Law Commons^™

Trustless Trust And Antitrust: A Synthesis, Matt Blaszczyk

Touro Law Review

Authors have written of antitrust law’s demise in the face of blockchain, which, seemingly, achieves the pro-competitive ends of the law through technology and private ordering. Permissionless blockchains in particular are said to offer a vision of radical disinter mediation and a break with the platform economy troubling the regulators today. At the same time, blockchain supposedly presents challenges to antitrust doctrine, from the most basic of concepts to the viability of enforcement and remedies. Finally, blockchain community governance is said to allow for private ordering of antitrust, i.e., enforcement of rules attempting to protect competition, which are at the …

Takings, Original Meaning, And Applying Property Law Principles To Fix Penn Central, John M. Groen

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Second Amendment: Incompatible Methodologies And The Bruen And Heller Opinions' Underlying Misalignment, Henry H. Robinson

Touro Law Review

In its 2022 Bruen opinion, the Supreme Court characterized the Heller opinion as having applied a “methodological approach” for interpretation of the Second Amendment. However, Bruen’s description and summary partially omitted, and was materially misaligned with, Heller’s actual reasoning. In Heller’s first step of constitutional interpretation, which addressed the first clause of the sentence comprising the Second Amendment, the opinion had selectively not applied the methodological approach described in Bruen; Heller’s first step had applied a different, incompatible methodological approach. Bruen’s description was aligned only with the second step of Heller’s constitutional reasoning, which had addressed the sentence’s second clause. …

School Choice & Religious Discrimination: A Story Of The Illusory "Wall Of Separation," Sour "Lemon Tests," And Overgrown "Baby Blaines", Keren Kendil

Touro Law Review

The significance of elementary school education in shaping a child's future, and the success of society, is immeasurable. The free public school system is built on the premise that every child deserves to have the equal opportunity to learn and succeed. However, this system overlooks the millions of children attending private schools due to their religious and moral convictions. This note delves into the imperative of ensuring universal access to quality elementary education for every child, irrespective of their family's religious affiliations or preferences for private schooling, highlighting the constitutional imperatives of ensuring that every child has the opportunity to …

Livin' On A Legislative Prayer: How Prayer At A School Board Meeting Survives Under An Exception To The Establishment Clause, Brian Muff

Touro Law Review

This Note discusses the circuit split between the Ninth Circuit and the Fifth Circuit on whether prayer should be permitted to open up a school board meeting. First introducing the topic and explaining the history of legislative prayer in America, the Note then discusses governing Supreme Court precedent concerning school prayer and legislative prayer. After analyzing the cases that are the subject of the circuit split, the Note concludes with a recommendation that the Supreme Court permit the recitation of prayer to begin a school board meeting, citing the commonalities between a school board and a legislature and making three …

Breaching The Walls Of The Inviolable Citadel: The Supreme Court's Treatment Of The Lemon Test And Its Progeny, Christopher C. Spinosa Jr.

Touro Law Review

The Supreme Court in Kennedy v. Bremerton finally laid the three-pronged Lemon test to rest. Instead of Lemon and its progeny, Establishment Clause cases are now to be decided based upon the historical practices and understandings of our Founding Fathers. Subsequently, the Eleventh Circuit instructed the Middle District of Florida to its analysis in Rojas v. City of Ocala. In Rojas, a prayer vigil occurred in the City's public square and featured uniformed police chaplains singing and engaging in Christian prayers. After this Note was written and submitted for publication, the district court issued its decision in Rojas …

The Punishment Of Cruel And Unusual Conditions: Extending The Purely Objective Standard Adopted In Kingsley V. Hendrickson To Claims Of Deliberate Indifference, Samantha M. Davis

Touro Law Review

In 2015, the Supreme Court in Kingsley v. Hendrickson held that a pretrial detainee claiming excessive force on the part of the state must only show that the force used was objectively unreasonable. Prior to the adoption of the purely objective standard, many courts around the country were analyzing such cases through a subjective standard to determine whether the officers subjectively knew that the force used against a pretrial detainee was unreasonable. The absence of this objective standard essentially allowed state officials to use excessive force against pretrial detainees without violating an individual’s Constitutional rights. The Supreme Court reasoned that …

The Danger Of Silence: The Negative Effect Of Supreme Court Hesitance To Establish A Bright-Line Rule For Determining Patent Subject Matter Eligibility, Amber N. Roibu

Touro Law Review

Ambiguity surrounding the interpretation of 35 U.S.C. § 101 and the ultimate application of the Alice/Mayo standard for determining patent subject matter eligibility has long plagued the courts, practitioners, and USPTO examiners alike. Maintaining a standard that leads to sheer confusion and, as a result, inconsistent rulings severely muddles the ultimate goal of patent law, to promote innovation. The Supreme Court has been presented with ample opportunities to address these issues, with the Solicitor General consistently recommending that it hear cases that deal with patent-eligibility debates. Nonetheless, the Supreme Court's continued hesitancy to grant certiorari on these cases only further …

