Law Commons^™

The Constitutional Moment That Wasn't: 1912-1914 And The Meaning Of The Sherman Act, Alan J. Meese

Popular Media

No abstract provided.

A Tokenized Future: Regulatory Lessons From Crowdfunding And Standard Form Contracts, Darian M. Ibrahim

Faculty Publications

This Article examines the world of risk investing in the cryptoeconomy. The broader crypto market is booming despite the latest downturn. People and institutions are buying in. The question is now how to regulate it.

This Article first tackles the question of whether coins, tokens, and other investable cryptoassets are securities. Second, for those cryptoassets that are not securities, this Article seeks to find a regulatory solution that balances promoting innovation with investor protection, just as the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) would do. To strike the right balance, this Article adopts a proposal by Ian Ayres and Alan Schwartz …

A World Without Prosecutors, Jeffrey Bellin

Faculty Publications

Bennett Capers’ article Against Prosecutors challenges us to imagine a world where we “turn away from prosecution as we know it,” and shift “power from prosecutors to the people they purport to represent.”

[...]

Capers joins a long line of authors seeking to attack mass incarceration by reducing the role of prosecutors. I agree with these authors that we should dramatically shrink the footprint of American criminal law and ending the war on drugs is a good place to start. But while Capers styles his proposal as a “[r]adical change,” I find the focus on prosecutors in this context decidedly …

A New Feudalism: Selfish Genes, Great Wealth, And The Rise Of The Dynastic Family Trust (Dft), Eric Kades

Faculty Publications

Today’s record levels of economic inequality are infecting our future as the top 0.01% bequeath vast wealth to their descendants. With the death of the Rule Against Perpetuities (RAP), this inequality has the potential to harden social class lines—not just for a generation or two, but forever. Although it may sound implausible, interviews with estate lawyers serving very high-net-worth clients reveal that some members of the wealthiest tier of testators are already exploiting the RAP’s elimination, along with a tax loophole, to establish dynasty trusts that will financially empower their bloodline as long as it continues. Recent work in evolutionary …

Ftx: How The Sec Should React, Darian M. Ibrahim

Popular Media

No abstract provided.

Improving (And Avoiding) Interstate Interpretive Encounters, Aaron-Andrew P. Bruhl

Faculty Publications

State courts often encounter the statutes of other states. Any encounter with another state’s statutes raises an interesting but inconspicuous question about choice of law. In particular, the interstate encounter presents a choice of interpretive law. Despite some universal practices in statutory interpretation, there are methodological differences across jurisdictions—both at the level of overall approach and in the details of particular interpretive canons. When a state court encounters the statute of a sister state, may the forum state use its own interpretive methods or must it instead use the methods of the enacting state?

The existing doctrine on this choice-of-law …

Nomos, Narrative, And Nephi: Legal Interpretation In The Book Of Mormon, Nathan B. Oman

Faculty Publications

The Book of Mormon helped launch one of America’s most successful religions, and millions around the world accept it as scripture. It is thus one of the more influential books to have been published in the United States. Ironically, precisely because of its role in the founding of Mormonism, the text of the Book of Mormon has often been ignored. Recently, however, the Book of Mormon has begun to attract the attention of scholars whose interest in the text goes beyond either religious devotion or the academic study of Mormonism. Rather, they look to the text as a literary creation …

Interpreting State Statutes In Federal Court, Aaron-Andrew P. Bruhl

Faculty Publications

This Article addresses a problem that potentially arises whenever a federal court encounters a state statute. When interpreting the state statute, should the federal court use the state’s methods of statutory interpretation—the state’s canons of construction, its rules about the use of legislative history, and the like—or should the court instead use federal methods of statutory interpretation? The question is interesting as a matter of theory, and it is practically significant because different jurisdictions have somewhat different interpretive approaches. In addressing itself to this problem, the Article makes two contributions. First, it shows, as a normative matter, that federal courts …

Making The Path To A Law Degree More Accessible For Everyone, A. Benjamin Spencer

Popular Media

US Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch recently asked if a law degree should require seven years of college and mountains of debt. William & Mary Law School Dean A. Benjamin Spencer answers that question and provides solutions for knocking down the barriers to a legal education.

First Amendment Scholar Timothy Zick Dismantles Trump V. Cnn Lawsuit, Timothy Zick

Popular Media

Former President Donald Trump filed a $475 million defamation lawsuit against CNN arguing the network has maligned him with “fake news” for the purposes of damaging his political future heading into 2024.

