Law Commons^™

A Terrorist In Death Only: How The Death Penalty Fills The Gap In Federal Terrorism Law, Caroline Alden Mcbride

Law Student Publications

In the absence of a federal statute criminalizing domestic terrorism, the United States turned to an unlikely proxy: the death penalty. This Comment argues that capital punishment is used to define domestic terrorism, particularly when statutory tools cannot capture white supremacist attacks. Although former President Biden commuted most federal death sentences to life imprisonment without parole, three individuals whose attacks met the legal definition of domestic terrorism were excluded from clemency. Examining several cases from Timothy McVeigh to Luigi Mangione reveals a trend of defendants whose crimes meet the legal definition of domestic terrorism receiving the death penalty, even when …

Under Pressure: Delaware, Corporate America, And Certified Questions, Derek S. Hubbard

Law Student Publications

With an advanced corporate code and a highly respected Court of Chancery, Delaware has long been America’s home for big business. But its status may be in jeopardy. Within the past year, the Court of Chancery has shattered two market practices and reminded stakeholders of the uncertain nature of fiduciary duties. Corporations have responded. Termed “DExit,” corporations are leaving Delaware for competing jurisdictions, namely Texas and Nevada. As corporations leave Delaware, so do their tax dollars. Delaware’s fiscal stability is directly tied to the continued presence of corporate charters in Delaware. Delaware residents enjoy a low tax burden, with the …

The Freedman's Savings Bank And Financial Literacy Education, Alexis Ann Ballance

Law Student Publications

In the United States, white, non-Hispanic individuals possess approximately seven times the wealth of Black individuals. One recent study found that for every 100 dollars in wealth held by a white household, a Black household holds about fifteen dollars. This disparity in wealth accumulation is referred to as the wealth gap, and it has historically stratified along racial lines. Although income inequality contributes to this disparity, the racial wealth gap is much more pronounced and continues to grow. ...

Insuring Algorithmic Liability: A Response To Artificial Intelligence, Judicial Evolution, And Insurance, Daniel Schwarcz

Articles

No abstract provided.

The Obverse-Turing Test: Rethinking Authorship, Trust, And Time In An Accelerated Age, Michael J. Miller, Chatgpt (Ai~Nesbo+)

Psychology

In this paper, we propose a new test for scientific accountability in the era of artificial intelligence: the Obverse Turing Test for Authorship. While the traditional Turing test focuses on a machine's ability to mimic human intelligence, our test addresses the question: when should a scientific contribution involving artificial intelligence be attributed joint authorship? We argue that more and more authors are using AI in the idea generation and elaboration stages of their work, but rarely acknowledge this use explicitly. To examine this gap, we analyze examples of human–AI interactions across fields and propose a new approach to authorship based …

Bureau Of Prisons Visitation Policy, Natalie D. Ebolum

Open Educational Resources

This assignment in Law and Institutional Treatment requires students to design a modern, equitable, and legally sound visitation policy for individuals housed in the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP). Using Microsoft CoPilot and ChatGPT as drafting tools, students will generate, edit, and refine AI-produced policy language to ensure it aligns with principles of nondiscrimination, institutional safety, and constitutional standards. Students must critically evaluate AI outputs, revise them to reflect course concepts, and compare iterative drafts to assess which version demonstrates stronger policy structure and legal grounding. A bonus component invites students to generate AI-created images representing an equitable visitation space …

Using Ai To Analyze Survey Data, Sara Martucci

Open Educational Resources

This assignment in Methodology in Sociology/Criminology engages students in the full research process by guiding them through variable selection, data analysis, interpretation, and critical reflection on AI-assisted decision-making. Using a class-generated survey dataset (or an existing dataset), students develop a research question, identify independent and dependent variables, and formulate a hypothesis. They then compare their selections with those suggested by an AI tool, analyzing differences in reasoning and variable choice. Through SPSS, students generate frequency tables, charts, and scatterplots to examine relationships between variables, including potential intervening factors. The assignment culminates in a group presentation and reflective analysis on the …

