Law Commons^™

Facial Recognition Technology And The First Amendment, Joseph A. Tomain

Articles by Maurer Faculty

The growing ubiquity of facial recognition technology (FRT) is a problem. While much has been written on harmful government use of FRT, little has been written regarding harmful private actor use. This Article helps fill a gap in the literature by providing a detailed analysis of the First Amendment interests at stake when private actors use FRT. Specifically, this Article analyzes whether laws that limit the use of publicly available photographs to create faceprints for inclusion in FRT databases violate the First Amendment rights of private actors.

In May 2025, a multidistrict litigation against Clearview AI, an FRT company, offered …

Climate Change And Corporate Law In The United States: Not "Woke" But Eyes Open., Cynthia A. Williams

Articles by Maurer Faculty

This Essay discusses the evidence that climate change and nature loss create financially material risks for corporations that must be carefully considered by officers and directors pursuant to their fiduciary duties of loyalty and care. This analysis concludes that under the current state of fiduciary duty law and the known financial risks presented by climate change and nature loss, officers and directors of corporations may breach their fiduciary duties by failing to implement and monitor a robust system to identify and manage each type of industry-specific climate-related and nature related risk. Risk of breach is particularly acute for entity-specific compliance …

"17 Going On 23": Sentencing Young People To Life In Canada, Debra Parkes

All Faculty Publications

This paper analyzes reported Canadian cases from 2008 to 2022 in which young people were sentenced for murder. It shows that, at least in these reported decisions, sentencing young people as adults for murder is not rare. The Crown routinely seeks life sentences for young people and the court orders them in the vast majority of cases in which they are sought. Life sentences for young people have become normalized and expected in murder cases, rather than exceptional. This paper delves into the case law to get a better picture of why and how this is happening.

Old Habits Die Hard: Precedent, Psychology, And The Admissibility Of Forensic Evidence, Sara Gordon

All Faculty Publications

Forensic evidence, long considered a cornerstone of criminal justice, has faced increasing scrutiny as recent studies and reports expose significant flaws in its scientific foundation. Techniques such as latent fingerprint analysis, microscopic hair comparison, and ballistics matching, which had been widely accepted for decades, are now being challenged for their lack of empirical validation. Reports by the National Research Council and the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology have highlighted the deficiencies in these forensic methods, calling into question their reliability and the weight they are given in courtrooms. Yet despite the growing acknowledgement of widespread issues affecting …

Streaming, Copyright And Creators: A Canadian Perspective, Graham Reynolds

All Faculty Publications

This paper will provide an introduction to streaming and copyright in Canada. It will proceed in five parts. Following this introduction, Part 2 of this paper will define streaming, discuss some of the benefits that flow from the widespread use of streaming services, and outline the extent to which streaming technologies are in use in Canada today. In so doing, this paper will distinguish between three types of streaming services: streaming services that secure authorization from rights-holders before making content available; streaming services that rely on technological measures or liability exemptions in order to host content in a non-infringing manner; …

Policy Forum: Are Carbon Contracts For Difference Well Suited For Canada?, Wei Cui

All Faculty Publications

At least up to the release of the federal 2024 budget, many Canadian politicians, climate policy think tanks, and industry groups promoted carbon contracts for difference (CCfD) to complement carbon pricing. This commentary urges caution against the broad adoption of CCfDs. The author begins by noting that the current designs of provincial output-based pricing systems (OBPS) are not consistent with the expectation of the systems delivering robust price signals. He argues that CCfDs depend on such price signals, and they are not a plausible policy for encouraging the emergence of such signals. The author then argues that it is hard …

Binding Rights: Contractual Federalism And The Right To Housing In Canada, Alexandra Flynn

All Faculty Publications

Canada’s housing crisis continues to deepen, exacerbated by constitutional fragmentation and intergovernmental reluctance to implement human rights-based housing policy. While the federal National Housing Strategy Act recognizes housing as a human right, its application is limited and its legal force is limited to the federal level, leaving provinces and municipalities unbound. This article argues that contract law – particularly conditional funding agreements between the federal government and subnational actors – can serve as a pragmatic and legally coherent mechanism to bind municipalities to housing obligations, including the recognition of housing as a human right. Drawing on the Canada Health Act …

Colorado River Insights, 2025: Dancing With Deadpool, Colorado River Research Group

Books, Reports, and Studies

No abstract provided.

Integrating Academic Success, Krishnee Coley, Laura A. Webb

Law Faculty Publications

Over the past few years, Richmond Law has taken several intentional steps to address one of ASP’s perennial challenges: the students who most need help may not be the ones who find their way to optional ASP sessions. By integrating academic success into orientation programs and collaborating with doctrinal professors, we’ve succeeded in reaching all our 1L students despite the lack of a mandatory 1L ASP course.

