Law Commons^™

A Fake Future: The Threat Of Foreign Disinformation On The U.S. And Its Allies, Brandon M. Rubsamen

Global Tides

This paper attempts to explain the threat that foreign disinformation poses for the United States Intelligence Community and its allies. The paper examines Russian disinformation from both a historical and contemporary context and how its effect on Western democracies may only be exacerbated in light of Chinese involvement and evolving technologies. Fortunately, the paper also studies practices and strategies that the United States Intelligence Community and its allied foreign counterparts may use to respond. It is hoped that this study will help shed further light on Russian and Chinese disinformation campaigns and explain how the Intelligence Community can efficiently react.

The Views Aired At Pitt Debate Were Ugly. It Was Still Right To Let It Happen, Bruce Ledewitz

Newspaper Columns

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

The Theological Error Behind Post-Liberalism’S Bid For Political Power, Bruce Ledewitz

Ledewitz Papers

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

With Pa’S Highest Court Depleted, Shapiro, Gop Senate Leaders Let Voters Down, Bruce Ledewitz

Newspaper Columns

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

Civil Procedure Update 2023, Julio C. Romero, Verónica C. Gonzales

Faculty Scholarship

This presentation aims to 1) review recent amendments to the state and federal rules of civil procedure; 2) help you understand the impact of recent federal and state published opinions interpreting and applying the rules of civil procedure; and 3) assess your understanding of the updates.

Foreword: Finding Balance In The Fight Against Gun Violence, Michael Ulrich

Faculty Scholarship

The United States is distinct among high-income countries for its problem with gun violence, with Americans 25 times more likely to be killed by gun homicide than people in other high-income countries.¹ Suicides make up a majority of annual gun deaths — though that gap is closing as homicides are on the rise — and the U.S. accounts for 35% of global firearm suicides despite making up only 4% of the world’s population.² More concerning, gun deaths are only getting worse. In 2021, firearm fatalities approached 50,000, the highest we have seen in at least 40 years.^{3 …}

What Bad Decisions By Ron Desantis And Gavin Newsom Have In Common, Bruce Ledewitz

Newspaper Columns

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

Concerning United States Constitutional War Powers, Marcus Armstrong

St. Mary's Law Journal

The United States faces a future in which the possibility of a conventional, great-power conflict is elevated. This is because of a constitutional interpretation that has altered United States constitutional war powers significantly. Specifically, the interpretation gives the president the authority to initiate and escalate war or hostilities unilaterally. In this Article, I reexamine that specific historical interpretation and find it wanting. I then offer a different historical interpretation, drawing upon other contemporary writers as well as upon historical events in order to give a more complete and nuanced understanding of the context in which the early American leaders developed …

The Panama Canal Treaties Were Carter’S Biggest Foreign Policy Win, Bruce Ledewitz

Newspaper Columns

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

What Both Sides Of The Abortion Fight Can Learn From Antonin Scalia, Bruce Ledewitz

Newspaper Columns

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

Why I Am No Longer A Jew, Bruce Ledewitz

Ledewitz Papers

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

By Any Measure, Liberal Democracy Is Superior. Here’S Why, Bruce Ledewitz

Newspaper Columns

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

Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh: 2023 Notre Dame Law Review Federal Courts Symposium, Marcus Cole, Brett Kavanaugh

2019–Present: G. Marcus Cole

Jan 26, 2023

NOTRE DAME LAW SCHOOL

U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh covered a range of topics during a keynote Q&A at the 2023 Notre Dame Law Review Federal Courts Symposium, held on January 23 in the McCartan Courtroom. Justice Kavanaugh was joined by G. Marcus Cole, the Joseph A. Matson Dean and Professor of Law at Notre Dame Law School, and responded to questions from students and faculty members in the audience.

If I Were A Betting Man: Some Predictions For The Year We Have Left, Bruce Ledewitz

Newspaper Columns

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

Forgotten "People": Reviving Textualism In The Fourth Amendment, Peter C. Douglas

San Diego Law Review

For more than a century, the Supreme Court has struggled to develop a coherent and sustainable theory of the Fourth Amendment. Before the ink is dry on a new Fourth Amendment opinion, it is cabined, abrogated, or outright overruled. As one scholar has commented, the “evolution of Fourth Amendment doctrine over the past century bears a striking resemblance to Hamlet’s descent into insanity.” While the Court vacillates between “theories” of the Fourth Amendment that might bring clarity to a difficult body of constitutional law, the rights it bespeaks lie vulnerable and unprotected. This Article argues that the problem flows from …

On Pope Benedict, Science, Faith, And His Legacy, Bruce Ledewitz

Newspaper Columns

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

An Alternative To The Independent State Legislature Doctrine, Bruce Ledewitz

Ledewitz Papers

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

The Openness Of Talmud, Bruce Ledewitz

Ledewitz Papers

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

La Relación Entre El Derecho Internacional Y El Derecho Interno En El Sistema Constitucional De Los Estados Unidos, Robert S. Barker

Barker Papers

A pesar de las amplias palabras de la Corte, la aplicaci6n de Derecho Internacional por los tribunales de los Estados Unidos es un tema complicado. Su propósito es el de identificar los principios mas importantes de la integracion y la separacion de Derecho Internacional y derecho interno en los Estados Unidos.

