Law Commons^™

Table Of Contents

Mercer Law Review

No abstract provided.

To Keep Our Nation Breathing: The Impact Of State Legislation And The Prep Act On Covid-19 Liability Immunity Defenses For Healthcare Providers In The Eleventh Circuit, J. Bailey Hotard

Mercer Law Review

This Comment is not intended to patronize you with statistics related to the COVID-19 pandemic. The odds suggest that you or someone you love dealt with these gruesome realities in real-time. Instead, allow me to paint a picture:1 You direct hospital operations. You have built your career at a trauma hospital, so you are familiar with the stress that comes with a daily ratio of six patients to one nurse—and yet, COVID-19 brings constantly evolving challenges that no one anticipated. On a typical day, during the height of the pandemic, your consecutive twelve-hour workdays become a blur as you and …

Anything No Longer Goes: How The Eleventh Circuit Has Settled On One Standard To Determine Deliberate-Indifference Claims, Sarah Beth Scarborough

Mercer Law Review

Deliberate indifference to the medical care of a loved one, or oneself, rightly causes outrage. When such an occurrence takes place behind prison walls, inmates or loved ones on their behalf, file a deliberate indifference claim under 42 U.S.C. § 1983,and they allege a violation of their Eighth Amendment right to be free of cruel and unusual punishment. However, the test for deliberate indifference has been misconstrued and misapplied for decades within the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. Such a malleable test leads to different standards of proof for a plaintiff to meet, and confusion among …

Repugnant Verdicts For $1000: Navigating The Intersection Of Double Jeopardy And Conflicting Verdicts In Mcelrath V. Georgia, Talia Levine

Mercer Law Review

“No man is to be brought into jeopardy of his life, more than once, for the same offense.” This ancient maxim, preserved in the Double Jeopardy Clause of the Fifth Amendment, is a hallmark of the American justice system. The Double Jeopardy Clause gives a criminal defendant the constitutional right not to be tried again for the same offense after being acquitted. This guarantee stands as “[p]erhaps the most fundamental rule in the history of double jeopardy jurisprudence.”

The Supreme Court of the United States has repeatedly upheld these principles; by refusing to allow retrial following an acquittal, the Court …

The Future Is In Their Care: Justice And The Washington Constitution, Steven González

Washington Law Review

No abstract provided.

Supreme Court Lgbtq Orthodoxy, Carlos A. Ball

Missouri Law Review

This Article argues that the Supreme Court has relied on two simplifying assumptions in First Amendment exemption cases involving LGBTQ issues. The first assumption is that the government’s interest in addressing and remedying discrimination is irrelevant to the matter at hand. The second assumption is that state officials, in enforcing sexual orientation antidiscrimination laws against individuals who object to them on religious or moral grounds, seek to force the dissenters to speak in ways they do not want to speak. As the Article explains, the Court has abided by neither simplifying assumption in exemption cases involving the application of race …

Whose Bot Is It Anyway? Determining Liability For Ai-Generated Content, John G. Browning

Northern Illinois University Law Review

As Chief Justice John Roberts noted in his State of the Judiciary address in late December 2023, artificial intelligence has not only had a seismic effect on society and the legal profession, but it is also presenting courts with novel questions to resolve. To date, most of the legal scholarship discussing generative AI has focused on areas like the ethical dimensions of its use, copyright infringement implications, AI governance issues, and the evidentiary questions raised by the use of this technology. However, a void in the scholarship exists with respect to the question of who should be liable for AI-generated …

Avoiding Dupe Process, Kevin Frazier

Northern Illinois University Law Review

Advances in artificial intelligence (AI) combined with increased documentation of human overreliance on AI recommendations demands a reexamination of content moderation processes. Social media platforms—reacting to internal values, social pressure, regulatory mandates, or some combination of all three—have carried over procedural due process norms to content decisions. One common procedural protection is a “human-in-the-loop” (HITL) requirement. These requirements insist that a human provide some oversight role prior to an automated decision becoming final.