2026 Supplement To The Corporations Curriculum - Caremark: The Board's Duty Of Oversight Regarding Work Force Safety And Sexual Misconduct, Sarah Haan

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Weight Of Stigma, Rebekah A. King, Michael S. Sinha

All Faculty Scholarship

Many health care providers, both implicitly and explicitly, perpetuate stigma in their treatment of patients classified as obese. While medical professionals understand that a one-size-fits-all approach to treatment is ineffective, patients classified as obese are frequently offered limited treatment options that fail to account for their unique needs. Access to a range of effective treatment options has historically been limited, but new GLP-1 receptor agonist medicines like Wegovy (semaglutide) and Zepbound (tirzepatide), have shown incredible promise in addressing the obesity crisis. Unfortunately, these transformative drugs are costly, in high demand, and not widely covered by insurance, rendering them inaccessible for …

The Asexual Assumption, Faith K. Whatley-Blaine, Michael S. Sinha

All Faculty Scholarship

Inclusion-focused dating shows such as ‘Love on the Spectrum’ feature individuals with developmental or neurological disabilities on a quest for love. Despite the focus on disability representation, these shows perpetuate stigma against the disabled community by fostering an infantilizing portrayal of individuals with disabilities. This portrayal undermines the premise of encouraging meaningful romantic relationships and reinforces the stigmatizing association of asexuality with disability. This framing aligns with the broader societal narrative that individuals with disabilities are incapable of or lack interest in participating in romantic relationships or physical intimacy.

The stigma that associates asexuality with disability extends beyond mere entertainment, …

Room To Breathe: The Surprising Capaciousness Of Osh Act Preemption, Michael C. Duff

All Faculty Scholarship

This essay is part of a Saint Louis University Law Journal seminar, conducted by the Wefel Center for Employment Law, titled "Shifting Workplace Law in an Era of Federal Vacuums: Business as Usual or Polycrisis?" The symposium presumed that the federal government would be scaling back workforce regulatory enforcement dramatically in the shadow of DOGE and several other developments. The essay focuses on OSHA and more narrowly questions the extent to which the OSH Act preempts state and local efforts to regulate workplace safety and health. The essay shows that unless OSHA promulgates a full-blown “standard” – a tedious form …

Flows, Financing Decisions, And Institutional Ownership Of The U.S. Equity Market, Alon Brav, Dorothy S. Lund, Lin Zhao

Faculty Scholarship

This Article analyzes the relationship between flows to institutional investment managers, corporate financing decisions, and institutional ownership of U.S. public equity. In so doing, it provides new evidence about the drivers of institutional investor growth in equity ownership over the past two decades. Contrary to conventional narrative, we find that equity capital flows into the “Big Three” investment managers have slowed in recent years, with substantial differences between each institution. We also present a framework to understand how fund characteristics and corporate actions such as stock buybacks and equity issuances combine to shape the evolution of institutional ownership, including that …

"Activist" Versus "Passive" Investors: A Closer Look At Proxy Contests And The Contemporary Balance Of Advantage, John C. Coffee Jr.

Faculty Scholarship

The era of the hostile takeover has clearly given way to the era of the proxy contest led by an activist hedge fund. Today, a record number of such contests are underway, and they have changed the board composition at many U.S. companies and caused a record number of CEO resignations. But there is a mystery here: when activist funds negotiate for changes with target managements, they often obtain meaningful changes in the board of directors and corporate policies. However, when activists attempt a proxy contest, they have generally been unsuccessful, winning only a small number of seats in a …

Tax In The Echo Chamber, Kathleen Delaney Thomas

Faculty Publications

This Essay explores the concept of social media echo chambers in the context of tax law. Specifically, in addressing this Symposium’s topic of “AI in Tax Law,” the Essay argues that a significant and growing number of taxpayers encounter information about the tax system through their interaction with social media content that is selected by machine-learning algorithms. Tax information, commentary, and advice abound on social media, and nearly eighty percent of those considered Gen-Z or millennials seek out tax and financial advice on social media platforms. Policymakers who are interested in keeping the public informed about the tax system, thereby …

