Law Commons^™

Brief Of Law Professors As Amici Curiae In Support Of Plaintiff-Appellee, Evan J. Criddle

Briefs

No abstract provided.

What Trump's Business Fraud Charges Mean -- A Former Prosecutor Explains The 34 Felony Counts And Obstacles Ahead For Manhattan's Da, Jeffrey Bellin

Popular Media

No abstract provided.

Death After Dobbs: Addressing The Viability Of Capital Punishment For Abortion, Melanie Kalmanson

William & Mary Journal of Race, Gender, and Social Justice

Pre-Dobbs legislative efforts and states’ reactions in the immediate aftermath of Dobbs indicate the post-Dobbs reality that deeply conservative states will seek to criminalize abortion and impose extremely harsh sentences for such crimes, up to and including death. This Article addresses that reality. Initially, this Article illustrates that abortion and capital punishment are like opposite sides of the same coin, and it is a handful of states leading the counter majoritarian efforts on both topics. After outlining the position of each state in the nation that retains capital punishment on capital sentencing and abortion, the Article identifies the …

William & Mary Law School Clinical Program News (2022-2023), William & Mary Law School

William & Mary Law School Clinical Program Newsletter

No abstract provided.

Legal Order At The Border, Evan J. Criddle

Faculty Publications

For generations, the United States has grappled with high levels of illegal immigration across the U.S.-Mexico border. This Article offers a novel theoretical framework to explain why legal order remains elusive at the border. Drawing inspiration from Lon Fuller’s “interactional view of law,” I argue that immigration law cannot attract compliance unless it is general, public, prospective, clear, consistent, and stable; obedience with its rules is feasible; and the law’s enforcement is congruent with the rules as enacted. The flagrant violation of any one of these principles could frustrate the development of a functional legal order. Remarkably, U.S. immigration law …

The Importance Of Accessible Government Data In Advancing Environmental Justice, Frank D. Lomonte, Daniel Delgado

William & Mary Environmental Law and Policy Review

Part I of this Article sets forth the history and animating principles of the environmental justice movement in the United States during the 1970s, which developed as an adjunct to the larger civil rights movement. Part II then turns to the role of documents and data in exposing where toxins present a risk to public health and where documentation habitually falls short. It discusses how freedom of information laws can unlock access to the documents and data that quantify environmental hazards but also how those laws fail to produce reliable results because of the influence of regulated industries. Part III …

Discovering Ebay's Impact On Copyright Injunctions Through Empirical Evidence, Matthew Sag, Pamela Samuelson

William & Mary Law Review

This Article reports on new empirical evidence discrediting the widely held view that judges have resisted applying the Supreme Court’s teachings in eBay Inc. v. MercExchange, L.L.C. about injunctive relief in copyright cases. That 2006 patent law decision ruled that courts should not automatically issue injunctions upon a finding of infringement; instead, plaintiffs must prove their entitlement to injunctive relief. eBay had a seismic impact on patent litigation and greatly reduced the threat that small infringements could be leveraged into billion-dollar settlements. Yet prior empirical work, at least one major copyright law treatise, and many articles assert that eBay had …

Securities And Exchange Commission Vs. Kim Kardashian, Cryptocurrencies And The "Major Questions Doctrine", Jerry W. Markham

William & Mary Business Law Review

The SEC has brought some highly publicized enforcement actions against Kim Kardashian and other celebrity social media influencers who received undisclosed payments for their endorsement of cryptocurrencies. This Article describes those cases and analyzes whether the SEC exceeds its authority under the Constitutional “major questions doctrine” recently applied by the Supreme Court in West Virginia v. EPA. That doctrine prohibits a federal agency from regulating activities that raise a major question that Congress, rather than the agency, must resolve. Such a question is one in which there is major political and economic interest and over which the agency has …

The Supreme Court Review Act: Fast-Tracking The Interbranch Dialogue And Destabilizing The Filibuster, Aaron-Andrew P. Bruhl

Faculty Publications

This Essay presents an analysis of the Supreme Court Review Act, a bill that was recently introduced in Congress. The Act would create a streamlined legislative process for bills responding to new Supreme Court decisions that interpret federal statutes or restrict constitutional rights. By facilitating legislative responses to controversial cases, the Act would promote the “dialogue” that commentators and the courts themselves have used as a model for interbranch relations. The Essay describes how the proposed Supreme Court Review Act would work, discusses some of its benefits, addresses its constitutionality, and raises some questions about its implementation and effects.

