Law Commons^™

Sidewalk Living, Michael C. Pollack

William & Mary Law Review

In City of Grants Pass v. Johnson, the Supreme Court held that the Eighth Amendment does not prohibit a city from enforcing a criminal ban on encampments on public property such as parks and sidewalks. But even if municipalities are now permitted to use tactics such as policing, encampment clearing, arrests, and imprisonment, these are not the right ways to address the problems of public homelessness.

Instead, homelessness must be understood as one of many conflicts over limited public space. At its best, vibrant sidewalk life enhances communities and local economies. But at its worst, every use of these …

The New Necessity, Ezra Rosser

William & Mary Law Review

According to the U.S. Supreme Court, cities are free to criminalize homelessness. The 2024 case City of Grants Pass v. Johnson is the most important homelessness case in decades and was a significant blow to advocates for the unhoused. The conservative majority rejected the idea that city ordinances criminalizing sleeping in public amounted to cruel and unusual punishment insofar as they penalized status. There is no sidestepping the loss. But within the faint glow of the embers of the oral argument and of the decision itself, there is the possibility that a new understanding of necessity, supported by the same …

Setting The Stage For Grants Pass (& A Moral Constitutional Reckoning), Sara K. Rankin

William & Mary Law Review

The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in City of Grants Pass v. Johnson marked a seismic shift in the legal landscape governing homelessness throughout the country. By permitting the criminalization of involuntary acts, such as sleeping or resting in public when no shelter is available, the Court foreclosed constitutional protections under the Eighth Amendment’s Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause and signaled judicial deference to punitive local policies targeting unhoused people. But Grants Pass was not spontaneous; it was seeded over time. This Article situates Grants Pass within the broader legal and nonlegal contexts that made its outcome possible. Part I explores …

Unacceptable In Any Era: The Unusual And Unconstitutional Effort To Criminalize Sleeping While Homeless, Joseph W. Mead, Shelby Calambokidis

William & Mary Law Review

Grants Pass, Oregon, effectively made it a crime for some of its homeless residents to sleep—a universal and unavoidable biological necessity. In a 2024 decision, the Supreme Court held that the Eighth Amendment’s Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause posed no obstacle to this law, but it emphasized that other constitutional provisions could place important limits on how cities treat their homeless residents.

This Article argues that modern laws criminalizing sleeping— especially when no shelter is available—represent an unprecedented and unconstitutional departure from centuries of American legal tradition. Tracing the evolution of vagrancy, poor relief, and settlement laws from the Statute …

Levers Of Default: Can The President Unilaterally Alter The Terms Of The National Debt?, Lev E. Breydo, Nathan B. Oman

Faculty Publications

The inviolability of America’s $30 trillion debt is a cornerstone of global markets and the U.S. economy. This Essay identifies a critical loophole: the President’s underappreciated power to dramatically change its legal structure—and argues that Congress should act to prevent a potential catastrophe.

The Essay details, for the first time in the literature, the arcane legal architecture underpinning America’s sovereign borrowings. Our analysis finds that although the President lacks authority to change the terms of outstanding debt retroactively, the President can accomplish similar goals by issuing new debt instruments that embed unprecedented powers. In surprisingly short order, a determined Executive …

Rewired: Reconceptualizing Legal Services For The Ai Age, Lev E. Breydo

Faculty Publications

The legal profession is at a crossroads, caught between intensifying fears of AI-driven displacement and a generational opportunity for transformation. This Article provides a practical framework for navigating the shifting terrain.

Situating legal innovation within a multi-century arc of technological change, the Article draws on management and strategy scholarship to develop two core organizing models: the Legal Services Value Chain and the Innovation Frontier. The value chain disaggregates the lifecycle of a legal matter into five distinct nodes of activity, providing a map for subsequent analyses

Building on that foundation, the Innovation Frontier traces LegalTech’s evolution from 2000s-vintage e-discovery to …

Unlached: The Case Against Laches In Actions Brought In Replevin By Foreign Sovereigns For Objects Of Cultural Heritage, Peyton M. Kendall

William & Mary Law Review

The American judicial system sanctions the theft of objects of immense cultural value from source nations—countries whose modern borders encompass territory previously inhabited by culturally rich civilizations—by allowing the allegedly equitable doctrine of laches to serve as an affirmative defense to actions brought by foreign sovereigns in replevin.