The complaint filed Oct. 3 stated, “CNN has sought to use its massive influence – purportedly as a ‘trusted’ news source – to defame the Plaintiff in the minds of its viewers and readers for the purpose of defeating him politically, culminating in CNN claiming credit for ‘[getting] Trump out’ in the 2020 presidential election.”

First Amendment Watch asked First Amendment scholar Timothy Zick to annotate the 29-page …

Consider Freedom Of Speech: Perspectives On How To Hold Difficult Conversations With Respect, Vivian E. Hamilton, Andrew D. Stelljes

Popular Media

No abstract provided.

William & Mary Law School Clinical Program Newsletter (Fall), William & Mary Law School

William & Mary Law School Clinical Program Newsletter

No abstract provided.

Rethinking Introductory Statutory Research Instruction, Leslie A. Street, Frederick Dingledy

Library Staff Publications

No abstract provided.

Segmented Innovation In The Legalization Of Mitochondrial Transfer: Lessons From Australia And The United Kingdom, Myrisha S. Lewis

Faculty Publications

The U.S. is often characterized as a leader in innovation—a home of Nobel Prize‐winning scientists, innovators, and abundant research funding. Yet, in the area of assisted reproduction combined with genetic modification or substitution, what I call “reproductive genetic innovation,” that characterization begins to wane. This Article focuses on the regulation of mitochondrial transfer, a subset of reproductive genetic innovation. While human clinical trials related to mitochondrial transfer go forward in the U.K., the clinical use of the technique remains illegal in the U.S. due to a system of subterranean regulation by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and a now-recurring …

Circuit Personalities, Allison Orr Larsen, Neal Devins

Faculty Publications

The U.S. Courts of Appeals do not behave as one; they have developed circuit-specific practices that are passed down from one generation of judges to the next. These different norms and traditions (some written down, others not) exist on a variety of levels: rules governing oral argument and the publishing of opinions, en banc practices, social customs, case discussion norms, law clerk dynamics, and even selfimposed circuit nicknames. In this Article, we describe these varying “circuit personalities” and then argue that they are necessary to the very survival of the federal courts of appeals. Circuit-specific norms and traditions foster collegiality …

Higher Ed Has Faults -- But Don't Ignore Its Utility, A. Benjamin Spencer

Popular Media

No abstract provided.

Abortion Litigation And Second Amendment Litigation After Dobbs And Bruen, Institute Of Bill Of Rights Law, William & Mary Law School

Supreme Court Preview

No abstract provided.

The Court And Religion, Institute Of Bill Of Rights Law, William & Mary Law School

Supreme Court Preview

No abstract provided.

Judging Hard Cases, Institute Of Bill Of Rights Law, William & Mary Law School

Supreme Court Preview

No abstract provided.

The Roberts Court And Race, Institute Of Bill Of Rights Law, William & Mary Law School

Supreme Court Preview

No abstract provided.

The Court And Limits On The Administrative State, Institute Of Bill Of Rights Law, William & Mary Law School

Supreme Court Preview

No abstract provided.

The Roberts Court After A Seismic Term, Institute Of Bill Of Rights Law, William & Mary Law School

Supreme Court Preview

No abstract provided.

Moot Court, Institute Of Bill Of Rights Law, William & Mary Law School

Supreme Court Preview

No abstract provided.

2022-2023 Supreme Court Preview: Schedule Of Events, Institute Of Bill Of Rights Law, William & Mary Law School

Supreme Court Preview

No abstract provided.

Granted Cases, Institute Of Bill Of Rights Law, William & Mary Law School

Supreme Court Preview

No abstract provided.

2022-2023 Supreme Court Preview: Digital Notebook (Cover Page), Institute Of Bill Of Rights Law, William & Mary Law School

Supreme Court Preview

No abstract provided.

2022-2023 Supreme Court Preview: Panelist Biographies, Institute Of Bill Of Rights Law, William & Mary Law School

Supreme Court Preview

No abstract provided.

The Imagined Juror: How Hypothetical Juries Influence Federal Prosecutors (Book Review), Jeffrey Bellin

Popular Media

No abstract provided.

What Does The Alex Jones Case Mean For The First Amendment And Disinformation? Leading Scholars, Lawyers Provide Analysis, George Freeman, Lyrissa Barnett Lidsky, Lynn Oberlander, Timothy Zick

Popular Media

No abstract provided.

The Supreme Court Decisions On Guns And Abortion Relied Heavily On History. But Whose History?, Allison Orr Larsen

Popular Media

No abstract provided.