Tourism’S Environmental Effects: Marine Environment Regulations As A Basis For Regulating Orbital Space Debris, Elena Mak

Journal of Air Law and Commerce

With the success of private suborbital space flight, the space industry is now facing unprecedented growth as billionaires strive to accomplish the task of sending astrotourists into space. However, given the novelty of this objective, the current domestic and international legal regimes governing outer space and space travel are both confusing and outdated, and thus, they have not adequately accounted for space tourism activities. Given the projected growth of this industry, detrimental and dangerous environmental effects—such as an increase in orbital space debris—have become a pressing concern. These effects will not only affect the global climate on Earth but will …

Sorry For The Delay: How Faa Regulations In The U.S. Are Stifling Innovation And Hindering The Growth Of A Promising New Industry Based On Delivery Drones, Mason Sarver

Journal of Air Law and Commerce

From the creation of the transistor radio to robots powered by artificial intelligence, the rapid pace of technological advancements in a multitude of industries has ushered in an innumerable amount of economic, environmental, and social benefits that have collectively produced positive effects around the world. However, in addition to benefits, these rapid advancements in technology have created a particular problem affecting many industries in the United States—antiquated regulations that were promulgated for a particular industry become inefficient and impractical due to rapid technological advancements within that industry. The delivery drone industry, a blossoming new sector of air commerce that has …

Curiousity Killed The (Fat) Cat: Promoting Safety Over Profit In The Space Tourism Industry, Ryan Puente

Journal of Air Law and Commerce

Humans have never been more capable than they are now of dominating the extreme environments of the universe. This newfound capacity to enter the depths of the oceans and exit the familiar grasp of the atmosphere has led to an unprecedented ability to explore the corners of the universe. This ability brings excitement and opportunity but also presents many potentially fatal risks associated with the unknowns of the extreme environments being explored. The space tourism industry, like other extreme tourism industries, faces the challenge of navigating the forefront of human exploration in a sustainable way that preserves the lives and …

Back To The Future: Outer Space Policy Review Of The Past For Clues To The Future, Paul B. Larsen

Journal of Air Law and Commerce

Sixty years later, Professor Paul B. Larsen revisits and discusses seven outer space legal issues identified by early space law experts and their current impacts on space policy. The first section addresses the ambiguous boundary of the non-sovereign outer space legal regime which, increasingly causes states to claim control of non-sovereign outer space. Second, Larsen analyzes how the lack of outer space regulation by an international agency like the International Civil Aviation Organization has encouraged states to seek to control outer space unilaterally. Third, although the original aim of space law experts was for outer space to be free for …

Accommodating Religion After Groff, Charles A. Sullivan

SMU Law Review

At the end of last term, Groff v. DeJoy “clarified” an earlier Supreme Court decision that had largely nullified Title VII’s duty that employers reasonably accommodate their workers’ religious practices by virtue of a very broad interpretation of a statutory exception. That exception permitted denying accommodation when the result would be “undue hardship,” and the Court in the earlier case had described that defense as triggered whenever the accommodation would impose “more than de minimis” costs. This atextual reading had the effect of largely erasing the duty, and over time became increasingly out of sync with the Court’s religious liberties …

In Honor Of Professor Joseph Norton, Marc I. Steinberg

SMU Law Review

No abstract provided.

At Least Make It Adequate: The Constitution Should Better Protect Public Education, Cristina J. Mauldin

SMU Law Review

Public education lacks adequate constitutional protection. The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted pre-existing issues in the public education system, such as poor literacy rates, chronic absenteeism, and disparities in students’ post-secondary college and career readiness. Additionally, recent changes in educational policies have often been part of legislative schemes passed by lawmakers who, on average, are at least two generations removed from American students—these policy changes have not been driven by data in response to students’ needs. As a result, there is a serious lack of consistency in the quality of an American education that has contributed to disparities in students’ learning and …

Make America Healthy: Reducing High Pharmaceutical Prices Without Reducing Innovation, Srividhya Ragavan

