Law Commons^™

Ks Pop Celebrating Three Years Of Tech-Driven Justice For All, Ayyoub Ajmi

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This article explores the development and impact of the Kansas Protection Order Portal (KS POP), highlighting the vital role of law librarians in the portal's design and implementation. The article showcases how KS POP has streamlined the legal process for domestic violence, sexual assault, and human trafficking victims in Kansas, marking a significant advancement in accessible legal support and serving as a model for future innovations in the justice system.

Revolutionizing Access To Justice: The Role Of Ai-Powered Chatbots And Retrieval-Augmented Generation In Legal Self-Help, Ayyoub Ajmi

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Advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) present numerous opportunities to routinize and make the law more accessible to self-represented litigants, notably through AI chatbots employing natural language processing for conversational interactions. These chatbots exhibit legal reasoning abilities without explicit training on legal-specific datasets. However, they face challenges processing less common and more specific knowledge from their training data. Additionally, once trained, their static status makes them susceptible to knowledge obsolescence over time. This article explores the application of retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) to enhance chatbot accuracy, drawing insights from a real-world implementation developed for a court system to support self-help litigants.

How We Can Best Support Neurodivergent Patrons, Mari Cheney, Annalee Hickman Pierson, Geraldine Kalim, Julia M. Pluta

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When law librarians think about making out libraries a welcoming and inclusive environment for all library patrons, we need to include individuals of all abilities in this process. This article discusses how law librarians can best create a welcoming and inclusive environment in their libraries and services. It also focuses on how to best support neurodivergent patrons through universal design.

The Lawyer's Duty Of Competence In A Climate-Imperiled World, John C. Dernbach, Irma S. Russell, Matthew Bogoshian

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The United States has more than 1.3 million practicing lawyers. Under Model Rule 1.1 of the ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct and every state’s rules of conduct, each of these lawyers owes clients competent representation. Under the rule, “[c]ompetent representation requires the knowledge, skill, thoroughness and preparation reasonably necessary for the services.” While law and rules will undoubtedly change in response to the climate crisis, the duty of competence does not await such change or legal reform. The ubiquitous nature of the duty of competence means it is applicable to each lawyer now and will continue to evolve as …

Comment Letter On Sec’S Proposed Rule On Conflicts Of Interest Associated With The Use Of Predictive Data Analytics By Broker-Dealers And Investment Advisers, File Number S7-12-23, Sergio Alberto Gramitto Ricci, Christina M. Sautter

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This comment letter responds to the Securities and Exchange Commission’s proposed rule Release Nos. 34-97990; IA-6353; File Number S7-12-23 - Conflicts of Interest Associated with the Use of Predictive Data Analytics by Broker-Dealers and Investment Advisers. Our comments draw on our scholarship relating to laypersons’ participation in securities markets and the corporate sector as well as on the role of technology in corporate governance.

We express concerns that the SEC’s proposed regulation undermines individuals’ ability to access capital markets in an efficient and cost-effective manner. In the era of excessive concentration of equities ownership and power, often with negative societal …

The Ethical Risk Of Experience, Barbara Glesner Fines

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Practice may make perfect, but in law practice, experience and specialization can actually increase some types of errors - leading to an increased risk of malpractice claims, disciplinary complaints, or client dissatisfaction. This article explores the question of why this may be so. The article first examines the phenomenon of increased malpractice and disciplinary risks for family law attorneys in general and experienced attorneys in par­ticular. The central question this article examines is this, "Why might highly experienced and specialized family law attorneys find themselves facing the most severe of disciplinary sanctions or malpractice judgments?" The answers point to some …

Inclusiveness: Advancing Environmental Justice In A Diverse Democracy, Irma S. Russell, Alexandra D. Dunn

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Today, environmental justice (EJ) is more than a significant and meaningful social movement. EJ has now emerged—after at least five decades—as a major initiative for the federal government and for many state governments. Since the beginnings of the EJ movement, its proponents have sought redress for the disproportionate and negative impacts of generations of environmental policy and siting decisions that resulted in adverse effects on the health, environment, economics, and climate of disadvantaged communities. Scientific research and “big data” programs now provide evidence supporting community EJ claims, and laws such as the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) and the Inflation Reduction …

Real Property Issues In Family Law: An Annotated Bibliography, Allen Roston

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No abstract provided.

Why U.S. States Need Their Own Cannabis Industry Banks, Christoph Henkel, Randall K. Johnson

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The legal cannabis trade is the fastest growing industry in the United States. In 2019, about 48.2 million Americans used the drug at least once. As such, it is easy to see why the legal cannabis trade may generate annual revenues exceeding $30 billion in Fiscal Year 2022 alone.

