Law Commons^™

Why Secular Society Desperately Needs The Recognition Of Religious Holidays, Bruce Ledewitz

Ledewitz Papers

Published scholarship collected from academic journals, law reviews, newspaper publications & online periodicals.

How Should The Law Adjust To The Rittenhouse Verdict?, Bruce Ledewitz

Newspaper Columns

Collected biweekly contributions to the Pennsylvania Capital-Star, a nonpartisan, nonprofit news site.

Stop Calling Kyle Rittenhouse A Hero. He Killed Two Unarmed People, Bruce Ledewitz

Newspaper Columns

Collected biweekly contributions to the Pennsylvania Capital-Star, a nonpartisan, nonprofit news site.

Maybe Deficits Do Matter After All, Bruce Ledewitz

Newspaper Columns

Collected biweekly contributions to the Pennsylvania Capital-Star, a nonpartisan, nonprofit news site.

No, This Isn’T Facebook’S ‘Big Tobacco’ Moment, Bruce Ledewitz

Newspaper Columns

Collected biweekly contributions to the Pennsylvania Capital-Star, a nonpartisan, nonprofit news site.

What The Lawyer Well-Being Movement Could Learn From The Americans With Disabilities Act, Alex B. Long

Scholarly Works

In 2017, the ABA National Task Force on Lawyer Well-Being published The Path to Well-Being: Practical Recommendations for Positive Change, a report that contained numerous recommendations concerning how the legal profession can better address the alarming rates of depression, anxiety, and substance abuse within the legal profession. Since the publication of the report, there have been numerous ethics opinions, bar journal reports, and articles dealing with one issue in particular: the ethical duty on the part of law firm partners and management to supervise or to otherwise take action with respect to another lawyer who may be experiencing depression, anxiety, …

Here's What's At Stake In Texas Abortion Case Before U.S. Supreme Court, Bruce Ledewitz

Newspaper Columns

Collected biweekly contributions to the Pennsylvania Capital-Star, a nonpartisan, nonprofit news site.

A Human Being Wrote This Law Review Article: Gpt-3 And The Practice Of Law, Amy B. Cyphert

Law Faculty Scholarship

Artificial intelligence tools can now “write” in such a sophisticated manner that they fool people into believing that a human wrote the text. None are better at writing than GPT-3, released in 2020 for beta testing and coming to commercial markets in 2021. GPT-3 was trained on a massive dataset that included scrapes of language from sources ranging from the NYTimes to Reddit boards. And so, it comes as no surprise that researchers have already documented incidences of bias where GPT-3 spews toxic language. But because GPT-3 is so good at “writing,” and can be easily trained to write in …

The Ballad Of Hicks Carmichael: Law, Music, And Popular Justice In Urban Appalachia, William Davenport Mercer

Scholarly Works

This article examines a rare folk ballad to revisit an 1888 Tennessee trial that newspapers referred to as the fastest in the country in which the death penalty was involved. If we look at this event using court records and newspapers, it tells a regrettably common story of a court under pressure from the populace skirting the protections of law. However, if we consider the trial as a performative endeavor, we can rightly consider other performative events, like folk songs, not as reflective of official events but as equivalents that help provide insight into the larger motives behind the court’s …

No, Joe Biden And The Dems Are Not Collapsing, Bruce Ledewitz

Newspaper Columns

Collected biweekly contributions to the Pennsylvania Capital-Star, a nonpartisan, nonprofit news site.

October 3, 2021: A Response To My Column Criticizing The National Vote Compact--What Ledewitz Missed, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “A Response to My Column Criticizing the National Vote Compact--What Ledewitz Missed“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

The Changing Landscape Of Asylum And Refugee Laws And Human Rights: The Diminishing Role Of The United States, Florence Shu-Acquaye

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Illinois Childcare Parentage Law (R)Evolution, Jeffrey A. Parness

College of Law Faculty Publications

State childcare parentage laws, that is, laws designating parents for custody, visitation, parental responsibility allocation, parental decisionmaking and/or support purposes, have evolved dramatically in the past half century. The (r)evolution is due to major changes in both reproductive technologies and human conduct. Yet the (r)evolution is incomplete.

The (r)evolution is especially incomplete in Illinois. Recent statutory amendments in Illinois chiefly reflect the work of the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws in its 2000 model Uniform Parentage Act, not its 2017 Uniform Parentage Act. The latter better addresses the effects on childcare parentage of the changes in …

What Is "United" About The United States?, Gary S. Lawson

Faculty Scholarship

Jack Balkin’s The Cycles of Constitutional Time aims, among other things, to preserve and promote what Jack regards as “democracy and republicanism,” understood as “a joint enterprise by citizens and their representatives to pursue and promote the public good.” My question is whether and how this normative project is possible in a world full of perceptions of social, political, and moral phenomena akin to the white dress/blue dress internet controversy of 2015. Even if Madison had the better of Montesquieu in 1788 (and that is questionable), the United States has grown dramatically since the founding era, in a patchwork, and …

The 2021 Race For Pa. Supreme Court: The Questions The Candidates Have To Answer, Bruce Ledewitz

Newspaper Columns

Collected biweekly contributions to the Pennsylvania Capital-Star, a nonpartisan, nonprofit news site.

