Law Commons^™

Compliance Design Options For Offline Cbdcs: Balancing Privacy And Aml/Cft, Panagiotis Michalopoulos, Odunayo Emmanuel Olowookere, Nadia Pocher, Johannes Sedlmeir, Andreas Veneris, Poonam Puri

Conference Papers

Many central banks are researching and piloting digital versions of fiat money, specifically retail Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs). Core to these systems’ design is the ability to perform transactions even without network connectivity. Due to the lack of direct involvement of third parties in these offline transfers, various regulatory requirements that are key in the financial space need to be accommodated. This paper deploys a compliance-by-design approach to evaluate technologies that can balance privacy with anti-money laundering and counterterrorism financing (AML/CFT) measures. It classifies privacy design options and corresponding technical building blocks for offline CBDCs, along with their impact …

Charge The Cockpit Or Die: An Anatomy Of Fear-Driven Political Rhetoric In American Conservatism, Daniel Hostetter

Senior Honors Theses

Subthreshold negative emotions have superseded conscious reason as the initial and strongest motivators of political behavior. Political neuroscience uses the concepts of negativity bias and terror management theory to explore why fear-driven rhetoric plays such an outsized role in determining human political actions. These mechanisms of human anthropology are explored by competing explanations from biblical and evolutionary scholars who attempt to understand their contribution to human vulnerabilities to fear. When these mechanisms are observed in fear-driven political rhetoric, three common characteristics emerge: exaggerated threat, tribal combat, and religious apocalypse, which provide a new framework for explaining how modern populist leaders …

Remodeling The Fruitless Link Between The Security Council And The International Criminal Court: Why Amending The Un Charter Could Be The Greatest Tribute International Politics Has Ever Paid To International Law, Mickey Isakoff

Et Cetera

Established in 2002, the International Criminal Court (“ICC”) has become a symbolic cornerstone of international criminal jurisprudence—prosecuting and convicting individuals for the commission of genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and crimes of aggression—collectively referred to as atrocity crimes.

One way the ICC can lawfully exercise jurisdiction is by referral—in the form of a resolution—from the UN Security Council. The language of Charter of the United Nations and the Rome Statute collaborate to provide an avenue for the Security Council to grant the ICC jurisdiction over atrocity crime situations. Such resolutions grant the ICC full jurisdiction over the suspected …

A Model Of Evidence-Based Practice For Law Schools To Improve System Outcomes, Chance Meyer

St. Mary's Law Journal

No abstract provided.

The Politics And Consequences Of State Secession, Olawale Olumodimu

St. Mary's Law Journal

This Article argues that the non-express prohibition of state secession in the Nigerian Constitution does not automatically allow component states to break away unilaterally. It appears the framers of the Constitution wanted to ensure political continuity and national unity rather than allow for Nigeria’s disintegration. Beyond Nigeria, international law only allows unilateral secession in the context of decolonization and the people’s right to self-determination.

Nigeria has a responsibility to provide self-determination to its citizens; however, secession is not a legal channel to seek self-determination in the absence of targeted, widespread, or systemic criminal acts committed by or on behalf of …

Foiled Foia: The Excessive Exemption, Edward L. Wilkinson Jr.

St. Mary's Law Journal

The Freedom of Information Act permits requestors access to government information unless an exemption applies. Exemption (b)(3)(B) permits the government to protect information if there is a specific reference to a FOIA exemption in the withholding statute. Congress created this new requirement in 2009 in order to remove decision making power from administrative agencies and courts and reserve the power to disclose or withhold information with the legislative branch. This exemption poses problems to courts when there is a clear intent to protect information in the withholding statute without a clear reference to Exemption (b)(3)(B). As a result, courts have …

How Close Is Close Enough: A Step-By-Step Analysis To Resolve The Circuit Split Created By Misunderstanding The Spokeo Ruling, Cason Shipp

St. Mary's Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Cyberspace And The Jus Ad Bellum: The State Of Play, Michael N. Schmitt, Anusha S. Pakkam

International Law Studies

This article examines how States are interpreting one aspect of the international law governing cyber activities, the jus ad bellum. The article focuses on two issues: (1) the prohibition on the use of force found in Article 2(4) of the UN Charter, and (2) the right of self-defense in Article 51. The critical unsettled question regarding the first issue is the threshold at which a hostile cyber operation can be characterized as a “use of force” subject to the prohibition of Article 2(4). Concerning the second issue, a number of unresolved questions plague the application of the right of …

Defiance, Lackland H. Bloom Jr

St. Mary's Law Journal

No abstract provided.