The Arbitrary Myth: Challenging Trademark Law's Elevation Of Arbitrary Marks, Dustin Marlan

Faculty Publications

Under its Abercrombie spectrum, trademark law grants “arbitrary” marks—like APPLE for computers or AMAZON for retail—its highest form of protection, treating them as equivalent to fanciful marks such as KODAK or EXXON. This Article challenges that foundational assumption. Unlike fanciful marks, which are invented and enjoy strong source-identifying capacity due to their novelty, arbitrary marks draw on existing language through catachresis: a rhetorical move that repurposes a common word in novel commercial context. In doing so, arbitrary marks generate layered metaphoric meanings that more closely resemble the associative leaps of suggestive marks, rather than the invented distinctiveness of fanciful ones. …

Space Mining, Richard Painter

Articles

The Trump Administration and U.S. Congress are promoting new ventures to extract valuable minerals from outer space. This Article does not dismiss the idea out of hand, but explores reasons for caution, including practical problems with space mining, its environmental impact, the likelihood that the United States could violate international law, and the risk of armed conflict. These problems are exacerbated by financial conflicts of interest in our government with a handful of billionaires, who have a financial interest in space mining work. The promotion of their agenda could involve wasteful government spending on subsidies for private ventures, with a …

Independence First ... Or Don't Use It: A Fiduciary Standard For Law-Firm Use Of General Ai, Edward S. Adams

Articles

To counter these structural threats, this Article proposes a restrictive, fiduciary-based standard for the use of GPAI in substantive legal work. The proposed “Fiduciary-Grade & Independence Safeguards” (FGIS) standard posits that law firms should presumptively prohibit the use of GPAI for tasks involving legal analysis, strategy, or the synthesis of confidential facts and law. A firm may only depart from this default prohibition if it can certify, with auditable proof, the implementation of two pillars of protection: (1) robust safeguards that neutralize vendor influence and preserve the lawyer’s independent professional judgment, and (2) fiduciary-grade confidentiality controls, including private deployment and …

Constitutional Limits On The President's Authority To Adjourn Congress, Allan Erbsen

Articles

Can the President adjourn Congress, declare that the adjournment constitutes a recess, and appoint cabinet officers without the Senate’s consent? President Donald Trump has considered invoking this supposed power. Adjourning Congress would enable the President to appoint otherwise unconfirmable officials. Even if the President does not adjourn Congress, the looming threat of adjournment could chill the Senate’s review of nominees.

This Article concludes that the President cannot evade the Senate’s role in the appointments process by adjourning Congress. Three clauses in the Constitution inform the analysis: the Consent Clause, which requires each house to consent to the other’s adjournment; the …

Jurisdiction And Citizenship, Ilan Wurman

Articles

This Article makes a series of interventions into the existing literature on birthright citizenship. It makes three historical claims about the common law rule and its development. First, the Article centers the importance of parental status. The relevant status was not the citizenship of the parents, however, but whether they were under the protection of, and owed allegiance to, the sovereign. The common law rule therefore did not depend on descent, but the modern belief that the rule depended solely on place of birth is also mistaken. Second, it reveals through an examination of safe-conducts and English statutes from the …

Searches And Seizures Of The Unhoused, Shawn E. Fields

Faculty Scholarship

The United States recorded its largest ever unhoused population in 2024. Acute affordable housing shortages and climate-fueled natural disasters have exacerbated a decades-long unaddressed humanitarian crisis, straining resources in cities and rural areas alike. In response, state and local governments have pivoted to a more punitive approach to houselessness. Draconian "anti-camping" ordinances subject houseless people to fines or arrests while police destroy their property in encampment "sweeps," disconnecting the unhoused from critical social structures. Quality-of-life laws criminalize basic biological functions in public. New York, California, and other states have expanded the reach of involuntary civil commitment procedures, forcibly hospitalizing and …