September 20, 2021: Two Recent Columns--The Texas Anti-Abortion Statute And Justice Wecht And The Death Of God, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “Two Recent Columns--the Texas Anti-Abortion statute and Justice Wecht and the Death of God“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

Did Pa. Supreme Court Justice David Wecht Herald The Death Of God?, Bruce Ledewitz

Newspaper Columns

Collected biweekly contributions to the Pennsylvania Capital-Star, a nonpartisan, nonprofit news site.

I Am Resigning From The Pro-Life Movement, Bruce Ledewitz

Ledewitz Papers

Published scholarship collected from academic journals, law reviews, newspaper publications & online periodicals

Casebooks, Bias, And Information Literacy—Do Law Librarians Have A Duty?, Kathleen Fletcher

Law Faculty Scholarship

The third principle of the American Association of Law Libraries’ Principles and Standards for Legal Research Competencies states, “A successful researcher critically evaluates information.” This evaluation includes evaluating legal information of material under criteria of “authority, credibility, currency, authenticity, relevance, and bias. ”Does this standard include information contained in legal casebooks? This article’s goal is to show examples of case treatment in casebooks in Constitutional Law, Property, and Civil Procedure which demonstrate authors’ biases in their selection and editing of cases. Under the AALL standards and the ACRL Standards and Framework for Information literacy, librarians should teach students how to …

The Steal In The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, Explained, Bruce Ledewitz

Newspaper Columns

Collected biweekly contributions to the Pennsylvania Capital-Star, a nonpartisan, nonprofit news site.

Investor-State Dispute Prevention: A Critical Reflection, Lise Johnson, Lisa E. Sachs, Ella Merrill

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment Staff Publications

With the rise of treaty-based investor-state dispute settlement (“ISDS”) which has taken place over the last two decades, a number of governments have adopted varying approaches to avoid those arbitration cases. Countries including Bosnia and Herzegovina, Colombia, Mexico, Mongolia, and Peru have pursued such initiatives, often with the support of intergovernmental organizations such as the United Nations Convention on Trade and Development (“UNCTAD”) and the World Bank.

In the context of discussions on ISDS reform taking place at the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (“UNCITRAL”), some states have identified development and implementation of such ISDS-avoidance strategies and tools …

The Rise Of Directed Trusts And Why It Matters, Amy Morris Hess

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

The Promise And Limits Of Lawfulness: Inequality, Law, And The Techlash, Salomé Viljoen

Articles

In response to widespread skepticism about the recent rise of “tech ethics”, many critics have called for legal reform instead. In contrast with the “ethics response”, critics consider the “lawfulness response” more capable of disciplining the excesses of the technology industry. In fact, both are simultaneously vulnerable to industry capture and capable of advancing a more democratic egalitarian agenda for the information economy. Both ethics and law offer a terrain of contestation, rather than a predetermined set of commitments by which to achieve more democratic and egalitarian technological production. In advancing this argument, the essay focuses on two misunderstandings common …

Doj’S Refusal To Defend Mo Brooks Was Wrong; Prosecuting Trump Would Be Worse, Bruce Ledewitz

Newspaper Columns

Collected biweekly contributions to the Pennsylvania Capital-Star, a nonpartisan, nonprofit news site.

What A Novel Can Teach Us About Religion In America, Bruce Ledewitz

Newspaper Columns

Collected biweekly contributions to the Pennsylvania Capital-Star, a nonpartisan, nonprofit news site.

Carbon Accounting By Public And Private Financial Institutions: Can We Be Sure Climate Finance Is Leading To Emissions Reductions?, Martin Dietrich Brauch, Emily Spittle

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment Staff Publications

To further and fully understand how to plan for the decarbonization of mining value chains, we need better data on carbon and other greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. However, neither consumers, corporates, or financial institutions know the embodied emissions in the products they produce or sell. While methods like life-cycle analysis and environmental product declarations exist, none use a verifiable, comparable, or widely adopted emissions reporting framework capable of sending supply chain signals.

To truly reform material supply chains, new solutions for markets, capital, and policy are required. COMET (the Coalition on Materials Emissions Transparency) – an alliance launched at Davos …

Law, Fact, And Procedural Justice, G. Alexander Nunn

Faculty Scholarship

The distinction between questions of law and questions of fact is deceptively complex. Although any first-year law student could properly classify those issues that fall at the polar ends of the law-fact continuum, the Supreme Court has itself acknowledged that the exact dividing line between law and fact—the point where legal inquiries end and factual ones begin—is “slippery,” “elusive,” and “vexing.” But identifying that line is crucially important. Whether an issue is deemed a question of law or a question of fact often influences the appointment of a courtroom decision maker, the scope of appellate review, the administration of certain …

Mr. Justice Breyer, Thank You For Your Service. Now Please Retire, Bruce Ledewitz

Newspaper Columns

Collected biweekly contributions to the Pennsylvania Capital-Star, a nonpartisan, nonprofit news site.

Yes, Allegheny Co. Da Zappala Should Resign Or Be Impeached. No, He Shouldn't Be The Target Of Legal Discipline, Bruce Ledewitz

Newspaper Columns

Collected biweekly contributions to the Pennsylvania Capital-Star, a nonpartisan, nonprofit news site.

July 5, 2021: The Greatest Column Ross Douthat Ever Wrote, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “The Greatest Column Ross Douthat Ever Wrote“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.