Why The United States Should Change Its Standards For Food Additives, Sara Smith

Touro Law Review

Processed food products sold in the United States are vastly different than those in Europe, often containing unnecessary and potentially dangerous additives. Recently, food consumer advocacy groups and reporters are bringing attention to these differences, thereby raising awareness of the poor processed food quality in the United States. The United States should take a new and improved method to food safety that mirrors the European Union’s approach. This Note will compare the differences between food additives in the United States and Europe, and further, will propose solutions to increase regulation on food additives in the United States.

Addressing Governance Challenges Of Digitalisation And Sustainability: The Case Of Central Bank Digital Currency, Heng Wang

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

Digitalisation and environmental sustainability are widely discussed topics. However, their nexus remains underexplored and can pose significant challenges for governments and industries alike. The environmental implications of digitalisation are becoming increasingly pertinent with the advent of central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) and their inherent energy consumption and production of e-waste. On the other hand, digitalisation could potentially support sustainability efforts. This begs the question of how systems of governance, such as regulatory frameworks and internal organisational governance, should harmonise digitalisation and sustainability goals. Such harmonisation entails ensuring that digitalisation processes are environmentally responsible while exploring how the application and features …

Punishing Individuals Who Complied With Intolerably Unjust 'Laws' In Predecessor Regimes, Seow Hon Tan

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

Suppose a 'law' required individuals to report neighbours of a certain race for extermination. If individuals complied with such a 'law' to avoid the penal sanction of a death sentence, should a tribunal involved in the process of transitional justice in a successor regime punish them? Radbruch suggests that intolerably unjust 'laws' are not legally valid. According to Radbruch's Formula, reporting the neighbour would not be justified by law. The logical implication of this Formula is that the act of reporting was, in substance, abetment to murder (or possibly, genocide). Yet, punishing individuals who complied with the purported 'law' in …

Sustainable Development Principles And The Global South In The Context Of Planetary Change, Michelle Lim

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

The principle of sustainable development is thus a part of modern international law by reason not only of its inescapable logical necessity, but also by reason of its wide and general acceptance by the global community.

Vice-President Weeramantry, Separate Opinion, Gabčíkovo-Nagymaros Project (Hungary v Slovkia), 1997 ICJ Rep 7 (25 September), p 95.

A Review Of The 2023/24 International Moots Season, Siyuan Chen

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

This is the 10th annual review1 of Singapore’s performance in international moot court competitions.2 In the highest-tier or Grand Slam competitions,3 SMU won the International Criminal Court world championship for the 5th time (increasing its lead as the tournament record holder for the most world championships), won the Lachs Space Moot world championship in Milan after winning the regional title in Tokyo, and reached the Price world championship final in Oxford for a record 7th time. Other notable results include SMU winning the Refugee and Migration Moot in its debut, winning the Fletcher Insolvency Moot for a record 3rd time, …

Insurrection-Proofing The Courts: Judicial Tools To Protect The Legal System From Litigation Abuse In The Wake Of The 2024 Election, Raymond H. Brescia

SMU Law Review Forum

In the wake of the 2020 presidential election in the United States, lawyers sought to overturn the results of that election filing baseless and far-fetched claims. Courts sanctioned many of those lawyers and at least some of them have been disbarred or are in the last throes of disbarment proceedings. Yet such punishment has come nearly four years after the events that precipitated the need for such professional discipline. Are there things courts can do now, on the immediate eve of the next presidential contest, to “insurrection-proof” their courtrooms to make sure that the legal system is not used, once …

Populist Secularism, Seval Yildirim

Journal Articles

This article argues that in the context of a developing democracy, the rise of religiously oriented parties should be viewed contextually as part of an ongoing process of democratic negotiation and consolidation. Using Turkey as a case study, this article argues that religion and secularism are best viewed as parts of a symbiotic relationship, informing each other’s identity, and defining characteristics through an ongoing process of negotiation.

The article discusses commonly used concepts relevant to secularism in general and argues for the need to distinguish between the secular, secularism, and secularization as a governance project. Through a historical survey of …

The Second Amendment’S Second Sex, Michael Ulrich

Faculty Scholarship

This Essay explores how the Supreme Court’s Second Amendment doctrine perpetuates gender hierarchies and a male monopoly on lethal self-defense. It critiques the narrow “true man” framing that ignores women’s experiences and advocates for a justice-centered framework that incorporates power and privilege into the gun-rights discourse.

