Law Commons^™

Foreword, Grace Perez

UC Law Journal of Race and Economic Justice

No abstract provided.

A.A. V. J.M.: The Virginia Court Of Appeals Excludes A Whole Class Of Prospective Adoptive Parents, Paul A. Dryer

Liberty University Law Review

A set of “bad facts” ultimately led to undesirable legal precedent and unintended consequences with respect to the “power to render” adoptions in Virginia. In 2019, Baby Doe was left orphaned in Afghanistan after her parents were killed as a result of military operations in the country. After Baby Doe was taken to the U.S. Bagram Air Force Base for treatment, Joshua Mast (J.M.)—a member of the Marine Corps Judge Advocate—attempted to obtain custody of Baby Doe out of fear for the adequacy of medical care if she were to remain in Afghanistan. J.M. and his wife petitioned the Fluvanna …

And Scene: Cross-Border Torts And The “Last Act” Under Virginia’S Lex Loci Delicti Rule, Wesley A. Vorberger

Liberty University Law Review

How does a court go about determining which jurisdiction’s substantive law applies to the parties in a particular dispute? Usually, the resolution of this question is straightforward: if the parties are from one jurisdiction and the event giving rise to the lawsuit occurred entirely within that jurisdiction, then that jurisdiction’s substantive law applies. However, when the parties are domiciled in one state, but the entirety of the liability-producing event occurred in another state (i.e., a multi-state tort), courts will apply one of several approaches to determine which substantive law applies. Some courts apply a flexible approach that evaluates the factual …

Timing Isn’T Everything: Rethinking The Intersection Of Virginia Standing Doctrine, Bankruptcy Law, And Virginia’S Statute Of Limitations Applicable To Personal Injury Causes Of Action, Joshua B. Davis

Liberty University Law Review

This Article posits that the interaction between Virginia standing doctrine, bankruptcy law, and Virginia’s two-year statute of limitations applicable to personal injury causes of action creates a timing issue that can lead to harsh and unnecessary consequences for certain plaintiffs. Under the Supreme Court of Virginia’s decisions in Kocher v. Campbell and Eye Consultants of Northern Virginia, P.C. v. Shaw-McDonald, the continued viability of a plaintiff’s personal injury cause of action can depend entirely on whether the plaintiff—who mistakenly fails to properly claim the personal injury claim as exempt on the bankruptcy schedules—files for bankruptcy before or after filing …

Perceptions Of Legitimacy In Three Forms Of Probation Supervision For People With Serious Mental Illness, Sophia Sarantakos, Emily Claypool

Qualitative Criminology (QC)

"In the context of criminal-legal community supervision, standard and specialized probation officers are often tasked with coordinating services for adults diagnosed with serious mental illness (SMI) on their caseloads. The coordination of services varies across different programs including traditional probation, specialty probation, and mental health court. Given the proliferation of programs focused on mental health in the criminal-legal system, the perspectives of front-line workers or street-level bureaucrats in criminal-legal agencies are a rich source of information about what is happening on the ground and could provide insights into the potential translational barriers of policy to practice. A deeper examination of …

From Acrimony To Forgiveness: How Adolescents Make Sense Of Childhood Maltreatment, Katherine Irwin

Qualitative Criminology (QC)

"This paper examines 16 adolescents’ narratives about the abuse they experienced during childhood. To date, most research examining child abuse (CA) survivorship and recovery has been conducted with adults who look back on their early experiences. Consequently, this study fills gaps in our knowledge by offering a youth-centered view of survivors’ efforts to cope with CA. The data come from a 12-year qualitative study of a group counseling program for high school students in Hawaiʻi. The findings revealed that a minority (n = 2) of the teens had negative views of their lives and futures, while the majority (n = …

A Content Analysis Of The Sutherland Address, 2001-22: A Qualitative Exploration, Phillip Shon

Qualitative Criminology (QC)

"Previous indicators of scholarly influence have been primarily quantitative, measuring a scholar’s influence through citation counts. This body of literature has overlooked the reflections of distinguished scholars, such as the recipients of the Sutherland Award, in the discipline as a form of scholarly influence. The current paper examines the Sutherland Address from 2001 to 2022. The key findings indicate that the majority of Sutherland Addresses reproduced existing sociological canons, while a minority of Sutherland Award winners explicitly rejected Sutherland’s sociological assumptions and their influence on criminology. Such findings suggest that Sutherland exerts a hidden influence on the recipients of the …