Courts have treated laches as a valid affirmative defense in foreign-sovereign-plaintiff replevin actions, treating the foreign sovereigns no differently than they would a private citizen bringing suit for a piece of artwork. While the value of the artwork may be the same in the two instances—both in terms of cultural and monetary …

Winnowing The Wheat From The Chaff: The Continuing Controversy Over Article Iii Standing And The Certification Of Rule 23(B)(3) Damages Classes Containing "Uninjured" Members, William G. Beatty

William & Mary Business Law Review

The controversy surrounding the inclusion of uninjured class members in Rule 23(b)(3) damages classes has deeply divided the federal circuit courts of appeals and continues to do so. This Article explores the constitutional roots of the issue, beginning with the foundational element of Article III standing, and discusses the question of how many uninjured members, if any, Rule 23 permits in a class seeking certification before problems with commonality and predominance arise.

The Article discusses the details of the Laboratory Corp. of America v. Davis case (LabCorp), which, in the spring of 2025, presented the Supreme Court with …

Crypto-Influencer Liability, Nicole Pecharsky, Moin A. Yahya

William & Mary Business Law Review

The growth of celebrities endorsing cryptocurrencies over the past few years has resulted in many lawsuits and regulatory actions against them. This Article examines some of these recent actions using Google Trends as well as insights from scholarly marketing literature. We suggest that while celebrities can have an influence on the public in terms of searches and interest in cryptocurrencies, such influence is more nuanced. The impact of celebrity endorsements depends on how the public perceives the celebrity both in terms of their fame and their expertise. As such, any legal or regulatory actions will have to account for these …

Mutual Fund Fees, Stewart L. Brown

William & Mary Business Law Review

Investors pay billions annually in fees for actively managed mutual funds, despite the availability of far superior, cost-effective alternatives like index funds. Mutual funds, with their unique legal structure, insulate management fees from competitive pressures, thereby enabling fund sponsors to maintain high fees. Contrary to the assumption that legal, regulatory, and governance mechanisms adequately protect investors, this Article demonstrates that such safeguards are largely ineffective. The competitive forces that would ordinarily drive fee reductions are rendered impotent by structural conflicts of interest, ineffective regulatory oversight, and the passive role of independent directors. Fund sponsors capitalize on economies of scale, reaping …

From Amateurism To Open Markets: The Ncaa's Reckoning With Antitrust Lawsuits, Jesse Giffin

William & Mary Business Law Review

Throughout the 2000s the National College Athletic Association (NCAA) has been the subject of many high-profile antitrust lawsuits regarding the financial restrictions imposed on student athletes. The aftermath of some of the most recent decisions has given athletes new ways to earn compensation while competing in college athletics. In House v. NCAA, another historic antitrust lawsuit against the NCAA, the Court for the Northern District of California was tasked with deciding whether student athletes can be paid directly for their athletic performance. By comparing these NCAA antitrust lawsuits with other blockbuster antitrust cases such as the Microsoft antitrust case, …

Through The Lens Of Natural Selection: Understanding The Development And Adoption Of Legal Forms Of Business Organization, Brent J. Horton

William & Mary Business Law Review

This Article makes three contributions to the scholarship on the development and adoption of legal forms of business organization (LFBO). First, this Article examines how Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection (i.e., variation, selection, and inheritance) can provide an overarching framework that can integrate previous theories of LFBO evolution propounded by Hurst, Blair, Hansmann, Kraakman, and Squire.

Second, Hurst, Blair, Hansmann, Kraakman, and Squire focused primarily on the evolution of joint stock companies and corporations during the American Industrial Revolution. This Article uses the lens of natural selection to explain the development and adoption of more recent forms of business …

Changing Duress: Giving Heirs Of Holocaust Victims An Easier Path To Recover Their Predecessors' Property, Jonathan M. Woolston

William & Mary Business Law Review

As claimants continue to come forth asserting claims for artworks their predecessors owned before the Holocaust, they run up against difficulties in trying to reclaim the property. While oftentimes it is not difficult to negotiate an informal return of property due to the immense public pressure and stigma on Nazi-looted works, more complex cases arise when artworks were sold to finance escape from the impending horrors of the Holocaust. In these situations, claimants face much greater difficulties in reclaiming the artworks. For one, the doctrine of duress prevents contracts from being voided if that duress was not applied by a …

Abuse Of Contract: A Proposal For A New Cause Of Action, Miriam A. Cherry

William & Mary Law Review

With the growth of online commerce and the platform economy, many companies are including provisions in their online terms and conditions that extend far beyond what reasonable consumers would expect. Some terms and conditions purport to bind customers to separate contracts in future transactions that have little to do with the first contract. Other boilerplate purports to cover family members of the customer who created an account. Some retailers have argued that people shopping in their brick-and-mortar stores are subject to terms and conditions because those shoppers had at some point previously created an online account. For example, Disney argued …

