Law Commons^™

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. …

Beyond The Indian Act: Restoring Traditional Government In Kahnawà:Ke Through Haudenosaunee Law, Brandon Montour

Osgoode Hall Law Journal

The Kanien’kehá:ka of Kahnawà:ke have been subjected to the Indian Act since 1889. Its forceful imposition has eroded ancestral governance systems and severed vital threads of cultural and social life. In 2024, the Mohawk Council of Kahnawà:ke—the Indian Act band council—declared its intent to restore traditional governance and unilaterally end the Indian Act’s reach within the territory. This work is presently underway in Kahnawà:ke. Against this backdrop, and in light of generations of collective experiences of trauma brought on by the forces of settler-colonialism, this article considers what role Haudenosaunee law can play in bringing community members together to build …

The Case For Contractual Exculpation Of Lawyers’ Liability: Doctrine, Economics, And Policy, Timothy Ke

Osgoode Hall Law Journal

For over a century, Canadian lawyers have been prohibited from agreeing to contractual clauses limiting, allocating, or excluding their civil liability—a stark contrast to the graduated regimes governing other Canadian professionals and lawyers in major international jurisdictions, including the United Kingdom, United States, Australia, Germany, Switzerland, and Belgium. This article seeks to initiate a critical conversation about legitimizing such clauses. It anchors its analysis in doctrinal integrity, economic efficiency, and policy, addressing competing objectives in relation to fiduciary responsibility, the market for legal services, and liability insurance. In doing so, this work delineates the benefits and bounds of contractual freedom, …

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 …

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 …

Large Language Scholarship, Alan Rozenshtein, Kevin Frazier

Articles

Generative AI isn’t just coming for the legal academy—the era of what we call “Large Language Scholarship” is already here. Law professors are using AI to write articles in weeks rather than months. Law reviews face an unprecedented deluge of AI-polished submissions. And the judges who increasingly lean on AI to help draft their own opinions will soon struggle to distinguish genuine insight from sophisticated imitation. Yet, existing scholarship offers only fragmented responses, trapped in misguided debates about plagiarism and disclosure while missing the full scope of the unfolding transformation.

This Article provides the first comprehensive analysis of how generative …

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 …