One inconvenient truth, however, is that the parties to any cannabis trade may face a range of difficulties due to conflicts between federal and state laws. These difficulties include the fact that many financial institutions are reluctant to handle cannabis proceeds. One reason is that a lack of alignment in terms …

What Is The Optimal Basis For Imposing Government Liens?, Randall K. Johnson

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By presenting a detailed case study, which focuses on who gets subjected to government liens, this essay helps U.S. states to make more informed decisions. It seeks to do so by critically assessing Illinois’ historic approach to lien imposition and enforcement, in part, because this state had the most forced sales of real property in recent years. In addition, Illinois also generated the largest amount of related economic losses in the U.S. during that same time period. This state did so despite adhering to the old majority rule for turning over surplus value from such sales. That rule required creditors …

The Retail Investor Report, Nick Einhorn, Jill E. Fisch, Sergio Alberto Gramitto Ricci, Monique Le, Christina M. Sautter

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In 2020, a wave of retail investors entered the stock market. In the last two years, approximately 30 million new retail investors opened brokerage accounts in the U.S. By 2021, retail investors comprised 25% of total equities trading volume, nearly double the percentage reported a decade prior.

And they’ve stuck around. In February 2023, retail investors across platforms set a new all-time high for weekly inflows, with $1.5 billion dollars pouring into the market in a single week.

Participation in the public markets remains high; more significantly, it has evolved. Public.com surveyed 2,000+ investors to compile its 2023 report. Public’s …

Wireless Investors & Apathy Obsolescence, Sergio Alberto Gramitto Ricci, Christina M. Sautter

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This Article discusses how a subgenre of retail investors makes investors’ apathy obsolete. In prior work, we dub retail investors who rely on technology and online communications in their investing and corporate governance endeavors “wireless investors.” By applying game theory, this Article discusses how wireless investors’ global-scale online interactions allow them to circulate information and coordinate, obliterating collective action problems.

Legal Education And Nextgen: Recommendations For Transitioning To A New Assessment Model, Wanda Temm

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No abstract provided.

Introduction: The Arc Of Race In Professional And Collegiate Sports Symposium, Kenneth D. Ferguson

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This introduction will highlight the five articles featured in the symposium issue of the UMKC Law Review and will also situate those articles in the Sports Law Symposium titled, The Arc of Race in Professional and Collegiate Sports. The goal of the two-day virtual symposium was to bring together leading legal, social science, and medical science scholars to engage in discourse concerning how race and gender have affected and continue to influence decision making in professional and collegiate sports. The symposium exposed how race, culture, ethnicity, and gender affect a wide range of phenomena in scientific fields such as neuropsychological …

Ella P. Stewart And The Benefits Of Owning A Neighborhood Pharmacy, Randall K. Johnson

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This Essay is the first to explain how and why Ella P. Stewart, who was among the first Black women to earn a doctoral degree in Pharmacy, used her status as a small business owner to protect the limited set of legal rights that were available to African-Americans in the twentieth century. It also describes how Stewart’s early personal and professional experiences informed her subsequent public service career. Additionally, this Essay highlights the various ways that Stewart expanded the real freedoms that Black Americans enjoyed by guaranteeing they received a fair share of public goods or services. It concludes by …

Constitutional Issues In Family Law: An Annotated Bibliography (Part 2 Of 2), Allen K. Rostron

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Significant constitutional questions often arise in the family law context. This is the second of two bibliographies, in this volume of the Journal of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers, about constitutional issues in family law. It focuses on issues discussed in the articles in this issue of the journal.

Introduction: Access To Healthcare Symposium, Yvonne F. Lindgren

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The four Articles in this Access to Healthcare symposium edition address the different ways that the U.S. healthcare delivery system is failing marginalized communities, including individuals who are disabled, who are birthing, who are women of color or represent another marginalized group, or who live in poverty. The result is a rich conversation that uncovers the complex systems that contribute to unequal access to health care and unjust disparities in health outcomes in the United States.

Advance Care Planning Is Critical To Overall Wellbeing, Barbara Zabawa

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Wellness is growing market in the United States. McKinsey and Company estimates the spend on wellness products and services to exceed $450 billion in the United States and to grow at more than five percent annually.1 Despite this impressive growth, wellness products and services are falling short of meeting many consumers’ wellness needs.2 Those who feel least satisfied with what wellness has to offer yearn for a more holistic approach to wellness, with a need for more products and services that address sleep and mindfulness concerns.3 Arguably at the heart of these more holistic approaches, particularly those …

Purposivist Reasoning In Federal Civil Procedure, Lumen N. Mulligan, Emily Pennington