A Qualitative Analysis Of Gender Inequality In Southeast Missouri Law Enforcement Agencies, Madeline Marie Whistler, Christopher Bradley, H. Hamner Hill

Qualitative Criminology (QC)

"Does gender inequality impact the careers of female law enforcement officers in the Southeast Missouri region? Using a qualitative single instrumental case study, seven cis-gendered female law enforcement officers who were employed at local law enforcement agencies within the Southeast Missouri region were interviewed to investigate the central research question. Four themes emerged from the data that illustrated their experiences: sexual exploitation and harassment, a lack of work-life balance, the presence of gender stereotypes, and patriarchal hierarchy and male dominance in the workplace. The findings suggest that the experiences of female law enforcement officers are heavily impacted by the behavior …

A Plea For Open Access To Qualitative Criminology: With A Python Script For Anonymizing Data And Illustrative Analysis Of Error Rates, Scott Jaques, Andrew Wheeler

Qualitative Criminology (QC)

"Qualitative researchers are expected, sometimes required, to publish their data open access (OA). This is for the sake of science, impact, and social justice. Yet, understandably, qualitative criminologists are worried about what this means for their workload and their ability to protect subjects’ confidentiality. To be solutions-oriented, we developed an open-source Python script for anonymizing qualitative data. It uses named-entity recognition and fuzzy-rule based merging to identify and replace personally identifiable information (PII) with unique pseudonyms. This tool doesn’t eliminate the need for manual work, but it reduces the cost and associated risk. In this article, we describe and explain …

International Law Situations: Internment Of Belligerent Forces, Raul (Pete) Pedrozo

International Law Studies

This Situation examines the duty of neutral States to detain belligerent warships, their officers, and crews during an international armed conflict. At the outset of the armed conflict between the United States and Iran, Iranian warships sought refuge in India and Sri Lanka following the sinking of the Iranian frigate IRIS Dena. India and Sri Lanka, as neutrals, have a duty to detain those warships and their officers and crews for the duration of the armed conflict and take appropriate measures to render the ships and their personnel incapable of taking to sea during the conflict.

Ndls Communicator: Week Of 06.15.26, Notre Dame Law School

NDLS Communicator

The Latest News

• Notre Dame Law School Announces Top Academic Awards for the Class of 2026
• Global Visiting Professors Enrich Scholarship and Community at Notre Dame Law School

Student News

• Joseph Reilly receives Lardy Scholarship Award for 2026-27
• Notre Dame J.S.D. Candidates Present at the 2026 J.S.D. Roundtable hosted by the American University Washington College of Law

Faculty Briefs

• Bruce Huber
• Fr. Pat Reidy
• Pattrick Corrigan
• Haley Proctor
• Paul Miller
• Jimmy Gurulé
• Paolo Carozza
• Carter Snead
• Nicole Stelle Garnett
• A.J. Bellia
• Roger Alford
• Derek Muller
• Msgr. John Paul Kimes
• Diane Desierto
• Rick Garnett
• Yan Yu
• Vincent Philip Muñoz

ND Law …

Humanitarianism Through Alan Kurdi Photograph: A Discourse Of Governing Suffering, Nada Mahmoud

Theses and Dissertations

Humanitarianism has become one of the powerful languages of modern times, in which compassion, ethics, and moral obligations are mediated to alleviate suffering. This thesis investigates humanitarianism not exclusively on the basis of its moral sentiments but on its functioning as a system of power that governs people’s conduct. It examines how different technologies of power feed into the operationalization of humanitarianism to transform it into a system for governing suffering. By decoding the elements of its power, the thesis aims to understand humanitarian reason through the humanitarian loop, from generating knowledge, categorization and representation, to the legal and normative …

How Disability Inclusion Shapes Student Experiences In Egyptian Public Universities, Ramez Maher

