Law Commons^™

The Empirical Double Standard: Opinion Surveys Across The Civil–Criminal Divide, Kay L. Levine, Bernard Chao

Faculty Articles

Across different legal domains, liability doctrines recognize the value of community input. But do courts truly listen to the community’s voice when deciding these sorts of cases? This study is the first to explore how courts treat community opinion survey evidence within both civil and criminal law. To that end, we comprehensively examine trademark, false advertising, patent, antitrust, obscenity, death penalty, and search cases.

Our research uncovers a significant asymmetry: Courts readily admit survey evidence in civil proceedings but systematically exclude it in criminal cases. This asymmetry does not appear to stem from structural differences between civil and criminal litigation …

It's In The Name—Examining The Obligations Sureties Should Possess Under Performance Bonds In The Construction Industry, Dylan C. Shaffer Esq.

Nova Law Review

No abstract provided.

Mandating Professionalism In Florida: Continued Attempts To Sanction Lawyers Into Being Nice, Debra Moss Vollweiler

Nova Law Review

No abstract provided.

Nova Law Review Full Issue Volume 50, Issue 2

Nova Law Review

No abstract provided.

Where Does The Border Begin And The Fourth Amendment End? Warrantless Forensic Searches Of Outbound Travelers' Electronic Devices, Robert C. Buschel Esq., Bradford M. Cohen Esq.

Nova Law Review

No abstract provided.

Access Denied: Closing The Construction And Renovation Loopholes In Disability Design, Lidia Menbaeva

Nova Law Review

No abstract provided.

Human Or Machine? Evaluating Authorship In The Age Of Generative Ai, Risauris Sanz-Garcia

Nova Law Review

No abstract provided.

Built To Collide? Antitrust Risks And Gender Equity Tensions In The House V. Ncaa Settlement, Alex Strickland

Nova Law Review

No abstract provided.

Procedimientos De Selección De Fuentes En Las Adquisiciones Federales De Estados Unidos: Una Introducción A Las Compensaciones De Mejor Valor En El Procedimiento De Negociación Competitiva, Daniel E. Schoeni

Books and Book Chapters by University of Dayton Faculty

Este libro es producto del III Congreso Internacional de Contratación Estatal, celebrado en Barranquilla en marzo de 2025, y tiene como propósito analizar uno de los aspectos centrales -y a la vez menos sistematizados e integrados- del derecho de la contratación estatal: las actuaciones y los procedimientos que estructuran el ciclo completo del contrato estatal. El texto tiene una premisa clara: la contratación estatal es una institución compleja, dinámica y funcional, cuya comprensión exige atender y entender una multiplicidad de actuaciones y procedimientos que la atraviesan, desde la celebración y el perfeccionamiento del contrato, la ejecución de obras en ausencia …

International Law Duties Not To Recognize, Not To Assist, And To Cooperate Against Peremptory Norms (Jus Cogens) Violations,, Diane A. Desierto

Journal Articles

Peremptory norms (jus cogens) are the highest norms of international law. When these norms are violated, all States and international organizations have, at a minimum, three international legal duties to discharge while the violation is occurring: (1) the duty of non-recognition, where no State or international organization should recognize the situation caused by the violation; (2) the duty of non-assistance, where no State or international organization should render any aid or assistance to maintain this situation caused by the violation; and (3) the duty of cooperation, where all States and international organizations should cooperate to bring the violation to an …

Women Speaking Law, Christine Venter

Journal Articles

From the Article

This Article will proceed in five parts.

Part I will briefly detail women's struggles to gain full access to legal positions generally throughout history.

Part II will emphasize women's lack of representation as oral advocates before the Supreme Court, while suggesting that the disproportionate selection of men as apex court clerks may be in part responsible.

Part III will cover the importance of oral argument and illustrate how women are effectively impeded from participating in a forum where decisions are being made.

Part IV will detail how both women advocates and women Justices are continually interrupted by …

Broken Lands And Trusts: The Omnipresence Of The Natives’ Land Act Of 1913 And The Persistence Of Its Inequity, Emily Venkatesan

Emory International Law Review

The hallmark of all colonial and ex-colonial states is the preservation of racial hierarchy where a minority of white colonizers reserve complete control over the political, social, and economic landscape of a colonized nation. One of the most powerful exercises of this colonial oversight is the use of western property law to strip native landowners of their property interests and redistribute that land to white colonizer for economic and social power. Access and ownership of land is crucial for maintaining the colonial state. Land provides social and economic leverage in the hands of the indigenous nation, but strengthens the colonial …

Gamification: The Viability Of Using Genai To Create Games To Teach Legal Concepts, Nicole Belbin

Faculty Scholarship

This Essay examines whether generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) can lower the technical, time, and cost barriers that have limited the use of game-based learning (GBL) in legal education. It first considers the science of learning, focusing on spaced practice, retrieval practice, and concrete examples, and explains how GBL can incorporate these strategies. It then evaluates four general-purpose GenAI tools—Perplexity, Gemini, ChatGPT, and Claude—by testing their ability to state legal rules accurately and create games that teach personal jurisdiction.

