Law Commons^™

Irrationalities In Legal Parentage: Gender Identity And Beyond, Jeffrey A. Parness

College of Law Faculty Publications

This Article is the first to outline the irrationalities in many new and old parentage laws. Irrationalities often arise when the laws employ gendered terms like mother and father, husband and wife, man and woman, and male and female. These terms require a parent to be gender identified by the state, even when such an identity clashes with the parent’s own gender identification. More importantly, these gendered terms frequently clash with public policies underlying parentage laws, new and old, that are not dependent upon any form of gender identity.

Beyond gender identity, irrationalities also arise when there are distinctions without …

Presuit Lawyer Information Duties Relevant To Civil Litigation, Jeffrey A. Parness

College of Law Faculty Publications

In both federal and state courts in the United States, there are significant civil procedure, professional responsibility, and substantive laws addressing presuit lawyer duties on creating, preserving, producing, and protecting information relevant to later civil litigation. These laws speak to lawyer conduct both in personally handling information and in overseeing the information acts of others. To date, the challenges these laws pose to lawyers have not been well examined, or even largely perceived. And, to date, lawyers have been left unaccountable for their personal violations of these duties.

Tax Cuts Cause Inflation, Too. We Need To Resist Quick Fixes, Bruce Ledewitz

Newspaper Columns

Collected biweekly contributions to the Pennsylvania Capital-Star, a nonpartisan, nonprofit news site.

Here’S A Path To Practical, Immediate Gun Reform, Bruce Ledewitz

Newspaper Columns

Collected biweekly contributions to the Pennsylvania Capital-Star, a nonpartisan, nonprofit news site.

Dental Support Organizations And The Corporate Practice Of Dentistry: Will Streamlining Create Legal Violations?, Angelina Campin

DePaul Journal of Health Care Law

The increased use of technology when searching for health care providers means that consumers of dental care are more concerned with efficiency in making appointments and paying bills, immediate access to information, clear pricing, and transparency when it comes to choosing a provider and a facility to visit. Keeping up with the increased demands for efficiency and technological advances presents a challenge to sole practitioner dentists, which is the standard dental practice model. Dental support organizations (“DSOs”) have seen an increase in popularity recently, especially over the last five to ten years, in part to meet both the needs of …

The Future Of Secularism, Bruce Ledewitz

Ledewitz Papers

Published scholarship collected from academic journals, law reviews, newspaper publications & online periodicals.

Working In Space: The Final Frontier Of Remote Work, Alyson Clare Decker

Northern Illinois University Law Review

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, virtual workplaces have become much more common. But while advancements in technology have made remote work more accessible for many employees, jurisdictional confusion and varying state-specific employment regulations have made it extremely difficult for employers to switch from traditional in-person office settings to work-from-anywhere workplaces. In addition, taxation and mandatory workers’ compensation insurance requirements mean that employers often need to be registered to do business in any state they have employees in, making a truly remote workforce somewhat of a misnomer. However, as difficult as it might be for terrestrial employers to navigate our patchwork …

Government Ethics And Sustainable Space Exploration, Adam F. Greenstone

Northern Illinois University Law Review

This Article is about how government ethics supports humanity’s sustained exploration of outer space. Connotations of space sustainability include addressing all bases so that space activity develops to maximize human benefit. NASA’s ethics practice advances key mission objectives by supporting workforce talent acquisition, talent transfer to other organizations supporting national space objectives, disseminating public information on NASA’s activities, and advancing space commerce development. Following the earlier concurrent development of US government ethics law and human spaceflight, the United Nations Convention Against Corruption (UNCAC) has advanced a global anti-corruption framework of which government ethics is part. The significance of government ethics …

Galactic Accessibility: An Introduction To Interplanetary Human Rights Law Through Crip Legal Theory, Aj Link

Northern Illinois University Law Review

The possibilities within the realm of outer space and future space exploration have always been limitless. There has been renewed interest in space over the last decade, largely fueled by the private commercial space sector. As more and more people become interested in space and connected to the space industry, we must take care not to repeat the mistakes of the distant and recent past. Space should be accessible to all who wish to travel amongst the stars. We should not discriminate or bar individuals from going to space based on race, gender, gender identity or expression, nationality, religion, disability, …

Three Observations About Justice Alito's Draft Opinion In Dobbs - Commentary, John M. Greabe

Law Faculty Scholarship

[Excerpt] "There is much to say about Justice Samuel Alito's draft opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, which was leaked from the United States Supreme Court on May 2 [2022].

Obviously, the most significant direct consequence of the proposed decision, which overrules Roe v. Wade (1973) and Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992) while upholding the constitutionality of a Mississippi law that outlaws most abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy, would be the restriction or elimination of abortion services throughout much of the nation. This will have all sorts of attendant consequences, large and smaller, many of which …

Debating When Clarence Thomas Should Recuse Himself Is The Wrong Argument, Bruce Ledewitz

Newspaper Columns

Collected biweekly contributions to the Pennsylvania Capital-Star, a nonpartisan, nonprofit news site.