A review of the core values of due process—namely, accuracy, fairness, legitimacy—and the nature of hybrid decisional frameworks—those that involve AI and human inputs—show that HITL requirements …

The Emerging Danger Of Ai-Generated Child Sexual Abuse Material And An Unprepared Criminal Code, Jessica L. Terkovich

Northern Illinois University Law Review

The development and dissemination of child sexual abuse material (“CSAM”) using artificial intelligence (“AI”) is becoming easier and easier with technological advancements. This Article argues that traditional child pornography statutes should be extended to encompass fully AI-generated images. The Article outlines the history of the nation’s current federal CSAM laws and details the results of a nationwide survey of statutes which determined that few states have effective laws on the books regarding AI-generated CSAM. This Article also offers recommendations for constructing effective laws against AI-generated CSAM and concludes that harm comes from the very existence of CSAM, no matter how …

Under The Limelight Of Fame: Life, Success, And Revenge Porn—A Public Figure’S Right To Privacy Versus Speech On Matters Of Public Concern, Jose Garcia

Northern Illinois University Law Review

The twenty-first century continues to evolve technologically and socially. However, the main constant in society is the public’s devotion to celebrity culture. Celebrity culture constantly has the public’s attention, from Travis Kelce’s and Taylor Swift’s relationship, to the controversies surrounding President Donald Trump. As a result, being a public figure in a technologically advanced society comes with a limited right to privacy. Public figures over the years have become victims of nonconsensual pornography with limited options for recovery and accountability. California Civil Code Section 1708.85 is a prime example of a statute that poses a challenge to a public figure …

Vol. 45, No. 3, Summer 2025: Table Of Contents, Northern Illinois University Law Review

Northern Illinois University Law Review

Table of Contents and Masthead for Volume 45, Issue 3 of the Northern Illinois Law Review

(De)Funding Family Separations, Joshua Gupta-Kagan

Faculty Scholarship

Federal foster care funding exists in tension with foundational family law principles. The law protects family integrity: the state may only separate parents and children in extreme cases, and, when it does, the state must work to reunify families. Yet the federal funding system directs billions of federal dollars to support CPS agencies and pay subsidies to foster parents, adoptive parents, and guardians. It does so via an open-ended entitlement, so that the more families a state separates, the more federal funds it receives. This system makes it relatively cheaper for CPS agencies to take custody of children, incentivizes states …

Regulating The Metaverse: Reducing Diffusion Of Trader Responsibility, Hadar Y. Jabotinsky, Michal Lavi

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

With the emergence of the metaverse, some problems relating to trader responsibility, which had previously long been addressed, have now resurfaced and come back to life. One of these problems is the question of who should be held accountable for harm inflicted by defective or counterfeit products sold by third-party vendors in metaverse marketplaces. Under the common law, liability for defective or counterfeit products rests with the immediate seller of the product. But, unique aspects of the metaverse may make holding sellers liable unwise, difficult, or even impossible.

The law confronted a similar question after online platforms emerged. Currently, common …

Cruising Beyond Car Dealer Dominance, Piotr Tereszkiewicz

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

The automotive industry plays a pivotal role in both the American economy and American daily life. This means that the laws that govern the automotive industry and structure power dynamics between central players in the market also play a pivotal role in both the American economy and American daily life. One such area of law has room for improvement: laws governing the manufacturer-dealer relationship in car sales.

Although the law currently structures automotive industry power dynamics to the detriment of consumer welfare, it does not have to be this way. This Article proposes legal reforms aimed at improving consumer welfare …

Redesigning Post-Incarceration Employment Tax Credits: Making Work Opportunity Credits Work For Former Felons, Stephanie Hunter Mcmahon

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Former felons have a significantly higher unemployment rate than other groups of American workers. This unemployment increases recidivism as well as broader societal problems. Consequently, Congress enacted the Work Opportunity Tax Credit to encourage employers to hire former felons (and other groups of targeted workers) by offsetting their wages. For the credit to increase employment, employers must know whether potential workers would likely qualify for the credit before hiring decisions are made. However, the growing Ban the Box Movement seeks to defer or eliminate conviction history questions in hiring. After examining the credit’s stated purpose, its operating mechanism, and some …

Front Matter

Hofstra Law Review

No abstract provided.

Exonerees Working For Work's Benefits: Prison Work For Social Security And Medicare, Stephanie Hunter Mcmahon

Hofstra Law Review

Exonerated individuals are released from prison, but they cannot recover the time they were incarcerated. The time is gone, as is its potential to qualify for the nation’s social safety net. Most people earn a right to the safety net and for retirement through their employment; however, even when prisoners work, they are denied employment-related benefits that would be enjoyed by those not incarcerated. Inmate labor does not earn toward Social Security, Medicare, and Social Security Disability Insurance, and the exclusion applies even if the inmate is later exonerated of the crime for which they were imprisoned. Therefore, exonerees’ mandatory …

The Power Of Voice In The Law: Reflections Of A Public Defender Turned Federal Judge, Eunice C. Lee

Hofstra Law Review

No abstract provided.

