Law Commons^™

Application Paths Of Semantic Modeling In Financial Fraud Detection And Risk Identification, Victor P. Gauthier, Daniel S. Wu

Computer Science Faculty Publications

Financial fraud and risk pose significant threats to economic stability and individual well-being. Traditional detection methods often struggle to keep pace with increasingly sophisticated fraudulent schemes. Semantic modeling, which focuses on understanding the meaning and relationships within data, offers a promising avenue for enhancing fraud detection and risk identification. This review paper explores the application paths of semantic modeling in this domain. We begin with a historical overview of fraud detection techniques, highlighting the limitations of traditional approaches. Subsequently, we delve into core themes, including knowledge graph-based fraud detection and semantic rule-based inference for risk assessment. We then compare and …

The Deregulation Of Cancer, Daniel G. Aaron

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

Fifty years ago, the U.S. embarked on a radical new path. Under pressure from the environmental movement, Congress passed an array of statutes aimed at regulating carcinogens out of our world. This regulatory experiment sprawled from air and water to food and consumer products.

Legal scholars have paid scant attention to this wave of cancer regulation despite its size and importance and the public’s apparent interest in avoiding carcinogens. But there is a growing literature finding flaws with individual regimes within the framework, such as the Clean Air Act, the Toxic Substances Control Act, and the Tobacco Control Act. In …

The Crisis In U.S. Cancer Care: Law, Markets, And Privatization, Daniel G. Aaron

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

Cancer is surging among youth and young adults in the U.S., yet instead of public regulation addressing its root causes, we have outsourced the management of cancer to the private sector.  A suite of laws, embodying faith that corporations will cure cancer, has subsidized the cancer biomedical enterprise and transformed quasi-public institutions into marketized, profit-seeking entities.  These changes, across patent law, healthcare law, innovation law, and Food and Drug Administration (FDA) law, have privatized cancer. 

The market failures I describe in U.S. cancer care raise larger questions about who we entrust with managing critical social problems.  This Article provides theoretical …

Negligent Hiring: Recidivism And Employment With A Criminal Record, Benjamin David Pyle

Faculty Scholarship

This Article tackles a difficult legal and policy challenge— reducing the impact of criminal records on job applicants’ chances in a manner that does not spur more discrimination—by looking at how another area of law, tort liability, impacts employers’ decision-making. It uses theoretical and empirical methods to study the most common reason employers report being reluctant to hire workers with a criminal record: legal liability generated by the tort of negligent hiring. While the purpose of the tort is ostensibly to protect and make whole those harmed when an employee misbehaves in a foreseeable manner, I show that, in practice, …

Measuring Lawyer Mental Illness: Evidence From Two National Surveys, Benjamin David Pyle, Clifford Rosky

Faculty Scholarship

The American Bar Association declared a “well-being crisis” among lawyers, but the empirical basis for this claim has been contested in recent years. This study systematically compares two high-quality, nationally representative surveys —the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) and the National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH)—to measure the prevalence of mental illness and alcohol misuse among lawyers. In both surveys, lawyers report elevated rates of alcohol misuse compared to the general public and similarly educated peers. The NHIS finds that lawyers experience psychological distress at rates lower than the general public and similar to, or moderately higher than, …

Beyond Digital Pessimism: How A Focus On Trust Can Enhance Eu Digital Law, Neil Richards, Woodrow Hartzog, Claire Boine, Lea Despotis

Faculty Scholarship

Lawmakers looking to foster technological innovation on the European market are adopting laws they hope will promote consumer trust in digital products. Their strategy can be broken down into three components. First, they aim to empower consumers to choose how much data they want to share with companies through an express consent framework. Second, they seek to avoid harms from digital products through product safety law such as adapting the Product Safety Regulation to digital products or adopting the AI Act. Third, they endeavor to prevent manipulation of consumers through digital means.

In this essay, we argue that while laudable, …

Informed Applicants: Anti-Discrimination Enforcement Based On The Use Of Criminal Records, Benjamin David Pyle

Faculty Scholarship

Navigating the labor market with a criminal record is treacherous. Countless job applicants will be turned down immediately after a potential employer learns they have had contact with the criminal legal system. Criminal records reflect and exacerbate long-standing racial and economic inequalities in the United States. Thus, the use of records in employment decisions will often implicate anti-discrimination laws. However, successfully enforcing these protections requires job applicants to, at minimum, understand why they were not hired. Many applicants never learn why they were not hired and thus will never be able to protect their rights. This Article argues that understanding …

Against Ai Half Measures, Woodrow Hartzog, Neil Richards, Ryan Durrie, Jordan Francis

Faculty Scholarship

So far, U.S. consumer protection policy for artificial intelligence (AI) accountability has largely consisted of industry-led approaches such as encouraging transparency, mitigating bias, promoting principles of ethics, and empowering people. These approaches are vital, but they are only half measures. To bring AI within the rule of law, lawmakers must start drawing substantive lines.

