Law Commons^™

Cowboy Apocalypse: Religion And The Myth Of The Vigilante Messiah, By Rachel Wagner. New York: Nyu Press, 2023. 320 Pages. $35.00. Isbn 978-1479831623, Scot Loyd

Journal of Hate Studies

Scot Loyd, a heritage studies scholar, reviews Rachel Wagner’s Cowboy Apocalypse: Religion and the Myth of the Vigilante Messiah. An Interdisciplinary study drawing from religious studies, media theory, and cultural analysis, Cowboy Apocalypse examines how American video games, film, television, and other forms of popular culture engage redemptive violence, particularly at the hands of lone heroes.

Klandamentalism: Bob Jones At The Intersection Of Revivalism, Politics, And White Supremacy, By Camille Kaminski Lewis. Clemson University Press, 2025. Rhetorics Of Conflict. 352 Pages. $128.00. Isbn 978-1638041566, Anderson Rouse

Journal of Hate Studies

A historian by training, Anderson Rouse reviews Camille Kaminski Lewis’s Klandamentalism: Bob Jones at the Intersection of Revivalism, Politics, and White Supremacy, a study of twentieth century religion and race that examines the fusion of Protestant fundamentalism and Ku Klux Klan activity and ideology. Klandementalism focuses on the work of Bob Jones through archives beyond that of the university that bears his name, illustrating how Bob Jones University became an example of the institutionalization of racialized Protestant politics.

Tell Her Story: Eleanor Bumpurs And The Police Killing That Galvanized New York City, By Lashawn Harris. Beacon Press, 2025. 352 Pages. $35.00. Isbn 978-0807011966, Thomas Aiello

Journal of Hate Studies

A historian and scholar of African studies, Thomas Aiello reviews LaShawn Harris’ Tell Her Story: Eleanor Bumpurs and the Police Killing that Galvanized New York City, which details the police killing of a 66-year old grandmother during a court-ordered eviction from her apartment in 1984, a time of elevated state violence against dispossessed people in New YorkCity, and its consequences, including the trial of the officer charged in her shooting and the public’s response. Tell Her Story examines the intersecting oppressions of racism, classism, sexism, ableism, and weight-based discrimination that shaped Bumpers’ experiences with bureaucracy, especially around housing, and …

Carla The Rescuer. Produced By Kristine F. Hoover And Clement Lye; Directed By Clement Lye. In English. 2024; Color; 128 Minutes. Rescuer Productions., Mary Pat Treuthart

Journal of Hate Studies

Reviewed by Mary Pat Treuthart, Carla the Rescuer is a feature-length documentary about the life and work of Carla Peperzak, a Dutch girl whose father managed to get her Jewish identity marker removed from her identification papers after Germany invaded the Netherlands in 1940. Peperzak used her relative freedom to join the Dutch Resistance, forging documents and assisting Jews in finding hiding places. Though Carla the Rescuer focuses on Peperzak’s youthful bravery, her family only learned of it when her granddaughter asked her to speak about her wartime experiences to the child’s middle school class. Peperzak thus became a later-in-life …

“A Candle In The Darkness”: On Palestine Uprooted: Nakba Past And Present At The Canadian Museum For Human Rights, Itay Zutra

Journal of Hate Studies

A scholar of Jewish studies, Itay Zutra reviews On Palestine Uprooted: Nakba Past and Present, an exhibit at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights that opened in June 2026 and is expected to run through November 2028. The exhibit, curated by Isabelle Masson, recognizes the historic and ongoing displacement of Palestinians by the Israeli government by including both historic relics from the initial removal of Palestinians in 1948 and contemporary art engaging continued violence there. Items include artifacts from the life of physician Izzeldin Abuelaish, who lost his daughters and niece to an Israeli attack on their home even …

Chapter 1: Sanctions And The Shadow Fleet: Terrorism Forfeiture And Operation Economic Fury, James Kraska

International Law Studies

No abstract provided.

Patronage Pardons, Lee Kovarsky

Duke Law Journal

Abuse of presidential pardon power is taking a new and frightening turn. The Donald Trump administration is using clemency, including pardons, to signal impunity to regime allies contemplating misconduct. Such clemency has a predictable effect: it induces loyalist crime by reducing the expected penalty. "Patronage pardoning" refers to the clemency practices that power this loyalty-for-protection exchange. Those practices pose a grave threat to the rules-based constitutional order, and they are the subject of this Article.