Comparative Law: Cases, Text, And Materials, Francesca Bignami

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

This new casebook offers a contemporary approach to the teaching of comparative law.  By integrating an up-to-date set of cases, code texts, and scholarly materials drawn from the civil law and common law traditions, as well as from Islamic law and customary law, it captures today’s dynamic legal landscape.  Beyond the western jurisdictions that typically feature in the general comparative law course, the book gives sustained attention to Brazil, Pakistan, South Africa, and Ethiopia. Subject areas covered are private law, procedural law, labor law, administrative law, digital law, and constitutional law.  Looking to professional life after graduation, this book equips …

The Law Of Health Equity, Govind Persad

Publications

Since 2025, health equity has faced increasing hostility from federal courts, agencies, and the executive branch. Yet health equity’s promise—to narrow stark health gaps along racial, economic, and other lines—remains urgent and widely endorsed by states, localities, and nongovernmental actors. Evaluating how health equity efforts might falter under or surmount these challenges requires understanding their legal underpinnings: the law of health equity.

This Article is the first in legal scholarship to comprehensively examine federal, state, and private sector health equity commitments. It reveals sustained societal recognition of health equity’s importance, while highlighting the need for more precise and actionable definitions. …

The Public Franchise Tradition As A Limit On Patent Takings, Laura E. Dolbow

Publications

A longstanding debate exists over whether patents are forms of “private property” that the Takings Clause protects. Recently, in a different context, the Supreme Court stated that a patent is a specific form of property: a public franchise. Several scholars have argued that the public franchise characterization means patents are not protected by the Takings Clause at all. This Article identifies another potential implication of the public franchise framing. It argues that even if patents are viewed as protected by the Takings Clause, the public franchise framing suggests that the scope of that protection should be quite narrow.

To explore …

Climate Last Resorts, Michael Pappas

Publications

The United States faces a climate crisis, an affordable housing crisis, and, linking them both, an insurance crisis. At the intersection of these concurrent predicaments lie a set of little-known but surprisingly impactful policies: state Insurer of Last Resort (ILR) programs. ILRs are state policies that provide property insurance when private insurance is unavailable, such as when private insurers determine that climate hazards are too risky to underwrite.

This Article argues that long-overlooked ILR programs are quickly becoming lynchpins for addressing some of today’s most pressing concerns around climate, housing, and insurance. Accordingly, ILRs bear urgent attention and reevaluation. In …

Dollar Challenger? Cbdcs, Complexities, And Monetary Hegemony, Heng Wang

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

Digitalization is transforming the architecture of the international monetary system, reshaping how currencies function and financial infrastructures evolve. Among the significant developments are central bank digital currencies (CBDCs)—new digital forms of national currencies. While CBDCs promise benefits such as efficiency, they also generate relational, technological, legal, and governance complexities that would profoundly affect the global financial landscape. Against this backdrop, a compelling question arises: will CBDCs, particularly cross-border CBDCs, challenge U.S. dollar dominance?

To address this, this Article adopts a forward-looking approach to examine three interrelated crucial questions: what makes CBDCs complex? What governance complexity is likely to arise? Will …

Beyond Amateurism: The Evolving Role Of Sports Agents In The Nil Era, Madison Taylor

Student Works

No abstract provided.

On Bended Knee: A Legal Analysis Of Colin Kaepernick’S Grievance And The Broader Implications Of Activism In Professional Sports, Ayoka Smith

Student Works

No abstract provided.

Market Failure In Mixed Martial Arts: Antitrust Constraints And The Need For Statutory Reform In Mma, Martin Adams

Student Works

No abstract provided.

Constitutional Structures In Private Law And The Example Of Waste Law, Jill M. Fraley

Scholarly Articles

This Article proposes three criteria for when a private law mechanism performs a structural constitutional function: when it constrains present authority in the name of future stability, when it disperses enforcement to avoid centralized authority, and when it has structural entrenchment to avoid ordinary displacement. While many private law doctrines contain constitutional resonances or echo rights, the core of constitutional law is the power structure—a precondition for the protection of those rights. Constitutional structures have three key components: self-binding through time, separation and diffusion of power, and entrenchment beyond ordinary politics. For a private law doctrine to do more than …

Predator Or Prey? The Challenges Of Enforcing Native American Usufructuary And Other Environmental Rights Against The Government, Luke Giltner

Student Works

No abstract provided.