Law Commons^™

"Florence's First Mayor", William Lindsey Mcdonald

Research Articles

The article briefly discusses the significance of Alexander Hamilton Wood, the first mayor of Florence, Alabama.

Genai And The Self Represented Litigant, Kristen Clarke Kellems, Kristen Clarke Kellems, Kristen Clarke Kellems

Faculty Publications

Generative AI is making it easier for self-represented litigants to produce polished legal documents, but easier filing does not necessarily lead to better outcomes. This presentation examines how AI may expand access to courts while increasing weak filings, early dismissals, and burdens on the legal system.

The session reviews attorneys’ duties of technological competence, confidentiality, supervision, and citation verification. It also distinguishes general-purpose AI from legal research tools. Using a Utah third-party custody and guardianship problem, the presentation compares several tools based on statutory accuracy, legal comprehension, treatment of case law, and completeness. The results show that identifying controlling cases …

Guardians In Orbit: Legal Justifications And Limits Of Defensive Satellite Operations, Yurika Ishii

International Law Studies

The deployment of “bodyguard satellites”—spacecraft designed to autonomously detect and counter hostile space objects—has moved from classified capability development to explicit national security policy across a growing number of States. This article examines the circumstances under which interference with another State’s satellite may be legally justified under international law, analyzing several possible grounds: self-defense under Article 51 of the UN Charter, forcible countermeasures, non-forcible countermeasures, and necessity. Drawing on a survey of national space defense policies, jurisprudence of the International Court of Justice, and the law of State responsibility, the article reaches two principal conclusions. First, across all justificatory frameworks, …

Ndls Communicator: Week Of 09.14.26, Notre Dame Law School

NDLS Communicator

The Latest News

• Religious Liberty Clinic requests emergency relief from U.S. Supreme Court to protect Orthodox Jew's religious exercise

Student News

• J.S.D. candidate Valentina Salazar

Faculty Briefs

• Lloyd Mayer
• Mary Ellen O'Connell
• Paolo G. Carozza
• Carter Snead
• Emily Bremer
• Rick Garnett
• Christine Venter
• Dennis Wieboldt

Events

• Faculty Colloquium - Paul Yowell, University of Oxford
• Faculty and Staff Birthday Celebration
• 2025-26 SCOTUS Recap
• Homecoming 2026: Notre Dame vs. Michigan State game, September 19, 2026

Looking Ahead

• Law & Economics Workshop: Stephan Wernicke, Humboldt University of Berlin Delaware in the European Union? EU Inc. – A New European Corporate Legal Form
• Conversation …

Beyond Thinking Like A Lawyer: Lonergan's Transcendental Method And The Formation Of Ethical Lawyers, Sigrid Vendrell-Polanco

San Jose - Lonergan Chair in Catholic Philosophy

Law schools have long promised to teach students to "think like lawyers."1 We teach students to read cases carefully, identify legally significant facts, extract rules from precedent, distinguish adverse authority, construct arguments, and predict how courts are likely to resolve disputes. These are indispensable skills. But they leave open a more fundamental question: What kind of lawyer are we teaching our students to become?2 Legal education is extraordinarily good at teaching students how to determine what the law is and what the law allows. We are perhaps less intentional about teaching them to ask what, as lawyers, they ought to …

Using Lonergan’S Method To Instruct For The Scholar: St. Mary’S Law Review On Race And Social Justice, Mike Martinez Jr

San Jose - Lonergan Chair in Catholic Philosophy

The Scholar began in the 2000s to bring light to the social justice issues of the day: Hopwood, Proposition 187 in California, Amendment 2 in Colorado, and the aggressive assault on civil rights laws, immigrants’ rights, and bilingual education. The origins of this publication began as a grassroots effort of six law students working to make a difference and contribute to the legal conversation by advocating for traditionally marginalized groups. The vision of the founding editors provided a voice for ethnic minorities, LGBTQ+, immigrants, racial minorities, women, and other disenfranchised groups often silenced in our legal discourse. The concept and …

Tax Exceptionalism After Loper Bright, Conor Clarke, Noah Hertz Marks

Faculty Publications

In this article, the authors consider what Loper Bright means for the relevance of Mayo Foundation and National Muffler as well as its broader implications for agency-specific deference, and they examine older case law that can be helpful post-Loper Bright.