Effects Of Actualized Language Policy On Ukrainian Stability, 1989-2022, Dawn Hersey

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

This dissertation seeks to generate a new perspective of the complicated relationship between actualized policy and stability through looking at Ukraine’s language policies and stability in a mixed manner approach that includes both primary and secondary sources. Russia justified its irridentist activities through claiming to protect Russian nationals within Ukraine’s borders: language policies within Ukraine appear to be a trigger for Russian antagonism. Neither Russian irridentism nor Ukrainian nationalism are being considered as right or wrong in this dissertation: the intent is to highlight trends, patterns, and perceptions in alignment with Ukrainian language policy. This dissertation does not present a …

Paraconsistency In Legal Systems: Why Not To Evaluate The Law With Classical Logic, Sydney Coddington

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

The following paper puts forth an argument for the analysis of legal systems via paraconsistent logics instead of classical logic due to the existence of legal dialetheia - true contradictions born from the law. Given that contradictions lead to absurdity in classical logic, a paraconsistent perspective becomes the clear choice once the existence of legal dialetheia is established. The first half of this argument, therefore, aims to support the work of Graham Priest in establishing legal dialetheia by explaining his view and combatting his opponent, J.C. Beall, who finds such dialetheia to fail beyond the limited scope of a legal …

Officers’ Perceptions Of Body-Worn Cameras: An Exploratory Study Of Small Police Departments In Upstate New York, Stefan A. Dela Riva

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

The aim of this exploratory study is to examine how police officers perceive the impact of body-worn cameras (BWCs) on their use of discretion when communicating with members of the public. In this context, “discretion” refers to an officer’s authority to make independent judgments while enforcing the law; deciding whether to issue a warning, make an arrest, or resolve an incident informally when legality permits. To understand officers’ opinions, a cross-sectional, quantitative online survey was distributed to various police departments and sheriff’s offices in upstate New York. Participants completed a series of Likert-style survey items addressing their general views on …

Video Analytics And Fourth Amendment Vision, Andrew Guthrie Ferguson

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

What does the Fourth Amendment have to say about video analytics running on citywide camera systems? Video analytics (also known as computer vision) involves hardware and software in cameras that turns video surveillance streams into useful data, identifying, categorizing, matching, and alerting police about objects, people, and incidents. Video analytics can identify objects (e.g., hat, backpack, person, car) and track that person or thing back in time and through the streets using video surveillance footage. For police officers conducting virtual patrols or retrospective investigations, video analytics lets police scan thousands of linked cameras for suspicious behavior or a particular suspect, …

Trademark Fair Use Is No Joke, Christine Farley

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

This Article examines how the Supreme Court's 2023 decision in Jack Daniel's Properties v. VIP Products reveals the limitations of using parody as a framework for resolving tensions between trademark rights and free speech. While the Court's ruling narrowed trademark protection in certain instances and acknowledged the importance of protecting parodic speech, it ultimately avoided addressing fundamental questions about the relationship between trademark law and the First Amendment. The Article argues that courts' reliance on parody as a paradigmatic case of permissible trademark use has become a distraction that prevents necessary reform of trademark law to better accommodate First Amendment …

Regulatory Sandboxes: One Decade On, Hilary J. Allen

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

Regulatory sandboxes have spread like wildfire since the U.K Financial Conduct Authority launched its sandbox for financial technology businesses (fintech) one decade ago. Despite widespread adoption, however, there is little empirical evidence available to assess whether the signature sandbox policy com- bination of regulatory rollbacks and regulatory guidance is in fact good policy. The empirical evidence that is available suggests that regulatory sandboxes are beneficial for the tech firms that participate in them, but tells us nothing about how regulatory sandboxes have impacted the broader enterprise of regulation, or whether the innovation generated by sandbox participants is beneficial for any- …

But For Borders: The Protection Gap For Internally Displaced Persons, Anita Sinha

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

Internal displacement, the phenomenon of people who are dislocated from their homes but remain within the border of their countries of origin, was once a forced migratory occurrence interchangeable with cross-border migration. This changed after the Second World War with the promulgation of the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, which was premised on an insistence on drawing a legal line in the sand based on which side of a border displacement transpires upon. Internally displaced persons (IDPs)-both in recent history and in the projected future-far outnumber people displaced across borders. Both rhetorical maneuverings and traditional international legal …

Gen Y More Black Corporate Directors, Chaz Brooks

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

Corporate diversity has been in the spotlight for decades. Recent efforts have followed years of legal scholarship, arguments on the business rationale for greater diversity, and more recently, the racial unrest during the summer of 2020. Called by some, a “racial reckoning,” the summer of 2020 catalyzed many corporate declarations on the importance of diversity, and more to the point of this article, the necessity of righting the economic disadvantages of Black Americans. This article looks specifically at one intervention by a corporate player following summer 2020, Nasdaq’s volley to increase corporate diversity through required disclosure. This article reviews the …

But For Borders: The Protection Gap For Internally Displaced Persons, Anita Sinha

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

Internal displacement, encapsulating the phenomenon of people who are dislocated from their homes but remain within the border of their countries of origin, was once a forced migratory occurrence interchangeable with cross-border migration. This changed after the Second World War with the promulgation of the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, which was premised on an insistence of making a legal line in the sand based on which side of a border displacement ultimately transpires. Internally displaced persons (IDPs)—in recent history, presently, and in the projected future—far outpace the number of people displaced outside the border of their …