Theses and Dissertations

The inclusion of students with disabilities in higher education is a critical aspect of equity, social justice, and human rights, particularly in Egypt, where systemic barriers continue to hinder access to education for this demographic. Despite the enrollment of approximately 19.4 million students in 2018, only 38,135 students with disabilities were admitted, highlighting the significant challenges they face in accessing higher education.   Through a qualitative approach employing reflexive thematic analysis, this study explores the interplay of institutional policies, cultural attitudes, and accessibility challenges that affect the educational experiences of students with disabilities in Egyptian public universities. The analysis of 21 …

Felony Murder: What Courts Ignore In Ohio Rev. Code § 2903.02(B), Richard S. Walinski

Et Cetera

Ohio has two levels of felony murder. One is aggravated felony murder, 2903.01(b). It is an approximate equivalent of the common-law felony-murder rule. The other is a felony-murder rule for the lesser offence of simple murder, 2903.02(B). In felony-murder cases prosecuted under Ohio Revised Code § 2903.02(B), the nearly universal practice among the lower courts in Ohio is to ignore certain explicit text in the statute.

To warrant a conviction, 2903.02(B) requires that death have occurred as a proximate result of the defendant’s having committed or having attempted to commit one of many predicate offenses that the General Assembly labeled …

Correcting A Carry-On Conundrum: A Proposal To Expand The Dot’S Ability To Regulate Unfair And Deceptive Practices In The Airline Industry, Antonio Linek

Et Cetera

This Note examines the Department of Transportation’s attempt to regulate airline ancillary fees through 89 F.R. 34620. The Rule required airlines to disclose certain ancillary fees in an obvious manner, early on in the booking process. Airlines for America challenged the Rule in the Fifth Circuit in Airlines for Am. v. Dep’t of Transp. The court held that 49 U.S.C. § 41712 allows the DOT to prohibit unfair and deceptive practices, but not to impose prescriptive rules. This holding conflicts with older Seventh Circuit authority approving similar agency action, creating a circuit split. This Note argues that the Fifth …

A Lawyer’S Responsibility To The Rule Of Law, Joseph Mead

Et Cetera

The American legal system faces a growing crisis as the gap between vested rights and judicial remedies expands. Attacks on the legal profession deter lawyers from taking on lawsuits challenging the federal government, potentially expanding the gap between right and remedy. This essay describes how the legal profession has responded to this moment and urges attorneys to renew their commitment to the rule of law.

The Unspoken And The Unseen: An Analysis Of Victim Gender And Linguistic Framing Of Sexual Assault In Judicial Discourse, Sarnika Ali

Quantitative Social Science Undergraduate Senior Theses

Sexual assault is a profound legal and social crisis. However, it is also fundamentally a linguistic one. The words used, or conspicuously not used, to describe victims, perpetrators, and their actions are not neutral arbiters of fact. They are powerful mechanisms that shape perceptions of harm, attributions of blame, and assignments of credibility. The central battleground for survivors is credibility, and while a “credibility discount” is often applied to female victims, the male victim is rendered nearly invisible. This research is therefore guided by one central, overarching question: how does a sexual assault victim’s gender influence the judicial language used, …

The Difficulties Of Property Development, A. Amrani

Revue Marocaine de Droit, d'Economie et de Gestion (Moroccan Journal of Law, Economics and Management)

This paper presents the difficulties encountered by the Compagnie Générale Immobilière (CGI) in the real estate sector. These challenges risk seriously compromising its mission to facilitate home ownership for low and middle-income groups. The nature and complexity of factors involved in property development are diverse: technical, land-related, financial, legislative, regulatory, and socio-economic. Housing prices are rising sharply and continuously while purchasing power evolves very slowly or stagnates. Housing affordability is increasingly out of reach for low and middle-income categories. This price increase is explained partly by the evolution of housing price components and partly by the requirements of local authorities …

Synthesis Report, Mohamed Naciri

Revue Marocaine de Droit, d'Economie et de Gestion (Moroccan Journal of Law, Economics and Management)