Some historical observations predicate the diagnostic and prescriptive arguments that come later. Most importantly, the Framers concentrated federal pardon power in the president because they …

Ensuring "The Right To Live In The World": The Right To Repair Powered Wheelchairs, Maximillian J. Grahl

Duke Law Journal

Twenty-seven years ago, in Olmstead v. L.C., the Supreme Court held that improperly institutionalizing people with disabilities is a form of unlawful discrimination. In doing so, the Court acknowledged that people with disabilities have a right to live free from confinement. Yet today, repair restrictions and outdated Medicare standards combine to threaten powered-wheelchair users' ability to live out in the world. Some states have responded by passing right-to-repair laws, which require powered-wheelchair manufacturers and suppliers to provide the resources necessary for more accessible and more timely repairs. This Note analyzes these state laws in the context of previous right-to …

Private Equity For All: The Paradoxical Push To Democratize Private Markets, William W. Clayton, Elisabeth De Fontenay

Duke Law Journal

The recent push to open private equity and other private assets to retail investors represents one of the most profound changes to U.S. capital markets in decades. This "retailization" effort is often framed as an overdue democratization of superior investment opportunities. Indeed, private equity has long been viewed as special, both for its market-beating returns and its success in making companies more profitable. Yet it has historically been off-limits to retail investors.

This Article argues that the push to democratize private equity is subject to a glaring paradox: Expanding access to private equity undermines the very benefits that access aims …

To Spend Or Not To Spend: Strengthening Congressional Oversight On Executive Impoundment, Grant Scherer

Emory Law Journal Online

The [H]ouse of [R]epresentatives cannot only refuse, but they alone can propose, the supplies requisite for the support of government. . . . This power over the purse may, in fact, be regarded as the most complete and effectual weapon with which any constitution can arm the immediate representatives of the people, for obtaining a redress of every grievance, and for carrying into effect every just and salutary measure.

James Madison, Federalist No. 58[1]

While the President may initiate the annual federal budget process with his or her budget request, the Constitution confers the “power of the purse” on …

Modern Tribulations Of Modern Trials: Ai-Generated Content Of Deceased Victims At Sentencing And Family Law’S Cure From Ho’Oponopono & Restorative Justice, Ethan Michael Knoll

St. Mary's Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Scenes From An Italian Restaurant: The Difficulties, Concerns, And Effects Of Protecting Cultural Elements In Restaurant Trade Dress, Lauren Lepre

St. Mary's Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Click To Sue: Defining Receipt Of Eeoc Notices In The Digital Age, Robert J. Toth Jr.

St. Mary's Law Journal

Federal employment discrimination statutes condition a claimant’s right to sue on timely receipt of a “right-to-sue” notice from the United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC).  Courts have historically treated certified mail slips as sufficient to trigger a claimant’s ninety-day filing window, regardless of when the claimant opened or retrieved the letter.  In the digital era, the EEOC increasingly issues notices through email and its online Public Portal, raising questions about when electronic notice constitutes “receipt.”

This Article examines recent federal appellate court decisions—Lax v. Mayorkas, McDonald v. St. Louis University, and García-Gesualdo v. Honeywell Aerospace of Puerto Rico, …

Containing The Explosion: Proposed Tort Reform To Address Nuclear Jury Verdicts In Texas, Jax Harvey

St. Mary's Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Purging Politics: A Proposal To Remove Gerrymandering In Texas, Lauren Teske

St. Mary's Law Journal

No abstract provided.

From Conflict To Clarity: Drafting Parenting Plans Grounded In Practicality And Precision, Ariana D. Meyers

Child and Family Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Legal Orphans: Defining Who Is The Mother In Gestational Surrogacy Agreements, Emma Savoie

Child and Family Law Journal

No abstract provided.

The Legal Gaps Of Financial Sextortion In The Age Of Artificial Intelligence: Why The Take It Down Act Is Not Enough To Protect Children, Andrea Toussaint

Child and Family Law Journal

No abstract provided.

The Rippling Effects Of Lucia: How A 2018 Constitutional Violation By The Securities And Exchange Commission Continues To Affect Childhood Disability Cases Under Titles Ii And Xvi Of The Social Security Administration, Trixy Lora

Child and Family Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Legal Shifts And Judicial Inconsistencies In Strict Liability After The Omnibus Law: A Critical Analysis Of Indonesian Environmental Law For Responsible Mining And Esg Compliance, Nurul Listiyani, Khenza Atthaya Namira Yulianto

Journal of Environmental Science and Sustainable Development

The legal significance of strict liability in mining arises from the sector’s capacity to generate technically complex, diffuse, and long-latency environmental harm that is difficult to address through fault-based litigation alone. This study aims to evaluate how the post-Omnibus Law reformulation of Article 88 of Law No. 32 of 2009 has affected the doctrinal autonomy, judicial consistency, and practical enforcement of strict liability in Indonesian environmental law. The research used normative doctrinal legal research including statutory, case-law, conceptual, comparative, and evaluative analyses. The data cover the 2009–2025 period and consist of two core statutory formulations of Article 88, the Job …

From Scrolls To Algorithms: A Critical Analysis Of Generative Ai, Digital Preservation, And Ranganathan’S Normative Philosophy, Madhu K S

Book Chapters

The paper discusses the developments in human information access across three historical paradigms including physical scarcity, digital abundance, and synthetic algorithmic mediation with Generative AI. History is discussed with the philosophical aspects of Floridi’s Philosophy of Information, Christine Borgman’s Digital Scholarship Framework, and S R Ranganathan’s Normative Library Science. This conceptual paper explores the transition from finding documents to creating answers with AI it has changed human thinking and reliability on information. This transition has changed how people believe and trust the source of information. This paper looks at the material ethics regarding how commercial large language models (LLM) are …