In this Article, we identify four AI regulatory approaches to consumer, data, and democratic harms as half measures. First, transparency does not produce accountability on its own. Second, while mitigating bias in AI systems is critical, even unbiased systems are a threat to the vulnerable. Third, …

Uncorrected, Janet Freilich, W. Nicholson Price Ii

Faculty Scholarship

In addition to making rules and deciding outcomes, the legal system generates, curates and shares information. When the system gets rules and outcomes wrong, it is obviously a problem, and much effort (and scholarly attention) goes into identifying those mistakes and fixing them. But the system also gets information wrong; a problem mostly overlooked by policymakers and scholars. Those information mistakes matter too: they are prevalent and harmful. We show here that even when the mistakes are widely known and the errors broadly acknowledged, the information very often goes uncorrected. As a result, people make decisions based on bad information …

The Unitary Theorists' Appointments Clause Problems, Jed Handelsman Shugerman

Faculty Scholarship

The unitary executive theorists’ recent retreat to the Appointments Clause as a basis for unconditional presidential removal power is contradicted by the text and by overwhelming originalist evidence.

It is a surprising argument for a power of presidential removal, because the text of the Appointments Clause plainly requires both the President and Senate to appoint. The noncommon sense reading, that the president alone appoints, and thus the president can remove, was not in any of the Trump Administration’s briefs, but it was in a single amicus brief, and it was picked up in oral argument and the mainstream media.

This …

The Power And Peril Of The Aca's Universality At Fifteen, Nicole Huberfeld

Faculty Scholarship

As part of the symposium "15th Anniversary of the ACA: A Health Equity Review," this essay explores the ACA's mix of private law and public law provisions that rendered measurable improvements in health equity and health outcomes, especially for populations that experienced longstanding health disparities before its enactment.  Congress’s central objective was near-universal health insurance coverage, and the ACA employed a variety of mechanisms to reach that goal. The law’s health equity successes grew from establishing a principle of inclusion across federal statutes. This principle, which I have called “universality,” centered a human right to health approach: No longer would …

Corporate Childrearing, Katharine B. Silbaugh

Faculty Scholarship

With children influencing a trillion dollars in spending annually, corporations actively seek to shape children's identities in support of consumer culture and profit. Yet there are no scholarly treatments or theories of the legal relationship between children and corporations. Instead, scholars address individual industries such as food, social media, cosmetics, tobacco, or fashion, missing the structural role corporations play in children's identity formation. Family law evaluates child wellbeing interventions using a triangle to map the legal dynamics among child, parent, and state. This article adds corporations as fourth actors, reconceptualizing that triangle as a square. This square provides the first …

Obscurity And The Fallacy Of No Privacy In Public Information, Woodrow Hartzog

Faculty Scholarship

The main thesis of this chapter is that because there are so many different possible interpretations of ‘public information’, the concept cannot be used to justify data practices and surveillance without first articulating a more precise meaning that recognises what is at stake. By disposing of the myth that there is an objective and dispassionate concept of public information, judges and lawmakers can clear the way for information rules based on overt value choices. In short, if the concept of ‘public’ is going to shape people’s social and legal obligations, its meaning and neutrality should not be assumed.

My argument …

Third-Party Funding: Balancing Transparency, National Security, And Access To Justice, Victoria Sahani

Faculty Scholarship

Many lawmakers who have recently become aware of the multi-billion-dollar global third-party funding industry are raising new national security concerns that further complicate preexisting, longstanding debates about transparency, disclosure, access to justice, and the best way to regulate third-party funding. In response, this Article briefly asserts three main points relating to the question of how best to regulate third-party funding. First, this Article explains the third-party funding industry, including its global regulatory landscape and how it serves three distinct populations: consumers, businesses, and law firms. Second, this Article explains that third-party funding is one tool that can help expand access …

The Other Side Of The Glass Cliff, Angela Onwuachi-Willig, Kellye Testy

Faculty Scholarship

First articulated by researchers Michelle K. Ryan and S. Alexander Haslam in 2005, the glass cliff theory posits that individuals from traditionally underrepresented groups in leadership, such as women and people of color, are more likely to obtain executive leadership positions during times of crisis, which means that such leaders take on their roles under conditions where they are more prone to fail. In this Essay, we focus on what we have termed “the other side of the glass cliff”: the intentional steps that women and people of color leaders in the legal academy have taken to build structures that …