Medical Device Dangers: Choosing Ignorance In The Courts And At The Fda, George Horvath

William & Mary Law Review

Medical devices save lives and improve well-being but have caused as many as 83,000 deaths and 1.7 million injuries in a recent decade. Decisions of critical importance—patients’ decisions whether to have a device implanted, doctors’ decisions about which device to use, insurers’ decisions whether to reimburse for those devices—depend on information about risk that is provided by manufacturers. But producing this information is costly. Injured patients, through private lawsuits under state products liability theories, can incentivize device manufacturers to incur these costs and to produce and disclose information about device risk. Unfortunately, courts are making it increasingly unlikely that this …

Property Law For Positive Externalities: Carving New Sticks For The Bundle, J.B. Ruhl, James Salzman

William & Mary Law Review

Property law has long confronted a troubling puzzle: Why does doctrine focus so much on eliminating harms flowing as negative externalities from uses of property—curbing pollution, nuisances, and other harmful land uses—while largely ignoring the potential to encourage positive externalities? Why such a strong focus on preventing bads instead of promoting goods? Using a case of a natural capital resource and the ecosystem services of flood control, water purification, and pollination it provides, this Article explains how and why existing doctrine fails to recognize these benefits as distinct property interests, leading to systematic underinvestment in conservation and service provision. We …

Skrmetti And The Problem Of Incidental Intent, Martin Katz

William & Mary Law Review

The modern Supreme Court has defined “discriminatory intent” as a strict-liability concept. It does not matter why the government sorts people by a protected characteristic, such as race or sex; it matters only that the government does sort people by such a characteristic. This principle is the key holding of affirmative-action cases, such as Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President & Fellows of Harvard College. Yet, in the recent case United States v. Skrmetti, the Court seemed to focus not on the question of whether the government sorted people by sex (it did), but on the question …

The Undue Degradation Of "Undue Degradation": How Loper Bright Threatens To Weaken Environmental Protections For Domestic Lithium Operations, Griffin M. Krawitz

William & Mary Law Review

On October 24, 2024, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) approved the Rhyolite Ridge Lithium-Boron Project, a seven-thousand- acre mining operation in the middle of the Nevada desert. Denoted as the “first domestic lithium project to get full regulatory approval under the Biden Administration,” the new mine is projected to supply enough batteries to power roughly 370,000 electric vehicles (EVs) every year for the next twenty-three years. Despite concern that the mine parallels and threatens the habitat for the Tiehm’s buckwheat (the only known habitat containing the critically endangered and culturally significant flower), the BLM has been adamant that its …

Is History Precedent?, Allison Orr Larsen

Faculty Publications

It has been just over three years since the Supreme Court instructed lower courts to evaluate Second Amendment challenges by examining history and tradition. And it is no secret that the courts have struggled. This Article tackles a phenomenon that is born of that struggle. Overwhelmed by the task of evaluating historical claims, lower courts instead are turning to other judges as authorities on history. They are using what I call in this Article “historical precedents”—meaning language about history from an older decision that the subsequent judge then treats as authority, not as part of a legal rule but for …

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

Faculty Publications

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 …

The Deepfake Dilemma: Fake Images, Real Victims, And The Legal Void In Addressing Non-Consensual Deepfake Pornography, Elizabeth A. Safaryn

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

This Note evaluates the various legal remedies available to victims of non-consensual deepfake pornography. As deepfakes are a relatively new but rapidly advancing technology, it is difficult for the law to keep up with the mass creation and distribution of AI-generated images on the Internet. With the competing interest of constitutionally protected speech, current deepfake laws fail to address non-consensual intimate image sharing (NCII) explicitly and lack the necessary deterrent effect to curb their proliferation. With an initial background on deepfakes and machine learning, this Note then explores the strained relationship between the First Amendment and the available civil remedies …

From Advocacy To Inaction: Paradoxes Of The United States And The Convention On The Rights Of Persons With Disabilities, Elizabeth W. Raymakers

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

This Note utilizes an analytical lens to consider why the United States never ratified the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). The Note first establishes the history of the CRPD and turns to the history of attempted ratification by the United States. By examining the legislative history of the Convention, as well as the U.S. engagement internationally leading up to and subsequent to the ratification attempts, this Note establishes a more nuanced understanding of the United States’ stance on the CRPD. Subsequently, by applying an analytical framework intended to identify manifestations of support for aspects of international …

