Law Commons^™

Gag With Malice, Shaakirrah R. Sanders

Washington and Lee Law Review

This Article brings agriculture privacy and other commercial gagging laws into the ongoing debate on the First Amendment actual malice rule announced in New York Times v. Sullivan. Despite a resurgence in contemporary jurisprudence, Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch have recently questioned the wisdom and viability of Sullivan, which originally applied actual malice to state law defamation claims brought by public officials. The Court later extended the actual malice rule to public figures, to claims for infliction of emotional distress, and—as discussed in this Article—to claims for invasion of privacy and to issues of public importance or concern.

United …

Taking The Knee No More: Police Accountability And The Structure Of Racism, David Dante Troutt

Washington and Lee Law Review

From before the birth of the republic to the present day, police brutality has represented a signature injustice of state authority, especially against African Americans. Defining that injustice is the lack of accountability for official misconduct. The rule of law has systematically failed to deter lawbreaking by its law enforcement departments. This Article explores the various legal and institutional means by which accountability should be imposed and demonstrates the design elements of structured immunity. Using Critical Race Theory and traditional civil rights law notions of how structural racism operates, this Article argues that transformative change can only come about through …

Higher Education Redress Statutes: A Critical Analysis Of States’ Reparations In Higher Education, Christopher L. Mathis

Washington and Lee Law Review

This Article introduces a novel concept, higher education redress statutes (“HERS”), to illustrate efforts that acknowledge and amend past wrongs towards African Americans. More proximally, the Article shines a probing light on the escalation of HERS in southeastern states that serve as a site for state regulation and monitoring. The Author exposes how higher education redress statutes, designed to provide relief or remedy to Black people for states’ higher education’s harm, categorically ignore groups of Black people who rightfully should also be members of the statutorily protected class. This Article queries whether legislators can expand the scope of such statutes …

Masthead

Washington and Lee Law Review

No abstract provided.

Risk Assessment And Immigration Court, Richard Frankel

Washington and Lee Law Review

Risk assessment and algorithmic tools have become increasingly popular in recent years, particularly with respect to detention and incarceration decisions. The emergence of big data and the increased sophistication of algorithmic design hold the promise of more accurately predicting whether an individual is dangerous or a flight risk, overcoming human bias in decision-making, and reducing detention without compromising public safety. But these tools also carry the potential to exacerbate racial disparities in incarceration, create a false veneer of objective scientific accuracy, and spawn opaque decision-making by “black box” computer programs.

While scholars have focused much attention on how judges in …

The Prosecutor Lobby, Carissa Byrne Hessick, Ronald F. Wright, Jessica Pishko

Washington and Lee Law Review

Prosecutors shape the use of the criminal law at many points during criminal proceedings but there is an earlier point in the process where prosecutors have influence: during the legislative process. The conventional wisdom in legal scholarship is that prosecutors are powerful and successful lobbyists who routinely support laws that make the criminal law more punitive and oppose criminal justice reform. In this Article, we test that narrative with an empirical assessment of prosecutor lobbying in America. Using an original dataset of four years of legislative activity from all fifty states, we analyze how frequently prosecutors lobbied, the issues on …

Election Emergencies: Voting In Times Of Pandemic, Michael T. Morley

Washington and Lee Law Review

Over the past century, two global pandemics have struck during American elections—the Spanish Flu of 1918 and COVID-19 in 2020. The legal system’s responses to those pandemics, occurring against distinct constitutional backdrops concerning voting rights, differed dramatically from each other. These pandemics highlight the need for states to address the impact of election emergencies, including public health crises, on the electoral process. States should adopt election emergency laws that both empower election officials to modify an election’s rules as necessary to respond to such disasters and set forth “redlines” to identify certain policies that, even in a disaster, are too …

Supported Decision-Making And Merciful Health Care Access: Respecting Autonomy At End Of Life For Individuals With Cognitive Disabilities, Brenna M. Rosen

Washington and Lee Law Review

Supported decision-making is a relatively new, powerful, and quickly developing alternative to restrictive guardianships and other draconian surrogate decision-making arrangements for individuals with cognitive disabilities. Its power lies specifically in the protection and affirmation of their autonomy, allowing these individuals to remain central in the planning of their lives and affairs. Despite supported decision-making’s theoretical promise, it is often unclear whether and how the model interacts with other legislation presiding over how one may make crucial life choices, such as those at end of life.