SMU Law Review

Cost of medication in the United States has historically remained one of the highest in the world. The conundrum that the United States has faced in balancing innovation with affordability of life-saving medications is palpable, especially when faced with the reality of patent monopolies conflicting with healthcare obligations. The result is an overflow of issues, which emphasize the need to delineate limits on innovation to balance pharmaceutical novelty with robust public health within the United States. This has increasingly shifted the focus of patent law into the realm of healthcare issues. Naturally, it leads to an inquiry about how best …

The Changing Face And Increasingly Targeted Tool Of State Interlocutory Appeals, Elizabeth Lee Thompson

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

This Article presents previously underappreciated and underrecognized nationwide developments concerning the transformed and broadly impactful role of subject-specific interlocutory appeal statutes and rules and to recommend a broad reset on the use of such appeals to serve the efficiency of and equal-access to the appellate system. Over the last fifty—and particularly over the last twenty-five—years, interlocutory appeals have expanded from a rarely-used, discouraged practice allowed for a limited category of irremediable trial court orders to a dynamically growing area allowing numerous, specific, and often politically or legislatively significant bases for swift appeal. The Article examines this previously unexplored, evolved, proactive, …

Restoring The Economic Interest Standard In The Taxation Of Mineral Resources, Barksdale Hortenstine, Gary R. Huffman, J. Andrew Miller

Rowling Books

In Restoring the Economic Interest Standard in the Taxation of Mineral Resources, Hortenstine, Hoffman, and Miller provide an important analysis of the U.S. Fifth Court of Appeals' 2022 decision in Exxon Mobil Corp. v. United States. They argue that the Fifth Circuit failed to adhere to the most basic historical precedent established for the concepts defining the economic interest in a mineral property. The authors examine the development of the federal taxation of natural resources, focusing on the interdependence and interaction of the concepts of economic interest and percentage depletion.

The first part of the book focuses on …

Tsai Today (2024), Southern Methodist University, Dedman School Of Law, Tsai Center For Law, Science And Innovation

Tsai Today

No abstract provided.

The Quad (The 2024 Alumni Magazine), Southern Methodist University, Dedman School Of Law

The Quad (Law Alumni Magazine), 1988-present

• Judge Irma Carrillo Ramirez United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit
• Trailblazer Speaker Series
• Alumna Spotlight: Brittany K. Barnett
• New Scholarship Challenge Initiative Timed with SMU • Dedman Law Upcoming Centennial Anniversary
• Office of Diversity and Inclusion Building Community with a Spirit of Compassion, Connection, and Excellence
• Jurist in Residence: Judge Kent Jordan SMU Dedman School of Law Inaugural Program
• Focus on our Centers Deason Criminal Justice Reform Center, Tsai Center for Law, Science and Innovation, Robert B. Rowling Center for Business Law & Leadership
• Faculty Spotlights Professors Nathan Cortez …

Rowling Record 2023-2024, The Robert B. Rowling Center For Business Law & Leadership

Rowling Record

No abstract provided.

Partnership Law, Troy Christensen, Jeff Dorrill, Matthew Schindel, Madeline Ballard, James Barnett

SMU Annual Texas Survey

This Article describes and analyzes major developments in partnership law that occurred in Texas between December 1 and November 30 of 2022.

Real Property, J. Richard White, Amanda Grainger

SMU Annual Texas Survey

No abstract provided.

Raising The Bar In Child Welfare Law, Diane M. Sumoski

SMU Law Review

This article explores the unique opportunities arising from child welfare law practice in clinical legal education. While training law students for lawyering in all practice areas, the clinic can also inspire experienced child welfare practitioners to raise the level of their practice. The article provides an overview of the child welfare practice in Texas, the various roles of lawyers in the system, the special training required for these lawyers, and how the lawyers are employed and paid. The article proposes that the clear impact of child welfare legal practice on clients, combined with its interdisciplinary complexity, creates an ideal combination …

Survey Of Recent Mandamus Decisions Of The Texas Supreme Court, Douglas S. Lang

SMU Annual Texas Survey

No abstract provided.