Fintech And Techno-Solutionism, Hilary J. Allen

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

Silicon Valley-style technological innovation is ill-suited to addressing complex problems like financial inclusion, concentrated market power, and privacy harms, yet promises abound that “fintech” can fix them. This oversimplified reduction of complex structural problems into technological puzzles is known as “techno-solutionism,” and it poses real dangers for public policy. When we start with the tech industry’s favored tools and then ask how to solve complex problems using those tools – rather than starting by defining the problem to be solved – it can distract policymakers from supporting real, structural solutions. Techno-solutionism can also deter policymakers from interrogating the limitations, and …

Betwixt And Between: Restorative Justice, Dei, And Education Carcerality, Thalia Gonzalez, Alyssa Faith Scott

Faculty Scholarship

American K-12 public education is at a critical anti-civil rights inflection point amidst a rapidly changing landscape of federal and state education law and policy. From local anti-literacy measures to state “three strikes” exclusionary school discipline legislation to punitive federal executive orders, new legal mechanisms are conjoining to produce public school climates marked by structural violence, and the erasure of students with multiple marginalized identities. Attending to these political and legal realities is a growing cluster of legal scholarship empirically categorizing, and theoretically challenging, the rise of such anti-education civil rights obstructions. Though diverse in scope, analyses prominently center the …

The Position Of The United States Of America Vis-A-Vis The Question Of Western Sahara: Assessing The Role Of Think Tanks In The Conflict, Hamid Baadeche

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

ABSTRACT

The Position of the United States of America Vis-à-vis the Question of Western Sahara: Assessing the Role of Think Tanks in the Conflict

Hamid Baadeche

Think tank organizations, particularly in the United States, have become a prominent feature of the political landscape. They act as advocates for specific policies that they consider beneficial for the country or a particular societal group. They function as a primary source of information, which they then aim to transform into well-informed policies and sound decisions. They are referred to as "the revolving doors," "idea brokers," and "idea factory." As such, their foremost objective …

Table Of Contents

The Judges' Book

No abstract provided.

Antitrust: Ai And Antitrust: “The Algorithm Made Me Do It”, Robin Feldman

The Judges' Book

No abstract provided.

Criminal Law: Felons, Firearms, And The “Federalization” Of Crime, Jonathan Abel

The Judges' Book

No abstract provided.

Civil Procedure: The Culture Of Forum Shopping In Civil Litigation, Scott Dodson

The Judges' Book

No abstract provided.

Civil Procedure: When Does State Law Affect Federal Jurisdiction?, Scott Dodson

The Judges' Book

No abstract provided.

In Search Of A State, Maeve Glass

Faculty Scholarship

This article offers a legal history of one of America’s earliest campaigns of state legislative resistance: the effort in Massachusetts to protest the national government’s perceived dismantling of an old Atlantic commercial order from 1803 to 1815. To date, scholars have either condemned this protest as a dangerous harbinger of the Civil War or vindicated it as an inevitable and salutary extension of the Founding. This article steers a different course. By focusing on the evolving language of protest and the complex hybrid of ideas and material realities from which this language emerged, this article illuminates how Federalist leaders who …

Trumpian Populism And The Changing Intellectual Landscape In Antitrust: Century-Old Resonances, The New Right And Possible End Of An Era., Jonathan B. Baker

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

Three sides predominated in the U.S. antitrust policy debate during the Biden administration: neo-Brandeisians (or antimonopolists), centrist reformers (or post-Chicagoans), and conservatives (or Chicagoans). At that time, Trumpian populists did not comfortably fit with any of these groups and were at best secondary participants in policy discussions.

Nine months after the start of the second Trump administration, the intellectual landscape was different. Trumpian populism has now taken center stage at the antitrust enforcement agencies through two senior appointments-- Abigail (Gail) Slater as Assistant Attorney General for Antitrust in the Department of Justice (DOJ) and Mark Meador as a Federal Trade …

Getting Donor-Advised Funds Regulation Right: Closing The Public Support Test Loophole, Benjamin Leff

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

Donor-Advised Funds (“DAFs”) have been the subject of vigorous critical scholarship in the past two decades. This Article addresses two timely issues in DAF regulation: the theoretical justifications for extra strict regulation of DAFs, and, in light of those justifications, how to close a major loophole in the regulatory scheme. DAFs have been called “virtual private foundations” because they are similar in some respects to private foundations, but until two decades ago, they were treated for legal purposes as public charities. In 2006, Congress enacted legislation that both formally recognized DAFs for the first time and subjected them to several …

The Unenforceable Indian Trust, Ezra Rosser

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

This Essay explores the Indian trust relationship in light of recent decisions, especially Arizona v. Navajo Nation, that severely limit the judicial enforcement of federal trust responsibilities. Given the built-in tension between the trust responsibility and self-determination, periodic reassessment of the role and power of the Indian trust is perhaps inevitable. The Supreme Court's attack on meaningful enforcement of the trust responsibility is deeply problematic in that it puts tribes in the position of getting neither the benefits of a special Indian trust nor those principles that are supposed to govern trusts in general. But the Court is not …