The Mosaic Theory In Fourth Amendment Jurisprudence: The Last Bastion Of Privacy In A Camera-Surveilled World, Auggie Alvarado

St. Mary's Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Fanfiction Flicks: Dissecting The Expected Legal Ramifications Of Harry Styles Homages On The Big Screen, Aydan Urias

Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal (AELJ) Blog

When the trailer for the highly anticipated Amazon Prime film The Idea of You debuted on YouTube in March 2024, viewers were captivated by the striking resemblance between the main character, Hayes Campbell, portrayed by Nicholas Galitzine, and the renowned former British One Direction member, Harry Styles. The film is based on the novel The Idea of You by author Robinne Lee. In a 2017 interview, Lee admitted to beginning the novel after seeing a YouTube video of the boy band One Direction and stated that she was specifically inspired by the personal life of Harry Styles.

This post was …

The Impact Of The “Misclassification” Of Employees As Independent Contractors On New York City’S Performing Arts Institutions And Gig-Based Performers, Katie Sigety

Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal (AELJ) Blog

During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (“CARES Act”) made it possible for independent contractors to access unemployment benefits, or “Pandemic Unemployment Assistance” (“PUA”), for the first time. This created a new awareness for how many gig-based performing artists were considered independent contractors. In the wake of the PUA program expiration in 2021, the DOL identified 425,000 fraudulent unemployment benefit claims filed, totaling $5.5 billion, during the COVID-19 pandemic. The fraudulent claims were filed using the real identities of individuals who were not employed, which were likely stolen during previous data breaches …

Tennessee Legislature Declares That The Human Voice Will Remain ‘The King’ In Nashville, Ryan Bickett

Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal (AELJ) Blog

Last month, Tennessee broke legal ground by passing the Ensuring Likeness Voice and Image Security, or “ELVIS,” Act. This law amends the state’s existing publicity laws to include protections for an individual’s voice in general as well as specifically against artificial intelligence (AI) impersonation. The statute defines a voice as “a sound in a medium that is readily identifiable and attributable to a particular individual, regardless of whether the sound contains the actual voice or a simulation of the voice of the individual.” This standard shows a statutory expansion of legal protections for voices that blossomed with major cases in …

National Pork Producers Council V. Ross And The Dormant Commerce Clause, Jeffrey C. Tuomala

Liberty University Law Review

National Pork Producers Council v. Ross is a dormant Commerce Clause case in which petitioners challenged a California law that restricts the instate sale of pork that comes from breeding pigs “confined in a cruel manner.” Because California comprises 13% of the national pork market, and because most pork consumed in California is raised in other states, the cost of compliance with the law falls largely on out-of-state producers. Pork Producers claimed that the California law placed an excessively heavy burden on interstate commerce, but they did not claim that California targeted out-of-state producers. The Court of Appeals dismissed the …

Groff V. Dejoy And Title Vii's "Undue Hardship" Standard, Natalie C. Rhoads

Liberty University Law Review

In June 2023, the Supreme Court issued its decision in Groff v. DeJoy, where it clarified the standard governing an employer’s obligation to make a religious accommodation under Title VII. For over 50 years, lower courts had been using the Court’s language in Trans World Airlines, Inc. v. Hardison, that a religious accommodation constitutes an “undue hardship” under Title VII if it would cause the employer to incur “more than a de minimis cost.” This Article explains the flawed Hardison standard and analyzes the Court’s decision in Groff, including the Court’s statement that an “undue hardship” under …

Reassessing Tyler V. Hennepin County: A Critical Examination Of The Supreme Court’S Federalist Overreach In Discovering A Constitutionally Protected Property Right In A Takings Case Involving A Sovereign State’S Real Property Tax-Foreclosure Sale, Tory L. Lucas

Liberty University Law Review

This Article features the case of a real property owner who disclaimed all her burdens under state law for over six years yet later claimed substantial benefits under federal law. Because this distorts any rational burden-benefit analysis, this Article scrutinizes the U.S. Supreme Court’s groundbreaking decision in Tyler v. Hennepin County that radically reinterpreted the Takings Clause of the U.S. Constitution. In Tyler, a unanimous Supreme Court departed from the consensus among the lower federal courts and discovered a novel property right—the constitutional entitlement to surplus proceeds from a sovereign State’s real property tax-foreclosure sale. Despite Minnesota’s clear and …

303 Creative And The Question Of Governmental Authority To Dictate Commercial Transactions, Rena M. Lindevaldsen

Liberty University Law Review

In June 2023, the nation awaited a decision from the United States Supreme Court in 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis. At its core, the case presented the question of whether free speech rights outweighed a state’s interest in prohibiting discrimination through its public accommodation laws. If the Supreme Court had ruled against 303 Creative and compelled its owner, Lorie Smith, to design a website for same-sex weddings despite Ms. Smith’s sincerely-held religious beliefs that such marriages are not biblical, free speech rights in America would have been at the mercy of what the majority deemed acceptable speech.