This Note attempts to bridge the gap by analyzing how supported decision-making may be a …

Comment: Further Consideration On The Relationship Between The Americans With Disabilities Act, Supported Decision-Making, And Medical Aid In Dying, Amitai Heller

Washington and Lee Law Review

As Ms. Rosen’s Note explains in further detail, the use of supported decision-making creates an opportunity for persons with cognitive impairments to participate more fully in their end-of-life care. While this Comment focuses on the legal requirement for healthcare providers to serve people with cognitive impairments at the end of life, the tenets of patient autonomy, self-determination, and the dignity of risk must be integrated into end-of-life practice to provide guidance where legal requirements are absent or ambiguous. The use of the supported decision-making model in end-of-life care will only succeed when healthcare providers participate in an open-minded manner. It …

Tribute To Professor James Moliterno, Patricia Roberts, Soledad Atienza, Eleanor Myers, Jim Heller, Gary Tamsitt, Neal Devins, Peter Čuroš, Maxim Tomoszek, Veronika Tomoszek, Pavol Žilinčík, Rongjie Lam, José M. De Areilza, Irina Lortkipanidze, Ján Mazúr, Javier Guillen, Lucia Berdisová, James Étienne Viator

Washington and Lee Law Review

A tribute to Professor James Moliterno, who served on the faculty of the Washington and Lee University School of Law from 2009 to 2022. An internationally active scholar of legal and judicial ethics, Moliterno was most recently the Vincent Bradford Professor of Law. For 21 years prior to joining W&L, he was a member of the faculty of the William & Mary Law School.

Comment: The Project Of Freedom, Alexandra L. Klein

Washington and Lee Law Review

A person’s status may change over time and people should have the right to maximize their autonomy and learn and grow from their experiences. Legal structures must encourage autonomy and growth, rather than producing a static environment that prevents people from challenging external controls imposed upon their lives. Law can create legal structures that sustain an individual’s right to live according to their values. As Ms. Rosen writes, “[i]f an individual is capable of valuing, the wishes stemming from those values should dictate how the individual ought to be treated.” By protecting those values, Ms. Rosen’s Note advises us how …

Comment: Unpaid Internships And The Rural-Urban Divide, Susan D. Carle

Washington and Lee Law Review

In this Comment, I first note how much the existing literature on unpaid internships under the FLSA focuses on urban contexts. Next, I briefly sketch some of the literature on the rural-urban divide, a topic I argue needs much more analysis from legal scholars in coming years. Third, I show how Morris’s work brings together these two literatures, which to this point have not been in conversation with each other. Finally, I note a few questions Morris’s work raises for future attention.

Masthead

Washington and Lee Law Review

No abstract provided.

Table Of Contents

Washington and Lee Law Review

No abstract provided.

Creativity Without Ip? Vindication And Challenges In The Video Game Industry, Bj Ard

Washington and Lee Law Review

This Article intervenes in the longstanding debate over whether creative production is possible without exhaustive copyright protection. Intellectual property (IP) scholars have identified “negative spaces” like comedy and tattoo art where creativity thrives without IP, but critics dismiss these examples as niche. The video game industry allows for fresh headway. It is now the largest sector in entertainment—with revenues greater than Hollywood, streaming, and music combined—yet IP does not protect key game elements from duplication. Participants navigate this absence using non-IP strategies like those identified in negative-space industries: AAA developers invest in copy-resistant features while indie game developers rely on …