The results demonstrate both GenAI’s promise and its limitations. Although all four tools incorporated core concepts of general jurisdiction, each omitted at …

Cold Comfort: Japan’S “Comfort Women” Litigation Under Transnational Law, Timothy Webster

Faculty Scholarship

Transnational human rights litigation has emerged as a powerful tool to remediate state and corporate abuses. Courts, however, rarely evince the same enthusiasm for these lawsuits as practitioners, scholars, and activists. For the past thirty-five years, “comfort women,” or survivors of wartime sexual exploitation, have used transnational litigation to seek redress from the Japanese government. Yet they have lost nearly all their cases. This Article uses ten “comfort women” lawsuits from Japan to test the limits of transnational human rights litigation. While judges rarely found for the comfort women, their verdicts nonetheless advanced the redress issue by showing the illegality …

Peeking Inside The Black Box: Discovery In Fair Housing Act Cases Arising From Ai Decision Making, Jessica Mahon Scoles

Faculty Scholarship

In today’s real estate market, more housing decisions are being automated. If artificial intelligence renders a biased decision, will the person impacted have any legal recourse? Commentators have expressed concern that the proprietary nature of AI will allow defendants in discrimination lawsuits to avoid discovery, effectively shielding their decision making from judicial scrutiny. This article examines whether AI and algorithm-related information is the discovery black box that some fear it to be.

Addressing the issue in the context of Fair Housing Act (FHA) litigation, the article argues that concerns about access to AI and algorithm-related discovery are overstated. In real …

Front Matter, Vol. 58 (2026)

Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law

No abstract provided.

Masthead, Vol. 58 (2026)

Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law

No abstract provided.

Foreword: Turning Points And Paradigm Shifts In International Law, Michael P. Scharf, Lucas R. Van Dyke

Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law

No abstract provided.

The Role Of International, Regional, And Domestic Courts In Transitions Toward Peace And Security, Milena Sterio

Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law

Over the past several years, we have witnessed tremendous violations of international law in situations of conflict and mass violence by both state and non-state actors. In Myanmar, hundreds of thousands of Rohingya have experienced severe persecution and have been forced to flee to the neighboring state of Bangladesh. In Sudan, military groups such as the Rapid Support Forces have been committing serious international crimes in the Darfur region and elsewhere. In Ukraine, Russian forces have targeted civilian objectives and have forcibly abducted children. And in Gaza, Israeli forces have been engaged in various violations of international law over the …

Sharenting And Child Rights In The Age Of Platform Capitalism, Christiana Essie Sagay, Unyime Abasi Odong

Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law

The boundaries between private life, work, and visibility have become increasingly blurred in the digital age. Nowhere is this more evident than in the phenomenon of sharenting, a portmanteau of “sharing” and “parenting,” where parents routinely post images, videos, and personal narratives of their children on social media platforms. While often framed as acts of familial affection or digital memory-keeping, sharenting implicates commercial content creation and positions children as de facto participants in global digital labor markets. In this context, childhood increasingly unfolds within algorithmic and economic contexts that transcend domestic boundaries and challenge conventional legal norms, protections, and understandings …

Seizing Responsibility: International Investment Law's Shifting Understanding Of Jurisdiction In Occupied And Annexed Territory, Lena Raxter

Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law

Following Russia’s 2014 occupation and annexation of Crimea, Ukraine pursued the unusual strategy of encouraging its nationals to file investment claims against Russia under the 1998 bilateral investment treaty between Russia and Ukraine. The resulting “Crimea arbitrations” consistently upheld jurisdiction, reasoning that Russia’s effective control over Crimea resulted in the assumption of legal obligations in the region. Many scholars, however, contend that this conclusion was incorrect because the disputes were outside the respective tribunals’ jurisdiction. The resulting fragmentation begs the question: how can international investment law reconcile these competing positions?

In the interest of promoting stability and consistency in international …

Bridging Divides, Building Futures: Affirmative Action From A Global Perspective, Irene Rhodes

Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law

Affirmative action in higher education has long been central to U.S. constitutional debate, but the Supreme Court’s decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard (SFFA) ended race-conscious admissions. This Article uses a comparative framework to examine how Canada, the United Kingdom, Brazil, and India reconcile equality, diversity, and meritocracy. Common law systems emphasize incremental positive action, while Brazil and India employ quota-based statutory models. These contrasts reveal that effective diversity policies must align with constitutional traditions. For the United States, durable reforms should include race-neutral socioeconomic indices, statutory authorizations, and programmatic supports with built-in review mechanisms. By drawing on …

The Rise Of Accountability Mechanisms: The Next Wave Of International Law Justice?, Jacqueline R. Mcallister

Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law

Since 2011, the United Nations (UN) has increasingly deployed investigative mechanisms—or commissions of inquiry, fact-finding missions, and other ad hoc investigations—to not just monitor and document egregious human rights abuses, but also to collect, preserve, and analyze evidence in order to lay the groundwork for future accountability. Importantly, these “accountability mechanisms” tend to deploy in places where the International Criminal Court (ICC) lacks jurisdiction or national courts are unwilling or unable to conduct prosecutions. They thus work to counter impunity gaps. However, since their debut, accountability mechanisms have faced immense political, financial, administrative, and institutional challenges, which have hindered their …