Although the …

Biden V. Nebraska: Student Loan Debt Forgiveness And The Dangers Of The Administrative State, Rodney D. Chrisman

Liberty University Law Review

In April of 2020, then-candidate Joe Biden promised that, if he were elected to the Presidency, he would “[i]mmediately cancel a minimum of $10,000 of student debt per person, as proposed by Senator Warren in the midst of the coronavirus crisis.” Once in office, the Biden administration found that Congress would not pass the type of extensive student loan debt forgiveness that the President wanted. Accordingly, President Biden did what has become all too common in recent presidential administrations— he acted by executive fiat through an administrative agency to accomplish a policy goal that he could not get passed through …

Gambling On Housing: Is Adverse Possession A Valid Tool For The Reallocation Of Vacant Property?, Kelsey Dunn

Texas A&M Journal of Property Law

Adverse possession, a staple of first-year law school property classes, never fails to shock the conscience of unsuspecting law students. Some are surprised to learn that a squatter can acquire legal title to another person’s property by moving in and using it for a period of years. In recent years, housing activists have begun to view the doctrine as an outside-the-box solution to our nation’s housing crisis. There are dozens of vacant homes for every person experiencing homelessness in America. Why not give those properties to people who actually use them?

However, this well-intended impulse does not square with reality. …

Royalty Wars: The Dark Side To Raising The Minimum Royalty Rate For Oil And Gas Leasing On Federal Land, Audrey A. Helm

Texas A&M Journal of Property Law

In 2022, the Inflation Reduction Act took marked steps toward changing the course of the oil and gas industry for the first time in over 100 years, requiring that all federal oil and gas leases issued for the following decade have a minimum royalty rate of 16.67%. This paved the way for a major adjustment in the oil and gas industry, which has seen a 12.5% minimum royalty for the past century. In 2023, the Department of the Interior proposed to permanently codify these changes, citing purposes of ensuring a fair return to taxpayers and protecting the environment.

This Article …

Climate Change And Implications For National Security And International Law In The Arctic, Choteau X. Kammel

Texas A&M Journal of Property Law

Climate change threatens national security due to the potential it carries to destabilize fragile regions, damage military installations, and exacerbate existing tensions between countries. While these effects will be global, the Arctic region represents a microcosm of a future where climate change affects the strategic priorities of states and renders existing governing institutions inadequate. Moreover, climate change will challenge the collage of “soft” international law that governs the Arctic, administered primarily through the Arctic Council’s collaborative forum. While this system has been effective, the opening of the Far North to increased sea passage, commercial exploitation, and great powers’ interests necessitates …

Brief Amicus Curiae Of The International Council Of Thirteen Indigenous Grandmothers, The Mica Group, And A Tribal Elder In Support Of Plaintiff-Appellant's Petition For Full En Banc Rehearing, Stephanie Hall Barclay, Meredith Holland Kessler, Francesca Matozzo

Court Briefs

No. 21-15295
Apache Stronghold v. United States of America

On Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of Arizona, Honorable Steven P. Logan (2:21-cv-00050-PHX-SPL)

From the Summary of the Argument

Once again, the Apache community has been denied the rights afforded to it by the Religious Freedom Restoration Act’s plain text—this time by a panel of the en banc court in a deeply contested and divided decision. The full Ninth Circuit should rehear the case en banc to restore the Religious Freedom Restoration Act’s full scope of protection for the Indigenous community, who has uniquely been deprived …

Discharging Equity: Harrington V. Purdue Pharma L.P. And The Validity Of Nonconsensual Third-Party Releases, Andrew Klauber