Keeping Evidence Real, Anya Bernstein, Julia Simon-Kerr

Faculty Scholarship

Commentators largely agree that the Federal Rules of Evidence have problems. Expert testimony standards admit junk science. Impeachment rules chill defendant testimony. The hearsay regime defies consistent application and obstructs self-representation. The list goes on: Many rules fail to assist, or affirmatively thwart, jurors trying to make good decisions. Such shortcomings disproportionately harm those with the least power in the system, raising profound questions about whether the evidence code serves its statutory mandate—to promote truth and justice in court proceedings. In the face of widely recognized problems, the government body charged with managing the evidence code—the Advisory Committee on Evidence …

Sidelining The Public, Anya Bernstein, Glen Staszewski, Wendy E. Wagner

Faculty Scholarship

This Article challenges the widely held view that Congress is the American government’s institution closest to the people, while administrative agencies are unaccountable and unresponsive. Providing a systematic, side-by-side institutional analysis, we compare the actual practices and capacities of these two institutions to engage affected publics in policymaking. We find that despite the democratic bona fides of an elected legislature, agencies possess superior capacities, more evolved practices, stricter rules, and stronger incentives for meaningful public engagement. Yet these capacities have been eroded—particularly over the last 50 years—by intensifying legal, political, and managerial obstacles. The Supreme Court and political actors have …

The Hypocrisy Of Data Governance, Zubair Shafiq, Olivia Figueira, Athina Markopoulou, Woodrow Hartzog, Michael Lavine

Faculty Scholarship

“Data governance” is an empty term, like a Rorschach inkblot just waiting to be filled with meaning. Tech companies take advantage of this ambiguity to craft narratives about their data-governance capabilities to fit their audience and purpose. On one hand, tech companies brag about their data-governance capabilities when it fits their business model (for example, to advertisers) and public image (for example, to their customers). On the other hand, tech companies claim that meaningful data governance is challenging or impossible when accountability is demanded.

In this Article, we argue that tech companies systematically misrepresent or selectively ignore their data-governance capabilities. …

Privacy’S Autonomy Thicket: Disentangling Choice, Consent And Control, Jordan Francis, Woodrow Hartzog, Neil Richards

Faculty Scholarship

When it comes to talking about autonomy, privacy law could use a little clarity. Its discourse uses terms like “choice,” “consent,” and “control” to evoke autonomy, but these terms are too rarely defined and too often used interchangeably, even though they can mean very different things. The three terms have become entangled in a way that has become confusing and counterproductive. We call this problem “privacy’s autonomy thicket,” and it matters because it encourages talking past each other in policy debates, enabling the redefinition of these terms in misleading ways that produce weak and disempowering “notice and choice” regimes.

In …

The Anti-Federalism Of Hr1, Nicole Huberfeld

Faculty Scholarship

The budget reconciliation bill signed on July 4, 2025 (“HR1”) weakened the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) and its core goal of near-universal health insurance coverage. To maintain 2017 tax cuts, Congress curtailed the ACA’s Medicaid eligibility expansion; simultaneously, HR1 limited the kinds of options states have been able to exercise within Medicaid while pushing the costs of deep cuts down to states. This essay argues that HR1 embodies an anti-federalism approach, and that anti-federalism is not the same as federalizing health reforms. In the past, Congress sometimes federalized health care or public health reforms to respond to …

Regulating Crisis Pregnancy Centers After Nifla And Dobbs: Controversies Over When Government Is Imposing An Orthodoxy About Abortion, Linda C. Mcclain

Faculty Scholarship

How does this broader sense of Barnette’s proscription of government from imposing “what shall be orthodox” implicate governmental restrictions on reproductive autonomy? Battles over reproductive freedom centrally implicate objections that government is unconstitutionally imposing a gender orthodoxy. Arguments for a right of personal autonomy embodying an antitotalitarian principle of liberty are arguments for a right to resist governmental imposition of an orthodoxy— for example, an idea about the natural or traditional role of women as mothers together with a view about how best to respect the sanctity of life. Rights to reproductive autonomy, grounded in personal autonomy and equality, …

An Insidious Interstice: Understanding Cognition And Language Behaviour Through The Eyes Of Juvenile Justice Professionals, Anne M. Perrotti, Allison T. Chappell, Tancy Vandecar-Burdin

Human Movement Studies & Special Education Faculty Publications

Introduction

Despite evidence suggesting language and cognition deficits are prevalent for justice involved youth, little research explores how juvenile justice personnel experience language and cognition behaviours in the youth they serve.

Aims

This qualitative study explored how juvenile justice personnel understand language and cognition skills and deficits in justice involved youth.

Methods

Twenty-two U.S. juvenile justice professionals participated in individual, semi-structured interviews. Questions focused on individual understanding of receptive language, expressive language, social communication, and cognition (i.e., problem-solving, predicting consequences and impulsiveness) in juveniles served. Using a phenomenological lens, transcripts were coded identifying themes and sub-themes of participant responses.