The author, a geographer, reflects on the dense two-day debate on the land system and its implications for planning and urbanism. Despite fearing he may not fully capture the richness of contributions—particularly from a legal perspective requiring precision—he notes a striking unanimity among all twenty-six speakers: the land system is fundamentally unsuited to Morocco's accelerating urbanization. This consensus reveals an inadequacy that has all the characteristics of a crisis—not merely of the legal system, but of the entire land system. While disagreement among scholars is traditionally seen as a blessing, this unanimity provokes less gratifying feelings. The finding is deeply …

The Effects Of Residential Lease Legislation And Its Judicial Practice On Investments In Rental Housing, O. Mounir

Revue Marocaine de Droit, d'Economie et de Gestion (Moroccan Journal of Law, Economics and Management)

The investor in rental housing seeks to generate returns on invested capital through rent while safeguarding the building as property. This investor fears for capital transformed into real estate assets placed in a tenant's hands, placing hopes in lease legislation to guarantee these assets and in courts to protect them whenever threatened. Thus emerges a purely economic relationship between lease legislation and its jurisprudence on one hand, and investment in rental housing on the other. This relationship can be either favorable or unfavorable to investment depending on legal guarantees and judicial practice. Good lease legislation combined with effective judicial practice …

The Role Of The Cdg Group In Property Development, Moha Ben Satti

Revue Marocaine de Droit, d'Economie et de Gestion (Moroccan Journal of Law, Economics and Management)

Since its creation in 1959, the CDG (Caisse de Dépôt et de Gestion) has continuously strengthened its intervention in the highly social real estate sector to contribute toward placing a significant number of decent housing units at reasonable prices on the market. This choice is justified by the nature of the Caisse's resources, primarily constituted from CNSS affiliate contributions and popular savings collected by CEN. After focusing its first fifteen years on establishing appropriate intervention instruments through generalized housing promotion, the CDG adopted a new orientation from 1975 onward, particularly from the 1980s, marked by massive housing programs for low-income …

Note On The Financing Of Housing Credit, M.L. Ben Otmane

Revue Marocaine de Droit, d'Economie et de Gestion (Moroccan Journal of Law, Economics and Management)

The causes of the housing crisis are numerous and interconnected: inadequate supply relative to demand, production system imbalances, growing urban populations, structural economic organization factors, and the shift from housing as use-value to housing as exhaustive commodity. Urban centers already concentrate nearly 45% of the population with a growth rate of 4.4%, while rural areas register only 0.1% (corrected from text: 4.1% likely a typo; logic suggests lower). Housing in Morocco is extremely expensive. Vertiginous increases in land costs for both individual and collective housing combine with unjustified rises in construction material prices. These increases are automatically passed on to …

Taxation And Property Development In Morocco, R. Lazrak

Revue Marocaine de Droit, d'Economie et de Gestion (Moroccan Journal of Law, Economics and Management)

Taxation reflects a country's socio-economic and political realities, but appropriately designed tax laws can also act upon these realities. Depending on its assigned qualitative and quantitative role, taxation can contribute to growth or recession in a sector of the national economy. Until the 1978 Finance Law, the real estate sector was primarily subject to a static tax—the urban tax—with mainly financial objectives. The 1978 Finance Law established a genuine real estate tax system through profound reform of the urban tax and creation of two new taxes: a tax on real estate capital gains and a tax on urban land (including …

Land Ownership And Land Market In Cities With Low Demographic Growth: The Example Of Asilah, A. Lehzam

Revue Marocaine de Droit, d'Economie et de Gestion (Moroccan Journal of Law, Economics and Management)

When discussing land speculation, rising land values, and their effect on housing costs and urban space organization, reference is typically made to large cities. The question arises whether existing discourse on large cities is reproducible in the analysis of land in small urban centers, or whether these small centers present particularities based on their regional location, history, and present or future economic potential. Theoretically, rising land values and the extent of real estate speculation depend on city size and population growth rate. Reliance on population parameters has become so evident that it obscures other equally important factors in shaping urban …

Land System And Clandestine Housing: The Case Of Tabriquet Nord In Salé, A Abouhani

Revue Marocaine de Droit, d'Economie et de Gestion (Moroccan Journal of Law, Economics and Management)

This article examines the legal ambiguity in Article 10 of the 1946 Dahir on apartment ownership. It questions whether the union manager's duty to preserve, maintain, clean, and repair common areas creates an overlap between the general assembly's decision-making authority and the manager's executive functions. While the assembly typically manages both routine and non-routine matters, the author argues that in exceptional cases, the manager may exercise both decision-making and executive powers under the initiative authority granted by the third paragraph of Article 10. This dual role raises two specific legal problems regarding the proper allocation of responsibilities.