One Year Post-Bruen: An Empirical Assessment, Eric Ruben, Rosanna Smart, Ali Rowhani-Rahbar

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

In the year after New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, a steady stream of highly publicized opinions struck down a wide range of previously upheld gun restrictions. Courts declared unconstitutional policies ranging from assault weapon bans to domestic abuser prohibitions to various limits on publicly carrying handguns. Those opinions can frequently be paired with others reaching the opposite conclusion. The extent to which Bruen shook up the Second Amendment landscape and has caused widespread confusion in the courts is starting to come into focus.

This Essay measures Bruen’s aftereffects by statistically analyzing a year’s worth …

Emerging Technology's Unfamiliarity With Commercial Law, Carla L. Reyes

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

Over the course of a three-year, collaborative process that was open to the public, the Uniform Law Commission (ULC) and the American Law Institute (ALI) undertook a project to revise the Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) to account for the impact of emerging technologies on commercial transactions. The amendments, approved jointly by the ULC and ALI in July 2022, touch on aspects of the entire UCC, but one change has inspired ire and attracted national media attention: a proposed revision to the definition of “money.” The 2022 UCC Amendments alter the definition of “money” to account for the introduction of central …

Scientific Context, Suicide Prevention, And The Second Amendment After Bruen, Eric Ruben

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

The Supreme Court declared in New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n v. Bruen that modern gun laws must be “consistent with this Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation” to survive Second Amendment challenges. Scholarship has shown how this test of historical analogy presents difficulties because of how technological, legal, and social change has shaped policy over the centuries. This Article is the first to assess Bruen as it applies to suicide- prevention laws, and, in doing so, illuminates another form of change that complicates Bruen’s implementation: scientific progress.

As this Article shows, early generations of Americans fundamentally misunderstood mental …

Reconciling Domestic Violence Protections And The Second Amendment, Natalie Nanasi

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

In March of 2023, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals held that individuals subject to domestic violence protective orders could not be required to give up their guns. The decision was the first of a federal court to overturn a firearm regulation pursuant to New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, a 2022 Supreme Court opinion that created a new standard for determining the constitutionality of gun restrictions. After Bruen, only laws that are “consistent with this Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation” pass constitutional muster.

The Fifth’s Circuit decision in U.S. v. Rahimi, which …

Correcting Federal Rule Of Evidence 404 To Clarify The Inadmissibility Of Character Evidence, Hillel J. Bavli

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

Courts misinterpret Federal Rule of Evidence 404(b)(2) as an exception to Rule 404(b)(1)’s prohibition on character evidence rather than a mere clarification that emphasizes the permissibility of other-acts evidence whose relevance does not rely on propensity reasoning. This misinterpretation turns the rule against character evidence on its head by effectively replacing Rule 404 with a Rule 403 balancing—and one that incorrectly treats character inferences as probative rather than prejudicial, thereby favoring admissibility rather than exclusion. Consequently, as currently interpreted, Rule 404(b)(2) generates substantial unpredictability and verdicts based on conduct not at issue in a case.

I therefore propose that the …

Corporate Human Trafficking, Carliss Chatman

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

The utilization of the internet for human trafficking and sexual exploitation is not an issue that can be tackled one corporation, one country, or one market sector at a time. It is an international problem that requires broader solutions that can protect and provide remedy to victims without chilling the freedom of speech and freedom of contract of consensual parties engaged in sex work. Recent changes to laws related to human trafficking have strengthened the power of litigation, authorizing civil lawsuits against perpetrators of human trafficking that may include third-parties who knowingly benefit from trafficking conduct—such as internet providers, business …

Defiance, Lackland H. Bloom Jr.

