Law Commons^™

Ndls Communicator: Week Of 01.12.26, Notre Dame Law School

NDLS Communicator

The Latest News

• A Global Ripple Effect: Notre Dame Exoneration Justice Clinic Expands Access to Justice in Kenya with the Strathmore Legal Aid Caravan

Alumni News

• Judge Elizabeth F. Tavitas ’85 B.A., ’90 J.D.

Student News

• Tyson Weeks
• John Blatt, Chloe Finn, and Grace Yeo
• Dennis Wieboldt

Faculty Briefs

• Paolo Carozza
• Kari Gallagher
• Lloyd Mayer
• Roger Alford
• Dian Desierto
• Mary Ellen O'Connell
• Kevin Murphy

Events

• Faculty Colloquium - Christian Burset, The Origins of Statutory Stare Decisis
• Faculty Meeting
• Walk the Walk Week

Around the Watercooler

• Pictures from the Retirement Party for Debbie Weiss

Mmu: 01/12/26-01/18/26, Student Bar Association

Monday Morning Update

This Week @ NDLS

Mass Times

Commons Daily Menu

Saint of the Week

General Announcements

Current Tax Reading, Jinyan Li, David Duff, Alan Macnaughton, Michael Veall

Articles & Book Chapters

No abstract provided.

Ai Arbitrators: Bridging Human And Machine Judgment In Construction Law, Mari Maloul

Cardozo Journal of Conflict Resolution (CJCR) Blog

In an industry guided by complex contracts, intense regulations, and narrow margins, disputes within construction are bound to occur. Internationally, arbitration has long established itself as a go-to method for resolving these disputes. On November 3, 2025, the American Arbitration Association’s International Centre for Dispute Resolution (“AAA-ICDR”) launched an AI-powered arbitrator tool which will revolutionize the future of construction arbitration. This machine learning system was created to recreate the human-like decision making process, yet still emphasizes the importance of human input as human arbitrators remain on board for reviewing final drafts. The AI arbitrator assesses claims “emulate[ing] human judgment,” provide …

A New Tax Shelter Wave, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah

Articles

There have been two tax shelter waves in recent memory: The first one ended in 1986, and the second in 2006. We are now amid a third one. The first wave lasted from around 1970 to 1986. It was based on mass marketed shelters sold to individuals with nonwage ordinary income like lawyers, accountants, physicians, and dentists, who were subject to high tax rates. The basic structure of the first wave of tax shelters depended on the Supreme Court’s misguided opinions in Crane and Tufts, which held that the amount realized from the sale of encumbered property included nonrecourse debt.2 …

Ethics Of Artificial Intelligence For Lawyers: Shall We Play A Game? The Rise Of Artificial Intelligence And The First Cases, Cliff Mckinney

Arkansas Law Notes

In the 1983 movie WarGames, a young computer hacker accidentally accesses a United States military supercomputer programmed to run nuclear war simulations. Four decades after WarGames, lawyers are now facing similar challenges of learning to use and communicate with artificial intelligence––hopefully without destroying the world. Artificial intelligence tools, such as ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini, are quickly being incorporated into legal practice. These systems can draft documents, perform analysis, and support other legal tasks. While lawyers adjust to these new technologies, courts and regulatory authorities are actively developing appropriate frameworks to guide and supervise the use of these tools within the …

Law School News: A Quiet Success Story: Rwu Law's Enduring Partnership With The Center For Justice 01-09-2026, Helga Melgar

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Cardozo Law News Brief: January 9, 2026, Benjamin N. Cardozo School Of Law

Cardozo Law News Briefs

Highlights from the January 9, 2026, Cardozo Law News Brief include:

• Dean Melanie Leslie was named one of The National Jurist’s Most Influential People in Legal Education.

• Professor Rebecca Ingber was quoted in The New York Times on the legality of proposed U.S. military involvement in Venezuela.

• Professor Matthew Wansley commented in The New York Times on robotaxi safety concerns after a power outage stranded Waymo vehicles in San Francisco.

• Professor Jessica Roth spoke to Bloomberg about the release of redacted Epstein-related DOJ files.

Faculty news includes:

• Professor Michel Rosenfeld appeared on Canadian TV to discuss U.S. legal issues surrounding …

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N.D., G.D., M.D., And Clark County Department Of Family Services V. Kevin John D., 142 Nev. Adv. Op. 2 (Jan. 08, 2026), Natalie D'Ambrosio

Nevada Supreme Court Summaries

N.D., G.D., M.D., and Clark County DFS v. Kevin John D. held that dismissal of a NRS 432B petition is a final, appealable judgment under NRAP 3A(b)(1); NRAP 3A(b)(7) does not bar such appeals, and In re A.B. is partially overruled.

Dean Leslie Named One Of The National Jurist’S Most Influential People In Legal Education, Benjamin N. Cardozo School Of Law

Cardozo Law News Archive

Dean Melanie Leslie was named one of The National Jurist's 25 Most Influential People in Legal Education for 2026 in recognition of her leadership at Cardozo School of Law. The announcement highlights her role in advancing social justice, innovation, institutional growth, and leadership development in legal education.