Antitrust Enforcement And Market Power In The Digital Age: Is Your Digital Assistant Devious?, Maurice Stucke, Ariel Ezrachi

Book Chapters

No abstract provided.

A Leak? The Supreme Court Tipped Its Hand On Abortion Long Ago, Bruce Ledewitz

Newspaper Columns

Collected biweekly contributions to the Pennsylvania Capital-Star, a nonpartisan, nonprofit news site.

Antitrust Philosophy And Its Impact On Rural Industry, Logan Gary Johnson

Honors Thesis

The United States is a nation steeped in values, and tradition. One of these values has always been the preservation of competition in the pursuit of liberty. The philosophical backing of America’s founding can be traced back to a handful of European thinkers, most notably John Locke. The connection between Locke, America’s founding, and continued struggles with antitrust enforcement are worthy of exploration. Though likely unintentional, rural communities have been left to deal with the impacts of weak antitrust enforcement in a number of key sectors. Chief of which is Agriculture. Consolidation is the new norm, with each stage of …

The Rule Of Law: “A” Relation Between Law And Morals, Alani Golanski

Northern Illinois University Law Review

H. L. A. Hart allowed that “there are many different types of relation between law and morals.” But he mostly, and sparingly, focused on law’s role in facilitating human survival, necessitating the legal system’s “minimum content of natural law.” Hart’s minimum-content view, in service of his concern to separate law and morals, spilled over into his laconic pronouncement on “legality,” typically deemed synonymous with the rule of law. He claimed that, if the legal system is to fulfill its social control function while abiding by legality, it will have to enact rules that are “within the capacity of most to …

The Demise Of The Bivens Remedy Is Rendering Enforcement Of Federal Constitutional Rights Inequitable But Congress Can Fix It, Henry Rose

Northern Illinois University Law Review

A federal statute allows a person whose federal constitutional rights are violated by state actors to sue for damages. There is no analogous federal statute that allows a person whose constitutional rights are violated by federal actors to sue for damages. In 1971, the United States Supreme Court allowed a suit for damages against federal law enforcement officials who allegedly violated Fourth Amendment rights to proceed directly under the Constitution, creating the Bivens remedy. Beginning in 1983, the Supreme Court reversed course and issued ten consecutive decisions in which it denied a Bivens remedy because no federal statute authorizes suits …

A New Approach To Felony Murder In Illinois, Jason M. Cieslik

Northern Illinois University Law Review

In August of 2019, six teenagers drove to a rural area of Lake County, Illinois, in a stolen vehicle with the intention of burglarizing vehicles. Startled, the homeowner retrieved his gun, went out on the porch, and observed one of the teens approaching him, with what the homeowner determined to be a weapon. The homeowner fired his gun and killed one of the teens. The remaining five teens were charged with felony murder. At the time of this incident, Illinois applied the “proximate-cause theory” to felony murder. In response, the General Assembly amended the felony-murder rule with the intent to …

Fundamental First Amendment Principles, David L. Hudson Jr., Jacob David Glenn

Northern Illinois University Law Review

First Amendment law is highly complex, even labyrinthine. But, there are fundamental principles in First Amendment law that provide a baseline for a core understanding. These ten fundamental principles are: (1) the First Amendment protects the right to criticize the government; (2) the First Amendment abhors viewpoint discrimination and often content, or subject-matter discrimination; (3) the First Amendment protects a great deal of symbolic speech or expressive conduct; (4) the First Amendment protects a great deal of offensive and even repugnant speech; (5) the First Amendment does not protect all forms of speech; (6) the First Amendment often depends upon …

Real Harm In A Virtual World: Establishing Federal Standing In The Seventh Circuit Under Illinois’S Biometric Information Privacy Act, Julia Lobo

Northern Illinois University Law Review

Illinois became the first state to regulate the collection and use of biometric information by private entities when it enacted the Biometric Information Privacy Act in 2008. In the years since, more and more businesses have begun to collect biometric information from their employees and customers. As lawmakers in other states and in Congress look to enact legislation to protect biometric privacy rights, their drafting choices may be informed by three recent Seventh Circuit decisions analyzing when a plaintiff alleging a violation of the Biometric Information Privacy Act has, or has not, established Article III standing as required to proceed …

Against The Death Penalty, Charles Jessup

Departmental Honors & Graduate Capstone Projects

My thesis is an argument against the death penalty. Given that public support for the death penalty in America is at a half-century low (according to the Pew Research Center), the timing could not be more appropriate to examine the death penalty. This research project had a two-step approach: first, ethical theory-based arguments for and against the death penalty were examined. Following that ethical theory-based examination, real-world statistics were applied to these theories to test where they stand in modern society. The findings contained in this research project point to a clear reality that the death penalty in America is …

How A Shuttered Bathroom At A Pgh Grocery Store Explains Structural Racism, Bruce Ledewitz

Newspaper Columns

Collected biweekly contributions to the Pennsylvania Capital-Star, a nonpartisan, nonprofit news site.