Monitoring American Federalism: The History Of State Legislative Resistance, Christian G. Fritz

Faculty Book Display Case

As Americans have monitored federalism, they struggled with how a government based on sovereignty divided between nation and states might function. The Constitution’s shared sovereignty created an inherently dynamic federalism with almost continuous debates over the balance of power, making this testing of the balance of federalism and monitoring government central to the American constitutional order. Many constitutional debates involved the protection of slavery, yet other interests including debt, taxation, and police powers also played vital roles in shaping American federalism. State resistance to the national government utilizing the constitutional tool of interposition arose when the disequilibrium of federalism was …

Through A Lens Of Genocide: A Different Approach For Hate Crimes Legislation, Bruce Ching

Journal Articles

Hate crimes perpetrators select their victims based on the victims’ identity groups. Policies underlying legislation against hate crimes recognize that such crimes inflict greater harm on society than do the same actions committed for non-biased motives. Genocide may be conceptualized as hate crimes writ large; conversely, a new model of hate crimes legislation might be patterned on legal concepts of genocide scaled down to state or local levels. This new recognition could successfully address criticisms from both liberal and conservative factions along the political spectrum, offering a model that state and local governments could invoke for dealing with bias-motivated incidents …

The Right To Immigrate: A Comparative Analysis Of Immigration System In The United States And Mexico, Roberto Rosas, Valeria Montalvo

Faculty Articles

This article highlights the immigration systems of Mexico and the United States. To address the different aspects of the migratory phenomenon, the article carefully observes the circumstances that determine the irregularity of migrants in Mexico and the United States, as well as the legal system that governs them depending on their migratory status. In addition to a comprehensive review of immigrant rights in Mexico and the United States, this article advocates for national legislation be brought in line with international human rights treaties, for there to be real protection of the economic, social and cultural rights of the most vulnerable …

Do Lawyers Inhibit Economic Growth? New Evidence From The 50 U.S. States, James V. Koch, Richard J. Cebula

Economics Faculty Publications

Whether the activities of lawyers might hamper economic growth has been hotly contested over the past three decades. Contradictory conclusions have flowed from evidence that typically has focused on the impact of lawyers on the growth rates of countries. Disputes over definitions and samples that vary among countries have colored portions of these debates. We surmount many of these issues by adopting a 50-state panel covering the period 2005-2018 for the United States and by utilizing widely accepted variables regarding economic activity and who is considered a lawyer. Further, we utilize two distinct measures of the activity of lawyers and …

The United States’ Stringent Sovereignty: How Foreign Policy Framing Prioritizes Security Over Human Rights, Kathryn Parker

Scripps Senior Theses

American policymakers utilize valence framing, purposeful descriptions of outcomes as positive or negative, to influence the opinions of voters while maintaining the moral superiority felt by many citizens in the liberal Western hegemon. This study intended to combine the political theories of Constructivism and Realism to form Constructive Realism, a theory that emphasizes the significance of state power and norms as joint influences on constituents. Constructive realism was then applied to four case studies – the UN Security Council, International Criminal Court, Convention on the Rights of the Child, and Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women. This study …

Privacy And National Politics: Fingerprint And Dna Litigation In Japan And The United States Compared, Dongsheng Zang

Articles

Drawing cases from two related areas of law-fingerprint and DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) data-this Article proposes a modified framework, built on the Balkin-Levinson emphasis on national politics: First, national politics understood as partisan rivalry cannot account for what I call doctrinal lock-in in this Article, where I will demonstrate that in different stages of American politics-the Lochner era, the New Deal era, and Civil Rights era-courts across the nation ruled predominantly in favor of public data collectors-state and federal law enforcement in fingerprint cases. From the 1990s, when DNA data became hot targets of law enforcement, the United States Supreme Court …

Dobbs In A Technologized World: Implications For Us Data Privacy, Jheel Gosain, Jason D. Keune, Michael S. Sinha

All Faculty Scholarship

In June of 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, overturning 50 years of precedent by eliminating the federal constitutional right to abortion care established by the Court’s 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade. The Dobbs decision leaves the decision about abortion services in the hands of the states, which created an immediately variegated checkerboard of access to women’s healthcare across the country. This in turn laid bare a profusion of privacy issues that emanate from our technologized world. We review these privacy issues, including healthcare data, financial data, website tracking and …

Do All Dogs Go To Heaven? How Our Secular Culture Views Death, Bruce Ledewitz

Newspaper Columns

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

Deportations For Drug Convictions In The United States And The European Union: Creating A More Compassionate Approach Toward Drug Convictions In The Immigration Law, Megan Smith

San Diego International Law Journal

This Comment begins by examining and comparing the legal framework for deportation and other immigration consequences for convictions of drug offenses in the United States, the European Union, and the United Kingdom. This Comment then looks at the harsh effects of current immigration policy on individuals and marginalized communities. Finally, this Comment argues that immigration law should be reformed to adopt a more humanitarian approach toward non-citizens convicted of drug offenses. Deportation and other harsh immigration consequences for drug offenses levy disproportionately severe punishments toward vulnerable minority immigrant communities, exposing them to consequences much harsher than non-immigrants would face for …

K-Pop’S Secret Weapon: South Korea’S Criminal Defamation Laws, Rebecca Xu

San Diego International Law Journal

South Korea’s criminal defamation laws have long been considered an intrusion on the free speech rights of citizens, especially in regard to the usage by politicians against their opponents and journalists to suppress criticisms. This Comment considers the history and effects of these controversial defamation laws through the lens of recent scandals within the Korean entertainment industry, where regular citizens accusing Korean celebrities of past school violence are confronted with threats of defamation charges. To highlight the controversial nature of such laws, comparisons will be drawn between South Korea and other countries to highlight the restrictive nature of Korea’s laws.

The One Good Thing About The Independent State Legislature Theory, Bruce Ledewitz

Newspaper Columns

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