Mapping The Invisible: A Topology Of De Facto Amnesties And The Shifting Landscape Of Accountability, Francois Naaman

Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law

This article introduces the concept of de facto amnesty as a distinct category within transitional justice. While international law has increasingly restricted de jure amnesties, it has paid less attention to informal or structural practices that foreclose accountability in fact. Such practices, whether extensions of statutory amnesties, tacit political bargains, or systemic enforcement failures, have often been tolerated, and at times legitimized, by international actors. Without a clear framework, they risk being conflated either with impunity or with legitimate reconciliatory measures. The paper proposes a working definition of de facto amnesty and a five-step diagnostic method for its identification. It …

Creeping Alliances In Foreign Policy Choices: A World Of Clusters And The Outline Of A Fragmented World Order, Kerem Gülay

Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law

International cooperation and conflict has long been studied through formal institutions, namely, membership in international organizations and participation in bilateral or multilateral treaties. This hardly grasps the informal and contingent relationships and the tacit and pragmatic alliances reflected in countries’ joint positions on multilateral issues. While most theories of alliances were preoccupied with why such formal alliances were formed, this article offers a reconceptualization of international cooperation based on empirical data. It proposes “creeping alliances,” tentatively defined as gradual and often informal cooperation that develops over time characterized by increasing mutual foreign policy alignment, to explain an undertheorized domain of …

The Unspeakable Unspoken: Terrorist Imagery, Symbolic Expression And The Shifting Boundaries Of Free Speech, Ayşe Yağmur Tunçak

Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law

A simple fruit like a watermelon can convey many meanings: solidarity for some, terrorism sympathies for others. Among other things, increasing restrictions on speech drive individuals to the use of symbols for political expression, which may lead to legal controversies at the international level due to the untended complexity of symbolic speech in legal discussions. Unlike verbal communication, the meaning and communicative content of symbols are often indirect and open to interpretation. Thus, international human rights standards should rely on context-sensitive evaluations to prevent arbitrary limitations. Although the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), due to its subsidiary role, assumes …

Governing Economic Statecraft: Procedural Guardrails From State Practice, Wto Rules, Multilateral Trade, Dah-Wei Yih

Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law

National security exceptions have long been part of international trade law, but their use has expanded alongside the rise of economic statecraft. States now increasingly rely on geoeconomic tools such as sanctions, subsidies, tariffs, and investment and export controls to pursue geopolitical goals. This phenomenon, described by political scientists as “weaponized interdependence,” has blurred the boundary between economic policy and national security, thereby straining the integrity of WTO rules and the multilateral trading system.

Against this backdrop, how can states promote rule-of-law values such as transparency and predictability on the international plane as they implement geoeconomic policies?

This Article makes …

Ecocide And The International Criminal Court: Reassessing The African Union-Icc Impasse, Ikechukwu Ugwu

Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law

The refusal of the African Union (AU) and its leaders to cooperate with the International Criminal Court (ICC) led to the negotiation of the Protocol on Amendments to the Protocol on the Statute of the African Court of Justice and Human Rights 2014 (the Malabo Protocol). The Protocol incorporates the core crimes of the Rome Statute and, in addition, expands on the meaning of international crime by defining crimes related to the environment, among others. Although the Malabo Protocol is innovative in its provisions, it lacks the potential to prevent ecocide in Africa or to serve as a model for …

Institutional Authority Without Ratification: Rethinking International Organizations’ Governance In The Post-Treaty Era, Izadora Coutinho

Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law

This Article examines the growing normative authority exercised by international organizations through informal governance mechanisms that operate without treaty ratification or formal consent. It argues that international law is undergoing structural transformation: global standards increasingly emerge from flexible, network-based arrangements rather than negotiated treaties. Using the OECD/G20 Global Anti-Base Erosion (GloBE) Rules as a case study, this Article illustrates how nonbinding instruments can generate de facto binding effects. Their adoption by numerous jurisdictions reflects systemic incentives, reputational pressures, and tax base erosion threats. While such mechanisms enhance flexibility and responsiveness, they also raise significant concerns about legitimacy, sovereignty, and accountability. …

State Complicity And The Threshold Of Knowledge: From Fragmentary Evidence To Evidentiary Saturation, Christina Bradic

Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law

The International Court of Justice’s (ICJ) 2007 judgment in Bosnia v. Serbia turned on evidentiary gaps. Although the ICJ recognized that genocide had been committed at Srebrenica, it declined to hold Serbia complicit, reasoning that the record did not prove awareness of genocidal purpose. Intelligence was piecemeal, contemporaneous witnesses were scarce, and the ICJ refused to infer knowledge absent direct proof.

Two decades later, the evidentiary environment looks radically different. In October 2024, ninety-nine American healthcare professionals who had volunteered in Gaza sent an open letter to the White House reporting that children with gunshot wounds to the head or …