Menstrual Justice In Theoretical Context, Vivian E. Hamilton

Faculty Publications

This Essay reviews and places into theoretical contexts Bridget Crawford and Emily Waldman’s invaluable book Menstruation Matters. Although the authors themselves do not explicitly label the theoretical approach that undergirds their work, much of Menstruation Matters: Challenging the Law’s Silence on Periods falls within the liberal feminist legal tradition typical of post-civil rights second-wave feminism. Their work also embodies aspects of critical feminist approaches to law. Crawford & Waldman expose the discriminatory effects of facially neutral laws, the limits of formal equality, and the pitfalls of essentializing or making universal claims about categories of individuals—including women and menstruators. In …

How Many More Brazilian Environmental Defenders Have To Perish Before We Act? President Lula's Challenge To Protect Environmental Quilombola Defenders, Sarah Dávila A.

William & Mary Environmental Law and Policy Review

The Global South has been historically marginalized and continues to suffer from systemic oppression, impeding the realization of their human rights. Afro-descendants and other minority populations in the Global South live in disproportionately environmentally unsafe conditions and are disproportionately more vulnerable to climate change and environmental harm. One of those populations are Quilombolas. Quilombolas are Brazilian Afro-descendant communities who continue to fight to protect their community rights to ancestral lands, natural resources, and survival as a people. The Brazilian government under former Brazilian President Bolsonaro engaged in a persistent and systematic campaign to target, attack, and kill defenders, including Quilombola …

Mining And The Protection Of Aboriginal Heritage In South Australia, Alex Wawryk

William & Mary Environmental Law and Policy Review

In 2020, the multinational mining company Rio Tinto destroyed 46,000-year-old Aboriginal rock paintings in Juukan Gorge, Western Australia, to national and international outrage. The incident led to an explosion of concern in Australia regarding the adequacy of domestic laws that aim to protect Aboriginal cultural heritage from the impacts of resource exploitation. This Article explains and critically analyzes the legislative and regulatory framework for the protection of Aboriginal heritage in relation to mining in South Australia. It demonstrates the complexity of the legal and regulatory regime, identifies a number of significant flaws in the key act designed to protect Aboriginal …

Mitigating Trail Troubles: An Analysis Of The Virginia Recreational Land Use Statute, Rachel Rogers, Cooper Vorel

Virginia Coastal Policy Center

While the overall focus of this discussion is on the law of Virginia, it is often useful to look elsewhere for comparative purposes. This is especially important when it involves considering the future of Virginia’s recreational land use statute. The overall objective of this discussion is to supplement Virginia’s existing recreational land use legal regime by exploring specific issues related to Virginia’s statutory scheme and identifying areas where further research may be needed.

Four issues involving recreational land use statutes are explored herein. First, the scope of recreational use statutes, namely in Virginia, is examined. This issue addresses the substance …

Heirs' Property In Virginia: Filling In The Gaps, J. Noble Pearson, Lillian Coward

Virginia Coastal Policy Center

The term heirs’ property refers to land that has been passed down informally for multiple generations through intestate succession. Each generation of intestate succession can drastically increase the number of heirs who own the property as tenants-in-common to the point that many may not even know their heirship status. This clouds the title to the property and makes ownership more fractionalized. Because heirs’ property exists outside of the official estate and title systems, owners are vulnerable both at the community and individual levels for three main reasons.

First, and most importantly, heirs’ property is a leading cause of involuntary Black …

Reducing Septic-Reliant Households: How A Comprehensive Legal Scheme Could Improve Water Quality, Environmental, And Human Health, Karlin Foor, Anna Bailey

Virginia Coastal Policy Center

Considering the [...] concerns of septic reliance in Virginia, this paper will present and explicate three issues pertaining to the Maryland Sustainable Growth and Preservation Act (the “Septic Law”). Maryland's Septic Law represents an effort at a statewide legal scheme for approaching the issue of rapid development on septic. It may function as a useful starting point for Virginia to approach the danger that failing septic poses to Virginian citizens and the health of the Chesapeake Bay, a vital contributor to the state economy and cultural heritage. Part II opens with an overview of Maryland’s Septic Law. Part III evaluates …

The Article Iii "Party" And The Originalist Case Against Corporate Diversity Jurisdiction, Mark Moller, Lawrence B. Solum

William & Mary Law Review

Federal courts control an outsize share of big-ticket corporate litigation. And that control rests, to a significant degree, on the Supreme Court’s extension of Article III’s Diversity of Citizenship Clause to corporations. Yet, critics have questioned the constitutionality of corporate diversity jurisdiction from the beginning.

In this Article and a previous one, we develop the first sustained critique of corporate diversity jurisdiction.