Birthing Alone, Elizabeth Kukura

Washington and Lee Law Review

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, hospitals implemented restrictive visitor policies that have prevented many pregnant people from giving birth with their chosen support people. For some, this meant foregoing labor and delivery support by a birth doula, someone who serves in a nonclinical role and provides emotional, physical, and informational support to birthing people. Given that continuous labor support such as the care provided by doulas is associated with fewer cesareans and other interventions, less need for pain medication, and shorter labors, the promotion of doula care is a promising strategy to ease the maternal health crisis and, in particular, shrink …

Something Stinks: The Need For Stronger Agricultural Waste Regulations, Audrey Curelop

Washington and Lee Law Review

In the twentieth century, the American agricultural industry underwent significant changes—while most food animals were once raised on small family farms, now, over fifty percent are produced entirely inside concentrated animal feeding operations. These large‑scale farming operations house hundreds to thousands of cows, swine, or chickens, which collectively produce hundreds of millions of tons of waste per year. The primary method of waste disposal is land application, a process in which waste is sprayed or spread onto land with no required pretreatment. After land application, waste byproducts make their way into the surrounding air and waterways, posing significant threats to …

Leave Them Kids Alone: State Constitutional Protections For Gender-Affirming Healthcare, Jessica Matsuda

Washington and Lee Law Review

State legislatures across the nation are continually targeting the rights of transgender individuals with a variety of laws affecting everything from bathrooms to medical care. One particularly invasive type of legislation, the gender-affirming healthcare ban, seeks to prohibit all forms of healthcare that align a person’s physical traits with their gender identity for individuals under eighteen. Bans like this severely impede the treatment necessary for transgender youth suffering from gender dysphoria, which carries serious physical consequences and sometimes fatal psychological repercussions. As legislative sessions pass, more and more states are introducing and actually enacting these bans

Striking down these bans …

The Disappearing Freedom Of The Press, Ronnell Andersen Jones, Sonja R. West

Washington and Lee Law Review

At this moment of unprecedented decline of local news and amplified attacks on the American press, scholars are increasingly turning their attention to the Constitution’s role in protecting journalism and the journalistic function. Recent calls by some U.S. Supreme Court Justices to reconsider the core press-protecting precedent from New York Times Co. v. Sullivan have intensified these conversations. This scholarly dialogue, however, appears to be taking place against a mistaken foundational assumption that the U.S. Supreme Court continues to articulate and embrace at least some notion of freedom of the press. Yet despite the First Amendment text specifically referencing it …

Masthead

Washington and Lee Law Review

No abstract provided.

Comment: Understanding Xenophobia As Intersectional Discrimination, Shreya Atrey

Washington and Lee Law Review

This Comment examines the nature of xenophobia and why it seems to fall through the cracks of international human rights law, especially as a form of racial discrimination under the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination. It considers an understanding of xenophobia as a sui generis case of intersectional discrimination because it has to do with racial grounds but also perhaps other grounds (such as nationality, religion, language, culture, and class), which makes it difficult to disentangle the basis of xenophobic discrimination as based on strictly racial grounds alone.

Rurality As An Intersecting Axis Of Inequality In The Work Of The U.N. Treaty Bodies, Amanda Lyons

Washington and Lee Law Review

Rurality intersects with other identities, power dynamics, and structural inequalities—including those related to gender, race, disability, and age—to create unique patterns of human rights deprivations, violations, and challenges in rural spaces. Therefore, accurately assessing human rights and duties in rural spaces requires attention to the dynamics of rurality in a particular context, the unique nature of diverse rural identities and livelihoods, the systemic forces operating in and on those spaces, and the intersections with other forms of structural discrimination and inequality.

Although much of the work of the U.N. treaty bodies has in fact addressed human rights situations in rural …

The Three Laws: The Chinese Communist Party Throws Down The Data Regulation Gauntlet, William Chaskes

Washington and Lee Law Review

Criticism of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) runs a wide gamut. Accusations of human rights abuses, intellectual property theft, authoritarian domestic policies, disrespecting sovereign borders, and propaganda campaigns all have one common factor: the CCP’s desire to control information. Controlling information means controlling data. Lurking beneath the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) tumultuous relationship with the rest of the world is the fight between nations to control their citizens’ data while also keeping it out of the hands of adversaries. The CCP’s Three Laws are its newest weapon in this data war.