Land System And Coastal Ecosystems: Between Land And Sea, The Tossed Littoral, Mohamed Ali Mekouar

Revue Marocaine de Droit, d'Economie et de Gestion (Moroccan Journal of Law, Economics and Management)

The concern for preserving environmental quality, a growing preoccupation worldwide, includes a distinctly spatial dimension among its multiple facets. Maintaining ecological balances depends largely on various modes of space occupation and their adequacy to specific environmental conditions. Neither the legal regime of land control, nor urban policy or property development, nor housing design or architectural style, are indifferent to the harmonious or chaotic shaping of the urban and rural environment where populations establish their living framework. The question of space management from an environmental protection perspective is therefore of considerable importance. The relationship between land status and environmental protection has …

Urban Planning And Land Development, Mouloud Belayachi

Revue Marocaine de Droit, d'Economie et de Gestion (Moroccan Journal of Law, Economics and Management)

Morocco, like other developing countries, continues to experience significant demographic growth with an average annual increase of 2.6% between 1971 and 1982. Urban growth is even stronger at 4.4% annually due to continuous migration. The urbanization rate rose from 29% in 1960 to 43% in 1982, representing 8.7 million urban inhabitants compared to 11.7 million rural inhabitants. The high growth rate of urban population between 1971 and 1982 will lead to a population volume two to three times current levels by the year 2000, despite accounting for progressive decreases in migration and natural growth rates. To satisfy the needs of …

Urban Evolution And Legal Stability: Immovable Property Law Put To The Test By Urbanization, Hervé Parcheminal

Revue Marocaine de Droit, d'Economie et de Gestion (Moroccan Journal of Law, Economics and Management)

The Moroccan landscape is rapidly transforming under the repeated assaults of galloping urbanization. This phenomenon, accelerated by socio-economic changes, has reached spectacular proportions as illustrated by the new faces of the Kingdom's major cities. Urban planners and architects are renewing and often disrupting the configuration of urban sites. Cities now extend both in surface area, gradually absorbing agricultural land, and in height, raising buildings ever higher. Faced with these transformations, the legal landscape is also evolving. Immovable property rights are shaken by an Administration that finds in urban planning and construction regulations indispensable instruments for a coherent urban policy. Territorial …

The Urban Planner And Legal Constraints Arising From The Land System, M'Hamed Motik

Revue Marocaine de Droit, d'Economie et de Gestion (Moroccan Journal of Law, Economics and Management)

Industrialization, demographic explosion, rural exodus, and changing lifestyles have resulted in intense urbanization of Moroccan cities and centers. This phenomenon has produced a housing crisis fueling rampant land speculation, driving up property prices for sale and rental, while also generating insalubrious neighborhoods surrounding major agglomerations. The urban planner faces inextricable problems, forced to fight on multiple fronts to provide humans with a living environment adapted to their nature. Urban planning aims to understand the urban phenomenon as a whole, remedy its ills, and rationally activate its future. The fundamental question is whether Morocco's land system allows the urban planner to …

Powers Of The National Land Agency In Land, Urban Planning, And Development Matters, Mohamed Adnane

Revue Marocaine de Droit, d'Economie et de Gestion (Moroccan Journal of Law, Economics and Management)

The National Land Agency's powers are defined by Prime Ministerial Circular No. 338/C of August 26, 1982. Its responsibilities include collecting, preserving, and disseminating information on unbuilt land belonging to the State (public and private domains), public habous, Guich lands, and local and ethnic communities located within urban perimeters and peripheral zones. The Agency also establishes orientation plans for municipalities, autonomous centers, delimited centers, and their peripheral zones in collaboration with the Ministry of the Interior through a preparatory commission chaired by the Agency. Additionally, it participates in various interministerial commissions on urban, industrial, tourism, and land development, and collaborates …