Our previous article demonstrated that corporations are not “citizens” given the original meaning of that word. But we noted this finding alone doesn’t sink general corporate diversity jurisdiction. The ranks of corporate shareholders include many undoubted “citizens.” And …

Smart Wearables: The Overlooked And Underrated Essential Worker, Rebekah Hill

William & Mary Law Review

This Note argues that the FDA should revamp its criteria for regulating medical devices to unambiguously include smart wearables. Specifically, this Note calls for the FDA to amend its definition of “medical device” to focus on what a device is technologically capable of rather than its intended use.

Part I will examine the established legislation regarding medical devices; in particular, it will examine the relationship between FDA regulations and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) Privacy Rule and argue that when taken together, HIPAA creates a strong presumption that smart wearables should be regulated by the FDA. This …

Table Of Contents (V. 47, No. 3)

William & Mary Environmental Law and Policy Review

No abstract provided.

Foreword To International Environmentalism: A Global Approach To Global Challenges, Cameron Krause

William & Mary Environmental Law and Policy Review

As the effects of climate change progress, people and governments in every country are left grappling with how to combat the consequences. Recognizing that such global challenges necessitate an international approach, this Symposium was convened to critically examine the domestic application of international law, the role of non-governmental organizations (“NGOs”), transnational ecological harms, and international environmental agreements. Articles and contributions from panelists in the Symposium contemplated the best paths forward in the face of an ever-changing international landscape.

This abstract has been taken from the author's opening paragraphs.

Litigation To Protect The Marine Environment: Parallels And Synergies With Climate Litigation, Randall S. Abate, Nadine Nadow, Hayley-Bo Dorrian-Bak

William & Mary Environmental Law and Policy Review

The world’s oceans are in crisis. Climate change impacts, biodiversity loss, plastic pollution, fisheries collapse, impacts to marine mammals, and vessel-based pollution are among the many threats the marine environment faces today. Fish biomass is predicted to drop by 3% to 25% by the end of the century due to climate change. Worse still, the amount of plastic in the world’s aquatic ecosystems is on track to hit 23 to 37 million tons per year by 2040.

[...]

This Article reviews recent successes and obstacles in using litigation as a tool to address these concerns across several contexts in the …

It Takes Two: Cites, Illegal Wildlife Trade, And Importing Country Accountability, Erica Lyman

William & Mary Environmental Law and Policy Review

This Article proposes that the CITES [Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora] compliance mechanism is fit-for-purpose in its design but its application is biased against source countries and ignores consumer countries both as drivers of illegal wildlife trade and as noncompliant actors. Bringing a justice-based sensibility to the application of the CITES compliance process requires a whole-of-supply-chain analysis and, drawing on the core relational foundations of the treaty, an international perspective, to identity the root causes of non-compliance that allow illegal trade to fester. Ultimately, the compliance mechanism must gel with the machinery and …

Promoting Healing And Avoiding Retraumatization: A Proposal To Improve Mental Health Care For Detained Unaccompanied Minors Through A Best Interests Of The Child Standard, Francesca J. Babetski

William & Mary Law Review

Part I of this Note will describe the circuit split. It will provide background on the A.M. [A.M. v. Luzerne County Juvenile Detention Center] and Doe 4 cases, including an explanation of the major precedents on which the Third and Fourth Circuits based their respective decisions. Then, Part II will argue that A.M. and its deliberate indifference standard cannot appropriately be applied in cases involving detained unaccompanied minors, also called Unaccompanied Alien Children (UACs). This almost twenty-year-old standard does not consider the latest information about immigration policy and the unique mental health needs of UACs such as Doe …

Get Out: Structural Racism And Academic Terror, Renee Nicole Allen

William & Mary Journal of Race, Gender, and Social Justice

Released in 2017, Jordan Peele’s critically acclaimed film Get Out explores the horrors of racism. The film’s plot involves the murder and appropriation of Black bodies for the benefit of wealthy, white people. After luring Black people to their country home, a white family uses hypnosis to paralyze victims and send them to the Sunken Place where screams go unheard. Black bodies are auctioned off to the highest bidder; the winner’s brain is transplanted into the prized Black body. Black victims are rendered passengers in their own bodies so that white inhabitants can obtain physical advantages and immortality.