Reconstructing Citizenship, Jenny E. Carroll, James Jeter

Faculty Scholarship

In our republican democracy, voting is a central right of citizenship. Yet millions of voters are routinely disenfranchised as a result of convictions or because their carceral status creates barriers to voting. In the past decade, academic scholarship has focused on the impact of disenfranchisement based on conviction. This work has mapped the legal and social implications of policies that deny voting rights to over five million otherwise eligible voters nationwide. Yet this work has some gaps. First, by focusing solely on conviction-based disenfranchisement, the existing scholarship has largely ignored fatal barriers to voting created (and at times perpetuated) by …

Affirmative Action’S Asian American Problem, Huyen Pham, Joseph Thai

Faculty Scholarship

Asian American opponents of affirmative action have received both credit and blame for their pivotal role in toppling racial preferences in university admissions in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard (SFFA). Allied conservatives highlighted evidence of discrimination against Asian American applicants as a compelling reason to dismantle affirmative action; liberals either denied this discrimination existed or tolerated it as an acceptable cost of helping other minority applicants. But largely unacknowledged is the precipitating history of the Supreme Court’s marginalization of Asian American applicants and its decades of tacit approval of their exclusion from affirmative action programs. This unwritten …

Personhood, Politics, Assisted Reproduction, And The Law Post-Dobbs, Myrisha S. Lewis

Faculty Publications

With the end of the federal constitutional right to abortion, state legislatures and state courts have become far more important in the sphere of reproductive rights. Before Dobbs, anti-abortion advocates had significant (albeit increasingly porous) ceilings on what they could prohibit in relation to reproductive health care. A significant check on those actions is now gone.

In the wake of Dobbs, societal debates about personhood have increased and expanded in terms of their practical implications. Before Dobbs, anti-abortion advocates admitted that Roe and subsequent cases limited the scope of their arguments, especially in relation to the legality …

Judicial Individualization Of Punishment In Uae Criminal Law, Hamad Abdulla Alebri

Thesis/ Dissertation Defenses

This study addresses the topic of judicial individualization of punishment in UAE criminal legislation through a descriptive-analytical approach. In the preliminary section, the study defines punishment, which is imposed as a consequence of a crime that has already occurred, and precautionary measures aimed at confronting criminal danger to prevent future harm that could affect society. The characteristics and purposes of both punishment and precautionary measures are detailed, as they cannot be applied unless those implementing them understand their goals and intended outcomes.
The study examines, in the first chapter, the concept of legislative and judicial individualization of punishment, where the …

You're Sending The Wrong Message: Sexual Favoritism And The Workplace, Paige I. Bernick

Tennessee Journal of Law and Policy

No abstract provided.

Fixing A Broken System: Reconciling State Foreclosure Law With Economic Realities, Yianni D. Lagos

Tennessee Journal of Law and Policy

No abstract provided.

Federal Rules Of Evidence 413, 414, And 415: Fifteen Years Of Hindsight And Where The Law Should Go From Here, Bryan C. Hathorn

Tennessee Journal of Law and Policy

No abstract provided.

A Statistical Look At The Supreme Court's 2009 Term, John M. Schleb Ii, Colin Glennon, Hemant Sharma

Tennessee Journal of Law and Policy

Whether a change in membership occurs or not, every Supreme Court term presents a unique set of controversies and decisions for legal scholars to examine. Herein, we offer a discussion of the Court's recently completed 2009-2010 term. Rather than analyzing specific opinions in detail (as many have already done), we generate a comprehensive statistical analysis of justice voting behavior for the term. In particular, we examine consensus and division on the Court, the ideological tenor of the term, voting alignments among the justices, the production of opinions, and the Court's overall ideological spectrum based on individual voting patterns. Ultimately, we …

Representing Agricultural Enterprises: Ethical Concerns, John Dillard

Tennessee Journal of Law and Policy

No abstract provided.

Agricultural Technology, Mike Buschermohle, John Dillard

Tennessee Journal of Law and Policy

No abstract provided.

Issues In Tennessee Agricultural Law & Policy, Julie Bowling, Theresa Denton, Rhedona Rose

Tennessee Journal of Law and Policy

No abstract provided.

Agritourism, Csas, And Direct To Consumer Sales, Julie Bowling, Rob Holland, Cari Rincker

Tennessee Journal of Law and Policy

No abstract provided.

National Agricultural Law Update, Cari Rincker

Tennessee Journal of Law and Policy

No abstract provided.

Employment Law: Smith V. Rock-Tenn. Services: Employer Held Liable For Same-Sex Sexual Harassment In The Workplace, Kaitlyn Dean

Tennessee Journal of Law and Policy

No abstract provided.