The New Transgender Tipping Point: Trumpism, Medical Necessity & Gender-Affirming Care, Molly J. Nunn

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

Following the rise and eventual triumph of Trumpism 2024, President Donald J. Trump and his administration have sought to discredit the internationally recognized standards of effective health care practice for gender-affirming care. Now, ten years after Time Magazine published “The Transgender Tipping Point,” the political discourse of transgender identity is tipping again. Under the second Trump Administration, transgender identity sits at the edge of an abyss. Trumpism seeks to eradicate or significantly limit access to gender-affirming care through executive actions and the judiciary, despite the plethora of medical associations stating that that care is medically necessary. Public policies that widely …

The Role Of Prosecutorial Discretion In Criminal Immigration Matters, Brian L. Owsley

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

If the Trump administration’s goal is to remove between fifteen and twenty million undocumented individuals, then it would be far more effective to reduce the incentive of American companies and employers to hire undocumented individuals. Therefore, from a prosecutorial perspective, the federal government should consider whether seeking to charge and prosecute individuals is the most effective approach, or whether they should redirect their effort to the individual’s employer.

In addition to employers engaging in criminal immigration offenses, for several years now, the federal government has notably ignored the action of one person engaged in the smuggling of over 100,000 undocumented …

Dad On Duty: The Potential Of Paid Parental Leave Laws, Laura E. Bates

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

The United States is the only industrialized country in the world that does not guarantee its citizens paid parental leave. While the Family and Medical Leave Act provides some employees up to twelve weeks of unpaid leave, its limitations leave most American parents without adequate support. In the absence of a national paid parental leave system, states are stepping in, enacting laws that provide fully or partially paid parental leave. Private employers are also offering paid parental leave in increasing numbers. Despite these efforts, only 27 percent of private-sector American employees have access to paid parental leave.

Men taking paternity …

Table Of Contents (V. 50, No. 2)

William & Mary Environmental Law and Policy Review

No abstract provided.

The Path To Abundance: The Legal, Policy, And Political Challenges Of An Abundance Agenda, Eric Biber

William & Mary Environmental Law and Policy Review

A range of public intellectuals and academics have argued that America is increasingly unable to advance major projects, such as housing, renewable energy, and innovation, because of legal obstacles such as judicial review and regulatory requirements. In response, the abundance movement has called for legal reforms to speed up project development. The abundance movement has identified real problems that require solutions. Unfortunately, the movement also faces political and legal challenges as well. Reform will require difficult tradeoffs, which will be politically difficult. Abundance reforms will likely not be politically popular, and will be particularly hard to implement in a polarized …

From Property To Personhood: Reimagining Nature's Place In The Legal Order, Lan Cao

William & Mary Environmental Law and Policy Review

This Article explores the emerging rights of nature movement as a radical departure from traditional environmental approaches, grounded in a “new consciousness” that challenges the anthropocentric world-view. The Article sets the stage for a defense of the rights of nature by providing a comprehensive critique of the current model of economic development, primarily focused on GDP, which has proven detrimental to environmental health by neglecting broader values; the Article also highlights alternative measures adopted by entities like the UN and EU that incorporate factors like happiness. Rights of nature builds upon that foundation for a broader understanding of development and …

A Green Supply Chain Or A Greenwashed Ad Campaign? Supply Chains, Environmental Marketing, And The Energy Transition, Meredith A. Wegener

William & Mary Environmental Law and Policy Review

Building upon prior research and scholarship, this Article is a study into supply chain environmental marketing, the Federal Trade Commission, and the evaluation of potential changes to the Green Guides under the umbrella of the global energy transition. While prior legal scholarship has addressed details of environmental marketing such as fashion, recycling, or agricultural practices, this Article brings this work forward and addresses the collective challenge the global supply chain creates for all environmental claims across industries in truthful environmental marketing.

What is truth-in-advertising in environmental marketing, given the global path of consumer products? In Part I of this Article, …

The Lost Mines Of Appalachia: How Revitalizing Abandoned Coal Mines Can Revitalize A Region, Jonathan Gharib

William & Mary Environmental Law and Policy Review

Since the decline of coal, which began in the late 1980s, Appalachia has been left with thousands of abandoned coal mines that act as a stand-in for the state of the region as a whole. This stands in not only for the economic decline of the region, but also as a stand-in for the people of the region who also perceive themselves to have been abandoned. The future status, both legal and economic, of these abandoned mines that once helped to fuel Appalachia’s growth is unclear. Despite the muddied history of both Appalachia and these mines, with the proper legal …