The 1994 Federal Crime Bill: An Evaluation Of The Past, Present, And Future Of Its Impact On The Criminal Justice System, Jade R. Philpot

Honors College Theses

The 1994 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act was signed into law in response to the crack cocaine and crime epidemic of the 1980s. In this thesis I address the major elements of this bill, the racial, financial, and ethical conflicts that arose thereafter, and the reforms that should be implemented today to correct said conflicts.

Toomey’S Vote Against Ketanji Brown Jackson Set A Dangerous Precedent. Here's Why, Bruce Ledewitz

Newspaper Columns

Collected biweekly contributions to the Pennsylvania Capital-Star, a nonpartisan, nonprofit news site.

Sexual Profiling & Blaqueer Furtivity: Blaqueers On The Run, T. Anansi Wilson

The Scholar: St. Mary's Law Review on Race and Social Justice

This article has taken some time to recollect. I have been struggling to find the grammar to communicate a phenomenon that is both central to BlaQueer life and beyond BlaQueer living. This difficulty, the silences, the gaps, the nonsensical and agrammatical nature of this phenomena—that of BlaQueer furtivity, the strict scrutiny of Black life and sexual profiling—are central features not only of this project but of the legal, extralegal and social logics and powers that mark, make and remake BlaQueer folks as always, already furtive, subject to strict scrutiny and necessarily sexual profiling. I have been struggling with whether to …

Financing Rural Health Care, Isaac ("Zack") D. Buck

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Presuit Civil Protective Orders On Discovery, Jeffrey A. Parness

College of Law Faculty Publications

There are few civil procedure laws broadly authorizing trial courts in the United States to consider presuit requests seeking protection from discovery sanctions or spoliation claims in later civil actions. There should be more laws on presuit protective orders addressing information maintenance, preservation, and production.

New presuit protective order laws are most apt where there have been demands by potential adversaries involving alleged information preservation duties under civil discovery laws or under substantive spoliation laws; where the recipients have strong reasons to secure early judicial clarifications; and where the availability and use of presuit protective orders will serve both private …

Fair Construction To Living Constitution: Analyzing Constitutional Interpretation Throughout United States History, Joshua Lloyd

Senior Honors Theses

The proper method of constitutional interpretation has been debated throughout the history of the Supreme Court. This debate has been defined by the tension between the originalist and living constitution jurisprudences. Each has been dominant at one point in United States history. A fair construction jurisprudence was almost universally utilized by the Supreme Court to interpret the Constitution according to its original meaning until Plessy v. Ferguson. Then, due to an alliance between evangelicals and progressive scholars, a broader, more lenient living constitution jurisprudence developed which allowed justices to interpret the Constitution in light of changing social norms. Finally, …

Truth And Reconciliation: The Ku Klux Klan Hearings Of 1871 And The Genesis Of Section 1983, Tiffany R. Wright, Ciarra N. Carr, Jade W.P. Gasek

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

Over the course of seven months in 1871, Congress did something extraordinary for the time: It listened to Black people. At hearings in Washington, D.C. and throughout the former Confederate states, Black women and men—who just six years earlier were enslaved and barred from testifying in Southern courts—appeared before Congress to tell their stories. The stories were heartbreaking. After experiencing the joy of Emancipation and the initial hope of Reconstruction, they had been subjected to unspeakable horror at the hands of white terrorists. They had been raped and sexually humiliated. Their children and spouses murdered. They had been savagely beaten …

The Legal And Social Challenges Involved In The Expansion Of Multinational Operations: A Case Study Of Exxonmobil Indonesia, Shashaank Rajaraman

Senior Theses

Within this paper, I will analyze the legal and social relations between multinational corporations and their host countries. This analysis will be conducted through viewing the circumstances surrounding Doe v. ExxonMobil within the District of Columbia Circuit Court, in which ExxonMobil has engaged in litigation regarding their human rights record within the country of Indonesia. Through secondary research conducted both within business and legal journals, information about the practices of ExxonMobil can be examined and utilized to make general conclusions upon the corporate diplomacy practiced by multinational corporations.

Domesticated: Migrant Domestic Workers In Jordan And Their Place In Jordan’S Law And Homes, Jeromel Dela Rosa Lara

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

The purpose of this study is to bring attention to the labor conditions for migrant women domestic workers and what agency they have in the workplace (the home of their employers) and the law in Jordan. Jordan is considered as having a model labor law for migrant workers in the region. Officials from the Ministry of Labor have claimed that this makes the Kafala System––a system of labor that puts migrant workers under the care, standards, and control of the employer––non-existent in the country. This study will look further on the extent that this is reflected to the experiences of …