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This invited Article both reviews the Tenth Circuit’s stance on the circuit split addressing repleading counterclaims in amended answers and observes broader interpretive-approach trends in Federal Rules of Civil Procedure cases. In Sinclair Wyoming Refining Co. v. A & B Builders, Ltd., the Tenth Circuit holds that, absent prejudice to the opposing party, the failure to replead a counterclaim in an amended answer does not constitute abandonment; thus, taking the so-called permissive side of a circuit split on this question. In so doing, the Tenth Circuit adopts a purposivist approach to interpretation of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. In …

Self-Intervention, Lumen N. Mulligan

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You cannot intervene in your own case, duh! Yet the United States Supreme Court granted certiorari on just this issue: Does Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 24(a)(2) allow state legislative leaders, seeking to represent the state’s sovereign interest, intervene when the attorney general is already representing the state’s sovereign interest. In this article, I contend that the text, history, and practice of Rule 24(a)(2) prohibits such “self-intervention.” I then explore how the fictive approach to state immunity established in Ex parte Young causes this confusion, while concluding that the doctrine, properly understood, focuses on real, not nominal, parties-in-interest. Next, I …

Restoring Confidence In Educational Technologies, Ariel Newman

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No abstract provided.

Tenancy By The Entirety Property And Transfers To Trusts, Julie M. Cheslik

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Lawyers practicing in the area of matrimonial law encounter the structuring of property transactions as their clients contem­plate marriage, during the marriage, and upon dissolution of the marriage. At all three periods in the life of a marriage, whether for creditor asset protection purposes, estate planning purposes, or dissolution purposes, whether and how to deviate from the state's default property laws is of utmost concern for the matri­monial lawyer. Of special concern is how default laws intended to protect the spouses' marital estate from creditors - including the tenancy by the entirety estate - may be implicated or abro­gated by …

Generative Ai And Finding The Law, Paul D. Callister

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Legal information science requires, among other things, principles and theories. The article states five principles or considerations that any discussion of generative AI large language models and their role in finding the law must include. The article concludes that law librarianship will increasingly become legal information science and require new paradigms. In addition to the five principles, the article applies ecological holistic media theory to understand the relationship of the legal community’s cognitive authority, institutions, techné (technology, medium and method), geopolitical factors, and the past and future to understand the changes in this information milieu. The article also explains …

The Persistent Treatise, Dana Neacsu, Paul D. Callister

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The thesis of this paper is that the legal treatise remains a pillar of our legal system and its Rule of Law, despite variations in its quantitate citation, and diversity of its qualitative usage in our jurisprudence, especially at the United States Supreme Court level. We support this claim with empirical data and qualitative analysis. First, as shown here, treatises have a significant and healthy presence in case law, briefs, and secondary sources. More importantly, they are a stabilizing influence in our evolving rule of law.

We have studied the citation of treatises in state and federal courts. In terms …

Information For Submitting Articles To Law Reviews & Journals, Allen Roston, Nancy Levit

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This document contains information about submitting articles to law reviews and journals, including the methods for submitting an article, any special formatting requirements, how to contact them to request an expedited review, and how to contact them to withdraw an article from consideration. It covers 196 law reviews.

Book Review: The Walled Garden: Law And Privacy In Modern Society, Ariel Newman

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No abstract provided.

Book Review: Critical Race Judgments: Rewritten U.S. Court Opinions On Race And The Law, Julia M. Pluta

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No abstract provided.

Empirical Study Of The Role Of The Chinese Guiding Case System In Chinese Law, Dong Yan, Jeffrey E. Thomas

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No abstract provided.

Is The Chemical Genus Claim Really “Dead” At The Federal Circuit?: Part Ii, Christopher M. Holman

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A 2020 law review article entitled The Death of the Genus Claim (“Death”) purports to document a dramatic shift in the Federal Circuit’s interpretation of 35 U.S.C. 112(a)’s enablement and written description requirements, particularly as applied to chemical genus claims. According to the authors of Death, it has become nearly impossible to obtain a chemical genus claim that will be upheld as valid in the face of a challenge for overbreadth under Section 112(a). Death was cited extensively in Amgens’s successful petition for certiorari in Amgen v. Sanofi, a case asking the Supreme Court to overturn the Federal Circuit’s decision …

An Algorithmic Assessment Of Parole Decisions, Hannah Lacqueur, Ryan W. Copus

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Objectives: Parole is an important mechanism for alleviating the extraordinary social and financial costs of mass incarceration. Yet parole boards can also present a major obstacle, denying parole to low-risk inmates who could safely be released from prison. We evaluate a major parole institution, the New York State Parole Board, quantifying the costs of suboptimal decision-making.

Methods: Using ensemble Machine Learning, we predict any arrest and any violent felony arrest within three years to generate criminal risk predictions for individuals released on parole in New York from 2012–2015. We quantify the social welfare loss of the Board’s suboptimal decisions by …