Banking On Jarkesy, Jacob Cunningham, Todd Phillips

Duke Law Journal Online

The 150-year-old bank regulatory system is under threat. Following the Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Jarkesy, bankers have filed numerous lawsuits challenging the ability of the federal bank regulatory agencies to adjudicate cases in non-Article III tribunals. But unlike the agencies tasked with enforcing the securities, antitrust, and consumer protection laws, the banking regulators lack statutory authority to file cases in federal court. A decision invalidating their in-house adjudicative authority strips of them of any forum in which to file enforcement actions.

This essay argues that these lawsuits should fail. Because the Seventh Amendment jury trial right exempts “public rights,” …

Ndls Communicator: Week Of 01.05.26, Notre Dame Law School

NDLS Communicator

The Latest News

• Notre Dame Law School Welcomes Global Visitors for Spring 2026

Faculty Briefs

• Mary Ellen O'Connell
• Jimmy Gurulé
• Jeff Pojanowski

Events

• Retirement Party for Debbie Weiss

Around the Watercooler

• Christopher O'Byrne, Research Librarian resigns

Staff Spot Awards

• Nominations open now through March 10, 2026

Library E-Book Licensing And State Law Reform, Kincaid Brown

Law Librarian Scholarship

Libraries don’t “buy” most e-books the way they buy print books; they license them. That reality is at the crossroads of budgetary constraints and patron satisfaction in modern libraries. With print, a library typically pays once, owns the copy, and lends it until it wears out. With e-books, publishers and intermediaries, like platforms such as OverDrive, commonly offer time-limited or loan-limit-ed terms (for example, a license that expires after a set number of checkouts or after a set period), can impose embargoes, and can set prices far above consumer retail. Libraries argue these terms frustrate their public mission and make …

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

Faculty Scholarship

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 …

Call Off The Dogs: Rethinking Sniffer Dog Searches In Canadian Criminal Law, Sara Gordon

All Faculty Publications

The Supreme Court of Canada has repeatedly held that police sniffer dog searches are Charter-compliant based on a low standard of reasonable suspicion because they are minimally intrusive, narrowly targeted, and can be highly accurate. Since the Court last considered their constitutionality, however, extensive empirical research has fundamentally challenged assumptions about the reliability and accuracy of police sniffer dogs, as well as the harm to individuals subjected to these searches. Moreover, the phenomenon of handler cueing can operate to transmit a police officer’s unconscious biases—even those they would consciously reject—to their dogs, further reducing accuracy and leading to false alerts …

Native American Law Explainer, Kincaid Brown

Law Librarian Scholarship

Native American tribes are the original sovereign peoples of the lands that now comprise the United States, with histories, governments, and cultures that predate the founding of the nation by thousands of years. Long before European colonization, hundreds of distinct tribal nations exercised independent political authority over their territories. Although the United States entered hundreds of treaties recognizing tribes as distinct political entities, federal Indian policy evolved over time through periods of treaty-making, forced removal, allotment, assimilation, termination, and, since the 1970s, tribal self-determination. The legal relationship between tribes and the federal government is grounded in the U.S. Constitution, as …

Interpreting Anti-Boycott Laws In The Shadow Of The First Amendment, Joseph A. Tomain

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Thirty-eight states have enacted “anti-BDS” laws. These laws require people or entities doing business with the state to certify that they do not participate in the Boycott Divestment Sanction movement against Israel. Typically, these laws define boycott as a “refusal to deal, terminating business, or other actions” that limit commercial relations with Israel or Israeli entities. It is highly contested in the courts and commentary whether these anti-boycott laws violate the First Amendment. Assuming arguendo that the “refusal to deal” and “terminating business” clauses do not implicate the First Amendment, that leaves the residual clause. At least one court and …

Welfare Litigation, State Courts, And Social Citizenship, Andrew Hammond

Articles by Maurer Faculty

For half a century, federal courts have stood at the center of welfare rights enforcement. That era is ending. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act’s historic cuts to Medicaid and SNAP will generate an avalanche of benefit terminations, work requirement sanctions, and overpayment actions from state agencies. And with a federal judiciary increasingly hostile to the private enforcement of public law, state courts will become not just a concurrent forum for welfare litigation, but an increasingly important one. Understanding how state courts have handled welfare litigation over the past three decades, then, is essential to anticipating what comes next. This …

Lunch Shaming And The Right To Privacy, Ira P. Robbins

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

Lunch shaming is the practice of penalizing students who cannot afford to pay for their meals, resulting in them being denied food, served alternative meals, or publicly identified. The origins of lunch shaming can be traced to the financial pressures faced by school districts that struggle to balance tight budgets with the mandate to provide free or reduced-price meals to eligible students. Despite legislative efforts and advocacy campaigns aimed at mitigating the problems associated with lunch shaming, the practice persists, exacerbated by rising food costs and the expiration of pandemic-era food programs.