Like Get …

Kids, Cognition, And Confinement: Evaluating Claims Of Inadequate Access To Mental Health Care In Juvenile Detention Facilities, Lydia G. Mrowiec

William & Mary Journal of Race, Gender, and Social Justice

In the United States, almost 60,000 juveniles are incarcerated in juvenile jails and prisons every day, and, as of March 2021, at least seventy percent of juveniles in the juvenile justice system have a mental health condition. For many young adults, prison and detention centers have “become the avenue of last resort” for treatment of those mental health conditions. However, juvenile detention facilities lack the support and resources to provide adequate care, which has led to high recidivism in the juvenile population. Juveniles, and individuals on their behalf, can challenge inadequate access to mental health resources by bringing claims under …

Optimizing Cybersecurity Risk In Medical Cyber-Physical Devices, Christopher S. Yoo, Bethany C. Lee

William & Mary Law Review

Medical devices are increasingly connected, both to cyber networks and to sensors collecting data from physical stimuli. These cyber-physical systems pose a new host of deadly security risks that traditional notions of cybersecurity struggle to take into account. Previously, we could predict how algorithms would function as they drew on defined inputs. But cyber-physical systems draw on unbounded inputs from the real world. Moreover, with wide networks of cyber-physical medical devices, a single cybersecurity breach could pose lethal dangers to masses of patients.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is tasked with regulating medical devices to ensure safety and …

Dispelling Sex Trafficking Conspiracy Theories: The Truth Behind Who Is Recruited By Traffickers And How, Mirelle Raza, Kyleigh Feehs

William & Mary Journal of Race, Gender, and Social Justice

Through an analysis of the 1,954 sex trafficking cases prosecuted federally from 2000 to 2020, this Article aims to provide insight into how sex traffickers commonly operate in the United States. Part I explains the damaging consequences of misinformation on an effective anti-trafficking response. The Article then details how traffickers within sex trafficking schemes across the country intentionally target individuals with particular vulnerabilities and recruit them for exploitation. Part II outlines the vulnerabilities that sex traffickers commonly target, highlighting that many of the children that traffickers exploit have run away from home, were experiencing homelessness, were part of the foster …

Friends With Benefits: Expanding Virginia's Domestic Violence And Mutual Protection Order Statutes To Include Reciprocal Beneficiaries, Faith A. Parker

William & Mary Journal of Race, Gender, and Social Justice

On June 26, 2015, the Obergefell decision recognized same-sex marriage. While same-sex couples celebrated their new rights to marriage equality, they still face legal battles in the realm of domestic violence. Both married and unmarried same-sex couples face discrimination when reporting incidents of domestic violence. While most domestic violence statutes are gender-neutral on their face, their implementations disparately impact same-sex couples. Furthermore, domestic violence statutes that include same-sex couples punish same-sex couples more harshly than opposite-sex couples. This Note will examine the domestic violence law in Virginia, arguing that the laws are too vague to properly protect same-sex couples and …

Beating Justice: Corporal Punishment In American Schools And The Evolving Moral Constitution, Timothy D. Intelisano

William & Mary Journal of Race, Gender, and Social Justice

This Note will discuss the Supreme Court’s holding in Ingraham v. Wright, and the subsequent developments in public school corporal punishment practices. Rather than focus exclusively on the case law, this Note will dive into the statistical data outlining which students are most often subjected to corporal punishment. Often, it is Black students and Autistic students who are subject to the harshest treatment.

This Note will outline the different avenues that courts could and should take to overrule Ingraham. Because a circuit split exists—on the issue of how to resolve these claims—overturning Ingraham and declaring corporal punishment per …

Disability And Transnational Arbitration: Human Rights Linkages And Reasonable Accommodations, Ilias Bantekas

William & Mary Business Law Review

Disability intersects with arbitration as regards the mental capacity of a party to enter into an arbitration agreement, the appointment of arbitrators with disability and grounds for removal thereof, accommodations during arbitral proceedings for arbitrators and counsel with disabilities, as well as the costs for all appropriate accommodations. This Article demonstrates that the right to a fair trial, which is universally recognized in arbitration, dictates that parties and arbitral institutions be free to select arbitrators of their choice, and no impediments may be imposed against arbitrators with disabilities other than that they are able to fulfill the functions of their …

No Equitable Relief: The Failings Of The Case Act To Protect Middle-Class Creatives From Copyright Infringement, Eliza James Unrein

William & Mary Business Law Review

Copyright law in the United States incentivizes creative activity for the public benefit by granting creators an exclusive right to control their original works. Many individuals and small businesses rely on this right and the protection of copyright law to build their reputations as artists, create a market for their work, and secure a livelihood for themselves and their families. When someone violates this right and infringes on these individuals’ and small businesses’ copyrights, the forum for seeking redress and preventing future infringement is a lawsuit in federal court. But bringing a copyright infringement claim in federal court is expensive. …