On A Collision Course: The Twenty-First Amendment, The Dormant Commerce Clause, And Physical Presence Laws, Burke Craighead

St. Mary's Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Birch On Fetal Sentience, Claudia Passos-Ferreira

Animal Sentience

Birch proposes that human fetuses be recognized as sentience candidates from 12 weeks, on the grounds that midbrain-centered theories fall within the zone of reasonable disagreement among theories of consciousness. I raise a methodological and a policy problem for his view. Methodologically, whether the midbrain-centered view belongs within the zone is disputed, so there is no consensus about the consensus.  Furthermore, the evidence Birch discusses for 12 weeks does not actually estimate the onset of sentience; the proposed threshold tracks anatomical rather than functional onset. On policy, the US Supreme Court’s Dobbs ruling shows that fetal sentience is difficult to …

“[Y]Et Another Victory For Deal Certainty”: Chancery Court Orders Specific Performance Of “Hell-Or-High-Water” Covenant To Remedy Reluctant Acquiror’S Obstruction Of Cfius Approval Process, Robert S. Reder, Ricky Bayon-Barrera

Vanderbilt Law Review En Banc

No abstract provided.

Chancery Court Refuses To Dismiss Claim That Activision Directors Failed To Satisfy Revlon Standard Of Conduct In Sale To Microsoft, Robert S. Reder, Jae Ho Yoon

Vanderbilt Law Review En Banc

No abstract provided.

Cognitive Resilience At The Edge: Hyperdimensional Computing Versus Deep Learning For Hardware-Degraded Rf Classification, Adrian B. Cisneros, Jeong Yang

Military Cyber Affairs

Autonomous Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) operating in contested electromagnetic environments must classify Radio Frequency (RF) signals on edge silicon that degrades over the mission lifetime due to thermal stress, radiation, and manufacturing variation. Deep neural networks dominate RF classification on pristine hardware, but their weights are precise and interdependent, causing catastrophic accuracy collapse as the underlying chip ages. We investigate whether Hyperdimensional Computing (HDC), a brain-inspired paradigm that distributes information across thousands of dimensions, can provide a reliability floor where Deep Learning fails. Using the RadioML 2016.10A dataset filtered to five digital modulations relevant to drone command-and-control links, we trained …

Mitigating Common Vulnerabilities And Exposures In Cobol-Based Critical Systems Using The Strangler-Fig Pattern, Lauren E. Caruso, Vincent J. Compeau, Assefaw H. Gebremedhin

Military Cyber Affairs

COBOL-based legacy systems continue to underpin critical infrastructure in banking and government sectors despite their age and associated cybersecurity risks. Originally developed through a Department of Defense–sponsored initiative to standardize business computing, COBOL remains widely used in mission-critical environments. However, these systems face increasing vulnerabilities due to outdated security architectures, workforce shortages, and rising maintenance costs. This paper examines cybersecurity and operational challenges associated with COBOL systems and evaluates the Strangler Fig pattern as a modernization strategy that enables incremental replacement while maintaining continuity. The findings highlight implications for financial institutions and public-sector organizations dependent on legacy infrastructure.

From Framework To Toolchain: Implementing Zero Trust Architecture In Cloud-Native Environments For Dow Compliance, Shelby C. Snyder

Military Cyber Affairs

Federal agencies face a fiscal year 2027 target for enterprise-wide Zero Trust deployment, but NIST SP 800-207A defines logical components without identifying the Kubernetes technologies that implement them. This paper proposes a three-tier mapping of the Policy Engine, Policy Administrator, and Policy Enforcement Point to service mesh, microsegmentation, and perimeter tooling, stating the criteria by which each component is classified. It then applies a defined rubric to six Zero Trust vendors across component alignment, Kubernetes capability, federal authorization posture, and evidence quality, finding that no single vendor covers all three tiers. The mapping is a testable architectural proposition; a Stage …

Hybrid Deep (Cnn-Bilstm) Intrusion Detection For Defense And Mission-Critical Networks, Corey A Cheng, Jermaine Anim-Addo, Asma Jakir Hussain, Zion O Smith-Fox, Sanjay Goel, Yuksel Celik

Military Cyber Affairs

This article examines how hybrid deep learning can strengthen intrusion detection for military and defense networks. Using the CSE-CIC-IDS2018 dataset, the study evaluates a CNN-BiLSTM model designed to detect benign traffic and multiple attack categories, including DDoS, DoS, botnet, brute-force, web attack, and infiltration activity. The model achieved strong multi-class detection performance, with 0.9893 accuracy and 0.9979 ROC-AUC. The findings suggest that AI-supported intrusion detection can improve cyber defense operations, analyst triage, and protection of mission-critical networks.

Foreward, Todd Arnold

Military Cyber Affairs

No abstract provided.