Many law journal and other articles have correctly …

Originalism As Disruption, Susan D. Carle

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

This Article challenges the conventional understanding of originalism as a method that promotes unchanging constitutional meanings. Drawing on four and a half decades of experience since Attorney General Edwin Meese first championed originalism as a conservative project, this Article demonstrates that originalism has generally proven destabilizing rather than stabilizing to constitutional law. Landmark cases such as New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President & Fellows of Harvard College, and Shelby County v. Holder show that the Supreme Court frequently deploys originalism when it seeks to upend settled constitutional doctrine, contradicting claims …

Law’S Limits: Abortion And The Social Determinants Of Health, Maya Manian

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

After Dobbs: How the Supreme Court Ended Roe but Not Abortion (“After Dobbs”) is a prescient and timely response to the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which overturned Roe v. Wade and upended nearly five decades of constitutional protection for abortion. In this meticulously structured oral history, law professor David S. Cohen and sociologist Carole Joffe center the voices of abortion providers, clinic administrators, funders, and advocates from across the country. After Dobbs, not only documents the extraordinary persistence of abortion supporters in the face of legal devastation but also bears witness to …

Upr Report Submissions, Sarah Dávila A., Lauren E. Bartlett

Faculty White Papers

No abstract provided.

Read But Not Understood? An Empirical Analysis Of Consumer Comprehension In Homeowners Insurance, Daniel Benjamin Schwarcz, Brenda Cude, Kyle D. Logue, German Marquez Alcala

Articles

Modern contract law assumes that consumers meaningfully assent to the standard forms that govern their daily lives. However, this assumption is widely regarded as a legal fiction for two key reasons: first, most consumers do not read standard forms, and second, even those who do often struggle to fully comprehend their terms and implications. Although the lack of consumer reading has been well documented through empirical research, consumers’ ability to comprehend standard-form contracts has received surprisingly little attention.

This Article addresses the latter issue by empirically examining whether providing excerpts from the dominant standard-form homeowners insurance policy improves consumer understanding …

Law Firms As Trust Directors, Raymond C. O'Brien

Scholarly Articles

The practice of permitting a third party, other than a settlor or a trustee, to give guidance to the trustee over some aspect of trust management reflects the trend of granting settlors increasing control over their transfers of wealth. In decades past, a few states enacted legislation permitting what is known as directed trusts, but in 2017, the Uniform Directed Trust Act was promulgated, seeking to provide a modicum of uniformity among the states, as wealth is now increasingly both interstate and international. Using the Uniform Directed Trust Act as a template, this Article discusses issues pertinent to directed trusts, …

Scaffolding Minimum Age Thresholds, Eve Rips

UIC Law Open Access Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Clinic Highlights 2025, University Of The District Of Columbia David A. Clarke School Of Law

Clinics

No abstract provided.

Fisc Opinion Digest 2022 - 2025, Alejandra Gutierrez

Joint PIJIP/TLS Research Paper Series

This digest summarizes selected opinions of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review (FISC-R) regarding Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). It covers the FISC’s annual review of intelligence agencies’ Section 702 certifications and the FISC and FISC-R’s opinions related to the statutory definition of Electronic Communications Service Providers (ECSPs). Publicly available opinions are posted on the FISC website, and further resources are available through the Intel.gov IC on the Record Database, a website of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI).

Originalism, Methodolatry, And The Only Guarantee Of Wisconsin, Chad M. Oldfather

Faculty Publications

Originalism, loosely defined, commands a majority on the Supreme Court and dominates legal discourse in a way that would have been unrecognizable a generation ago. Yet its actual constraining effect on judicial behavior remains doubtful. This Article offers two contributions to the long-running debate. First, it identifies a pathology in both originalist scholarship and practice that it terms "methodolatry"—a preoccupation with methodological refinement that threatens to elevate method over the purposes interpretation is meant to serve. Second, and more importantly, it argues that debates over interpretive method, however vigorous, fail to address the core problem. Text and history offer relatively …

Toddlers, Investors, And Tax Policy, Lauren Shores Pelikan

Faculty Publications

There is a continuing childcare crisis that worsens every year. Congress has historically used tax incentives aimed at parents and employers to try to alleviate the lack of affordable childcare. However, with private equity's increasing investment in the childcare sector, this Article advocates for an entirely new approach: Congress should encourage more people to work in the childcare sector by enacting a tax benefit for the individual childcare service provider.

Childcare is a broken market. The labor-intensive nature of the industry results in razor thin profit margins, and wages remain low due to entrenched racial and gender norms. There is …

Turning Risks Of Cheating With Ai Into Opportunities For Better Teaching, John M. Lande

Faculty Publications

Many law school faculty are concerned that students may misuse artificial intelligence (AI) tools to undermine their learning and violate academic integrity policies.  Although some students will inevitably cheat, faculty can reduce the risk – and improve student learning – by rethinking assignment design and classroom communication.

This article frames the risk of AI-related cheating as an opportunity for pedagogical improvement.  It offers practical strategies to help faculty design assignments that enhance student learning, promote good decision-making, discourage inappropriate AI use, and foster responsible AI literacy.  It outlines approaches consistent with the ABA’s new requirement for formative assessment throughout the …