Treading Water: Striking A Delicate Balance In Wetland Conservation In The Wake Of Sackett V. Environmental Protection Agency, Ryan Donofrio

Hofstra Law Review

No abstract provided.

Step, Prep, And Leap: How Choreographers Can Overcome The Hurdles Placed By Copyright Law, Anne Henderson

Hofstra Law Review

No abstract provided.

Analyzing Copyrightability Of Ai-Generated And Assisted Works Under A New Theory Of Authorship, Katherine Lu

Journalism

While pending cases like the New York Times’ case against OpenAI will be the first test for artificial intelligence (AI) in the copyright space, current copyright legislation inadequately answers questions regarding grey-area uses of generative AI in the creation of journalistic, creative, or academic works. The Copyright Office has established that copyright requires human authorship, but current legal definitions of authorship may include simple prompt writing as a form of authorship. This paper addresses the inadequacies of the current definitions of authorship, and proposes a new one that encompasses traditional definitions, the Copyright Office’s new motions addressing AI, and Christopher …

Legal Responses To Work-Related Intimate Partner Violence In Canada: Troubling Privatization, Jennifer Koshan

Dalhousie Law Journal

Intimate partner violence and coercive control can manifest in abusers’ attempts to sabotage their partners’ participation in employment. Work-related intimate partner violence (WRIPV) also implicates employers, governments, and society more broadly, challenging the individualizing frame often applied to IPV. However, the legal recognition of WRIPV has been slow and sporadic, disproportionately impacting women experiencing intersecting inequalities, who are more vulnerable to IPV and to work-related inequalities. This article examines how governments have responded to WRIPV, situating their responses in the continuing legacy of the public/private distinction. Using a rights-based framework, I evaluate the two newest Canadian reforms concerning WRIPV: occupational …

The Crime Victims' Rights Movement: Historical Foundations, Modern Ascendancy, And Future Aspirations, Paul G. Cassell

University of the Pacific Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Complex Interplay Between Intellectual Property And The Right To Science, Peter K. Yu

Faculty Scholarship

In April 2020, the U.N. Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights released General Comment No. 25, which provides an authoritative interpretation of the right to science—a right that has hitherto not received much attention. In light of this publication and the recent celebration of the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, this article examines the complex interplay between intellectual property and the right to science, with a view toward the human rights challenges brought about by both the COVID-19 pandemic and the arrival of generative AI.

The article begins by documenting the historical evolution of the …

Punitive Desire, Belief In Redeemability, And Support For Rehabilitation: A Comparison Of Victimized And Non-Victimized Individuals' Attitudes Toward Criminal Offenders, Caleb Linder

Student Theses

This study examined the attitudes of victimized and non-victimized individuals toward criminal offenders, investigating whether the supportive attitudes observed in Spoo et al. (2018) extend beyond sexual offenses to other types of crime. The study also explored how the perpetrator’s relationship to the victim (family member vs. stranger) and participants’ previous exposure to the justice system influenced their perceptions of offenders. Contrary to our hypothesis, punitive attitudes did not differ between participants with a history of victimization and those without. Additionally, there was no significant difference in punitive attitudes toward stranger offenders compared to offenders known to the victim. Furthermore, …

Assessing Illegal Take Of Sea Turtle In Bocas Del Toro, Panamanian Caribbean, Daniela Carolina Rojas-Cañizales

Theses and Dissertations

In Bocas del Toro, Panama, sea turtles were exploited for generations to supply local, national, and international markets. Today, sea turtle species are globally protected by different laws, and Panama is no exception. However, the use of sea turtles in Bocas del Toro and local perceptions regarding the consumption of these reptiles are unknown. Accordingly, during May of 2024, I conducted twenty-five semi-structured interviews with key informants selected by targeted and snowball sampling. Sea turtle consumption persists, and there is a clandestine network to sell turtle meat and derived products in Bocas del Toro. This study provides the first assessment …

Symposium Introduction: Illuminating Public Health Struggles Behind Bars, Justin Iverson, Javiera Sothers

Nevada Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Keynote: Promoting Disability Equality Behind Bars, Margo Schlanger

Nevada Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Secretive Sheriffs: Opacity And Variation In California's Jail Responses To Covid-19, Aparna Komarla, Hadar Aviram

Nevada Law Journal

No abstract provided.

The Solitary Confinement Crisis In Immigration Detention, Sabrineh Ardalan, Arevik Avedian, Philip L. Torrey

Nevada Law Journal

No abstract provided.