Duke Journal of Constitutional Law & Public Policy Sidebar

In September 2019, Purdue Pharma L.P. petitioned for bankruptcy in the Southern District of New York. Purdue, which the Sackler family had owned and operated for decades, developed and aggressively marketed addictive opioid products, contributing to the modern opioid epidemic. The tsunami of litigation arising from the opioid epidemic gave rise to claims against Purdue and the Sackler family estimated to total more than $40 trillion, causing Purdue to petition for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

In Purdue’s plan of reorganization, it employed a nonconsensual third-party release to discharge claims against the Sackler family. Nonconsensual third-party releases controversially enjoin parties to a …

Cardozo Celebrates Annual Donors & Scholars Reception, Benjamin N. Cardozo School Of Law

Cardozo News 2024

Cardozo’s annual Donors & Scholars event, where students meet those who finance their scholarships and stipends, was held April 15.

Foreign Subsidy Regulation – Will The United States Follow The European Union, Or Lead From Behind?, Hannah Perez

Cardozo International & Comparative Law Review (CICLR) Blog

Back in December of 2022, the European Union (EU) adopted the Foreign Subsidies Regulation which requires notification and approval for certain mergers and other deals that ‘distort’ the internal market through receipt of foreign subsidies. One of the central concerns for the European Commission (Commission) in adopting this rule was curbing the “unfair advantage” that subsidies create over domestic companies in attempting to win contract bids. This regulation went into effect in July 2023 and has recently been put to work with the first in-depth foreign subsidy probe of the Bulgarian Ministry of Transport and Communications’ contract to acquire twenty …

Where Do Families Come From? The Law Of Family Definition, Katharine Baker

BYU Law Review

Why does the law recognize families? Sometimes family recognition serves to foster cooperative communities in which sharing norms, more than the market or the government, determine rights and obligations. These communities often take care of dependents and serve as important sources of individual self-determination and pluralism. At other times, family delineation serves a corrective purpose, when it forces family members who are not sharing with each other to do so. At still other times, family delineation serves a distributive purpose, as when the law uses “family” definition to distribute resources to determine an intended beneficiary. This use of “family” for …

Ordinary Meaning As Last Resort: The Meaning Of "Undue Hardship" In Title Vii, James Phillips

BYU Law Review

Ordinary meaning reigns supreme in modern statutory interpretation. Yet that supremacy can cause an interpreter to miss specialized meaning. And the Supreme Court has never fully clarified when ordinary meaning must give way to specialized or technical meaning.

This Article attempts to provide doctrinal clarification as to when one should use ordinary as opposed to other meanings through putting the doctrinal pieces together in a full and coherent way. That doctrinal clarity leads to a methodological refinement: rather than the starting point, ordinary meaning is the ending point of statutory interpretation.

This Article applies this doctrine and methodology, as well …

Navigating Section Three From Griffin’S Case To The Case Of Couy Griffin: Who Should Decide Its Longstanding Questions?, Austin Carpenter

BYU Law Review

Section Three of the Fourteenth Amendment was a long-dormant constitutional provision enacted to bar former Confederates from political office. Then, as a result of the shocking political violence at the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021, Section Three suddenly found itself resurrected into the national political discussion. Scholars and courts are now grappling with Section Three’s original meaning and modern application to those politicians and office holders whose conduct led to the events on January 6 — events that interrupted the peaceful transfer of power and left a stain on the United States’ democratic tradition.

Yet, use of Section …

Expectation V. Reality: Practical Problems With The Right Of First Refusal As A Defense Against Eminent Domain, Aerin Christensen

BYU Law Review

In the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Kelo v. New London, many states enacted new laws to protect property owners from eminent domain. One possible defense for property owners is a statutory right of first refusal. In theory, this is a common-sense protection that ensures that if property is not needed for a public use, it is returned to the original owner. Unfortunately, in practice a right of first refusal is not always an effective protection for property owners.

The plaintiff’s experience in the Utah case Cardiff Wales, LLC v. Washington County School District demonstrates Utah’s statutory …

The Harm In The Fiduciary Myth, Kelli Alces Williams

BYU Law Review

Fiduciary law has become the doctrine of choice in scholarship aiming to protect vulnerable parties from powerful decisionmakers. But fiduciary law cannot fill all the gaps in those impersonal, public relationships because the beneficiary class is large, disparate, and widely dispersed. Public leaders and decision makers cannot zealously pursue the interests of all parties vulnerable to their decision making and they are often driven by various personal interests in choosing which set of beneficiary interests to prioritize. The persistent myth that leaders of large groups are fiduciaries and that fiduciary obligation is the answer to all power imbalance problems harms …