Results …

Ensuring Rich Rigor Of Qualitative Methodologies In Behavior Analytic Research, Daria K. Lorio-Barsten, Selena J. Layden

Human Movement Studies & Special Education Faculty Publications

Quantitative methods remain the hallmark of research in applied behavior analysis. Yet, such methods frequently fail to capture the nuances of context where behavior analysis is practiced. Therefore, qualitative methods can provide complementary means to gain deeper insight into changes in socially significant behavior. We believe that researchers within the field of behavior analysis have much to gain from embracing qualitative methodologies. We propose that more researchers can and should consider conducting rigorous qualitative research to elevate the voices of the participants and relate the depth and complexities of their nuanced experiences. This article discusses Tracy’s “big tent” quality criteria …

International Law, The Courts, And The Political Branches Of Singapore: Painting A Complete Picture, Benjamin Joshua Ong

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

In line with Singapore's vision of the separation of powers, the courts' duty is primarily to give effect to domestic law; the political branches take the lead in engaging with international law. A study of Singapore's interface with international law would therefore be incomplete were it to consider only the courts' role and not the political branches' model of international law as primarily a guarantor of Singapore's sovereignty and standing as a participant on the international stage. The political branches have been circumspect in engaging with international law in other areas, such as human rights, preferring a specifically Singaporean vision …

The Shareholder’S Standing To Challenge The Exercise Of Directorial Power: Tianrui (International) Holding Company V China Shanshui Cement Group Ltd, Pearlie M. C. Koh

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

An enduring problem with the proper purposes duty is the apparent right of the shareholder to enforce the same despite the duty being owed to the company. The cases on the proper purpose duty have thus far simply assumed the right of the shareholder to do so without dealing with the question of standing. In Tianrui (International) Holding Company Ltd v China Shanshui Cement Group Ltd, the Privy Council dealt with this issue directly and affirmed the shareholder's right to bring the action on the basis of the statutory contract constituted by the memorandum and articles of association of the …

Evolving Legal Issues In Higher Education: Introduction To The Higher Education And The Law Symposium, Patricia E. Salkin

Touro Law Review

The Touro Law Review could not have selected a better time to highlight many of the evolving legal issues in higher education. It can be both an exciting time to practice law in this space and one that challenges the creative problem-solving skills of lawyers and their clients. This issue of the Law Review highlights a number of key developments and trends.

Loper Bright Enterprises V. Raimondo And The Prospect Of “Management By Judiciary”, Rodger D. Citron

Touro Law Review

In January 2025, Touro University, Touro Law Center, and Touro Law Review held a wide-ranging conference on higher education in the 21st century. The timing could not have been more apt. We were days away from the inauguration of Donald Trump’s second term as President. The ferment in higher education would continue, only more so. In addition, in its 2023-24 term, the Supreme Court had decided a number of important administrative law cases, none more significant than Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo (“Loper Bright”).1 Although I did not speak at the panel session on “The Changing Regulatory Landscape in Higher …

Ai Bots As Law Teachers: What Is Left For Human Professors To Do?, Harold I. Abramson

Scholarly Works

This article considers what bots can do as AI law teachers, how students are already using bots for learning, how to integrate the use of AI into law courses, and what faculty can do to stay ahead of the bots in their classrooms. During this discussion, the article confronts the existential question of what is left for human law professors to do in an AI world. It concludes that there is a future for humans for now, and one that might make us better teachers.

Excavating Miranda, Samuel J. Levine

Scholarly Works

Sixty years after it was decided, Miranda v. Arizona remains one of the most significant and renowned cases—as well as, arguably, one of the most controversial cases—in the history of the United States. Chief Justice Earl Warren’s majority opinion, establishing the eponymous Miranda warnings for custodial interrogation of criminal suspects, has prompted voluminous and continuing commentary, among both critics and supporters. This Article is part of an ongoing project exploring a particular aspect of Chief Justice Warren’s majority opinion: a footnote referencing Jewish legal sources, documenting an important passage at the start of a pivotal section of the opinion.

Building …

Postpartum Psychosis On Trial: A Preview Of Commonwealth V. Clancy, Jolie Zangari

Scholarly Works

In the case of Commonwealth v. Clancy, the deaths of three young children are the focus of the upcoming criminal trial.  However, the identity of their killer will not be at issue.  The children, Cora, Dawson, and Callan Clancy, were killed by their mother, Lindsay Clancy, who then attempted suicide, but survived with severe permanent injuries. The critical issue to be litigated is—why?  Why did she kill them?  Most fundamentally at issue is whether Lindsay Clancy was suffering from symptoms of a mental disease so severe that she should be found not guilty by reason of insanity.

The Commonwealth of …