One byproduct of the CCP’s emphasis on controlling …

(G)Local Intersectionality, Martha F. Davis

Washington and Lee Law Review

Intersectionality theory has been slow to take root as a legal norm at the national level, even as scholars embrace it as a potent analytical tool. Yet, in recent years, intersectionality has entered law and policy practices through an unexpected portal: namely, local governments’ adoption of international norms. A growing number of local governments around the world explicitly incorporate intersectionality into their law and practice as part of implementing international antidiscrimination norms from human rights instruments like the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of …

Sexual Violence, Intangible Harm, And The Promise Of Transformative Remedies, Jill C. Engle

Washington and Lee Law Review

This Article describes alternative remedies that survivors of sexual violence can access inside and outside the legal system. It describes the leading restorative justice approaches and recommends one of the newest and most innovative of those—“transformative justice”—to heal the intangible harms of sexual violence. The Article also discusses the intersectional effects of sexual violence on women of color and their communities. It explains the importance of transformative justice’s intersectional approach to redress sexual violence. Transformative justice offers community-based, victim-centric methods that cultivate deep, lasting healing for sexual violence survivors and their communities, with genuine accountability for those who have caused …

Mass Arbitration 2.0, Andrew B. Nissensohn

Washington and Lee Law Review

Over the past four decades, corporate interests, in concert with the Supreme Court, have surgically dismantled the American civil litigation system. Enacted nearly a century ago, the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA) was once a procedural law mandating that federal courts enforce arbitration agreements between sophisticated parties with equal bargaining power. Through death by a thousand cuts, corporate interests shielded themselves from nearly all methods of en masse dispute resolution. These interests weaponized the FAA into a “one size fits all” means to compel potential litigants with unequal bargaining power into arbitration. The so-called “Arbitration Revolution” is the subject of much …

Foreword: Centering Intersectionality In Human Rights Discourse, Johanna Bond

Washington and Lee Law Review

In the last decade, intersectionality theory has gained traction as a lens through which to analyze international human rights issues. Intersectionality theory is the notion that multiple systems of oppression intersect in peoples’ lives and are mutually constitutive, meaning that when, for example, race and gender intersect, the experience of discrimination goes beyond the formulaic addition of race discrimination and gender discrimination to produce a unique, intersectional experience of discrimination. The understanding that intersecting systems of oppression affect different groups differently is central to intersectionality theory. As such, the theory invites us to think about inter-group differences (i.e., differences between …

Table Of Contents

Washington and Lee Law Review

No abstract provided.

Abortion Rights And Disability Equality: A New Constitutional Battleground, Allison M. Whelan, Michele Goodwin

Washington and Lee Law Review

Abortion rights and access are under siege in the United States. Even while current state-level attacks take on a newly aggressive scale and scope—emboldened by the United States Supreme Court’s June 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization to overturn Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey—the legal landscape emerging in the wake of Dobbs is decades in the making. In this Article, we analyze the pre- and post-Roe landscapes, explaining that after the Supreme Court recognized a right to abortion in Roe in 1973, anti-abortionists sought to dismantle that right, first …

Murdering Crows: Pauli Murray, Intersectionality, And Black Freedom, Lisa A. Crooms-Robinson

Washington and Lee Law Review

What is intersectionality’s origin story and how did it make its way into human rights? Beginning in the 1940s, Pauli Murray (1910–1985) used Jane Crow to capture two distinct relationships between race and sex discrimination. One Jane used the race-sex analogy to show that race and sex were both unconstitutionally arbitrary. The other Jane captured Black women’s experiences and rights deprivations at the intersection of race and sex. Both Janes were based on Murray’s fundamental belief that the struggles against race and sex discrimination were different phases of the fight for human rights.

In 1966, Murray was part of the …