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

Mass public defiance of legal authority has a lengthy history in America, extending back to the nation’s founding. Indeed, the very existence of the United States is the result of the ultimate act of defiance against legal authority—the revolution against Great Britain. It hardly stopped there, however. Defiance of legal authority has persisted from the outset to the present. Examples include Shays’ Rebellion, defiance of the Supreme Court’s decisions in M’Culloch v. Maryland and the Cherokee territory cases; the Nullification Crisis; slave revolts; defiance of the fugitive slave laws; resistance to the Supreme Court’s decision in the Dred Scott case; …

Origins Of Russian Membership In The Council Of Europe And The Seeds Of Russia's Expulsion, Jeffrey D. Kahn

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

The story of Russia’s membership in the Council of Europe now has a beginning, a middle, and an end. What can we learn about the values of this international organization, and its preeminent human rights convention, from Russia’s inclusion in them? Was Russia’s membership “worth it”? Any attempted answer must produce more questions: from which perspective – Russia’s, the Council’s, other Member States’ – should the effects of Russian membership be evaluated? How did the Council of Europe change Russia (if Russia was, indeed, changed) and how did Russia change the Council of Europe?

This paper examines the beginning of …

The Death Of The Evolving Standards Of Decency, Meghan J. Ryan

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

The Eighth Amendment Punishments Clause is in jeopardy. The constitutionality of punishments is usually judged according to the “evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society.” And in evaluating these standards, the Court has traditionally looked to changing societal views on punishment. This is a living constitution approach to interpretation, and the Eighth Amendment is the only area of law in which the Court has consistently and explicitly ap-plied such an approach. But a living constitution approach is diametrically opposed to the current Court’s focus on originalism. This is the first originalist Court in history, and …

Content Moderation Regulation As Legal Role-Scripting, Sari Mazzurco

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

Lawmakers and scholars concerned with content moderation regulation typically appeal to "analogies" to justify or undermine different forms of regulation. The logic goes: law should afford individuals due process rights against speech platforms because speech platforms are "like" speech governors as a matter of objective reality. Other common analogies include common carriers, publishers, distributors, shopping malls, and bookstores. Commentators attempt to invoke social roles to understand what the content moderation relationship is, what behaviors are "right" and "wrong" within it, and how law should police behavioral deviations. But they do so without relying on foundational sociology theory that explains what …

"Reverse Divisibility" And "Subsequent Modification": Expanding The Scope Of Justified Non-Performance In Multiple Contract Situations, Gregory S. Crespi

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

Parties to a contract sometimes invoke divisibility arguments in an attempt to recharacterize the contract as being two or more separate contracts. This is often done in order to limit the justified non-performance consequences of a breach of contract on their part. This short article considers the often-overlooked symmetrical possibility of a non-breaching party attempting to recharacterize two or more facially separate but closely related contracts as a single contract, expanding the scope of their justified non-performance rights after one contract is breached. I describe two complementary arguments justifying such a single-contract recharacterization of the relationship as the "reverse divisibility" …

The Wages Of Hitching Wagons, Thomas B. Bennett

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

This article examines the challenges faced by states that align their constitutions with federal doctrine through the practice of "lockstepping"—adopting federal legal standards into state law. Lockstepping binds states to federal law, regardless of its trajectory. Part I traces the evolution of standing doctrine in both federal courts under Article III and Kentucky courts under its constitution. Part II presents an originalist critique of the federal injury-in-fact requirement, highlighting emerging efforts to abandon this requirement in federal courts. Part III discusses the dilemma states like Kentucky face, balancing constitutional interpretation, federalism, and legal stability.

Cooperative Federalism And The Digital Tax Impasse, Orly Mazur, Adam Thimmesch

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

The digital economy is changing faster than the law can respond and has challenged legal systems worldwide. In the tax space, the digital economy has undermined traditional tax systems in ways that have created significant tax compliance and enforcement challenges, substantial tax revenue losses, and unwarranted distortions in the market between digital and traditional transactions. These problems are well recognized both in the legal literature and in the public sphere. Unfortunately, the legal reforms that are needed in this space have been slowed by a combination of technical, conceptual, and political impediments. This Article focuses on the digital tax landscape …