Mmu: 09/14/26-09/20/26, Student Bar Association

Monday Morning Update

This Week @ NDLS

Mass Times

Commons Daily Menu

Saint of the Week

General Announcements

"How Do I Design My Law Course?": A Quick Guide For New Professors, Steven Arrigg Koh

Faculty Scholarship

How do professors start teaching law? This question is a particular challenge for new law professors, who often lack resources for course design. Written from the perspective of a recently tenured law professor, this Essay offers four major categories of decisions: semester structure, classroom, final exam, and “professorial personality.” It argues that, for each decision, reasonable minds can differ. This Essay also provides some personal reflections on the decision-making to illustrate how one professor might weigh various considerations in course design. A final Appendix is a checklist for new professors.

Between Blockchain And Black Markets: South Africa's Legal Readiness For Crypto-Driven Cyberfraud, Sagwadi Mabunda, Yassin Chande

Communications of the IIMA

This paper examines whether the proliferation of cryptocurrency-facilitated fraud warrants a reclassification of the terrestrial crime of fraud into the distinct statutory offence of cyberfraud under South African law. Engaging with established fraud typologies — exit scams, Initial Coin Offering (ICO) scams, Ponzi schemes, pump-and-dump schemes, and market manipulation — the article tests their definitional fit against both the common law of fraud and section 8 of the Cybercrimes Act 19 of 2020. Through a hypothetical composite scenario combining multiple fraud typologies, the article demonstrates that whilst cryptocurrency significantly amplifies the reach and complexity of fraudulent schemes, it functions primarily …

Cardozo Law News Brief: September 11, 2026, Benjamin N. Cardozo School Of Law

Cardozo Law News Briefs

Highlights from the September 11, 2026 Cardozo Law News Brief include:

• Professor Matthew Wansley was quoted in The New York Times about Tesla’s Cybercab and the challenges of developing a reliable automated driving system.
• Professor Luis Calderón Gómez spoke to The Washington Post about the Trump administration’s proposal to remove tax exemptions from schools that consider race in admissions and the potential for legal challenges.
• Professor Zalman Rothschild spoke to Gothamist about New York’s vaccine requirements and renewed constitutional challenges to vaccination mandates.
• Adjunct Professor Gary Galperin was quoted in Newsweek about the Lindsay Clancy mistrial and the possibility of …

Twenty-Five Years After September 11, 2001: Display Boards, Natasha Nandlal Varyani

Institute for Race and the Law

These slides are quotes by the contributors to the book “Twenty-Five Years After September 11, 2001: A Collection of Personal Narratives from the Day and What Followed, edited by Professor Natasha Nandlal Varyani, Director of the Institute for Race and the Law. The slides were displayed at the program “September 11th: 25 Years After, Remembrance, Reflection & Community,” held at the John Joseph Moakley United States Courthouse on Friday, September 11, 2026. The Roger Williams University Institute for Race and the Law, the Boston Bar Association, and the South Asian Bar Association of Greater Boston co-sponsored this program. The book …

Twenty-Five Years After September 11, 2001: A Collection Of Personal Narratives From The Day And What Followed, Natasha Nandlal Varyani

Institute for Race and the Law

This book is a collection of personal reflections on 9/11, edited by Professor Natasha Nandlal Varyani, Director of the Institute for Race and the Law, printed and distributed at the program “September 11th: 25 Years After, Remembrance, Reflection & Community,” held at the John Joseph Moakley United States Courthouse on Friday, September 11, 2026. The Roger Williams University Institute for Race and the Law, the Boston Bar Association, and the South Asian Bar Association of Greater Boston co-sponsored this program. A collection of quotes from the contributors is also available in the collection.

Child Welfare History Of Prison Inmates Would Provide Meaningful Data For Foster Care Policy Research And Planning, Maggie Zehring

Student Scholarship

Child welfare intervention in the United States continues to operate distinctly different in each states and community without a full picture of the overall system’s efficacy. While federal and state agencies collect extensive information on children’s movement in and out of the foster care system and related adjudication, there lacks a nationwide understanding of how kids fare after exiting the system. This note argues that Departments of Correction (DOC) nationwide should collect child‑welfare history from incarcerated individuals as part of existing intake procedures and regularly communicate the data for the federal Children’s Bureau to aggregate for longitudinal analysis of foster …

Crime From The Perspective Of The Holy Qur’An, Mustafa Mahdi Lafta Al-Sudani, Murtadha Fathi

Imam Ja'afar Al-Sadiq University Journal of Legal Studies

This research addresses the concept of crime in light of the Holy Quran, in terms of definition, types, punishments, causes, and prevention. It seeks to clarify the Quranic approach in addressing the criminal phenomenon as a social, moral, and legal phenomenon. The research relied on the inductive analytical method of relevant Quranic texts, with reference to books of interpretation and Islamic jurisprudence. The research concluded that the Holy Quran presented an integrated system to reduce crime based on doctrinal, moral, and legislative reform together.

Developing A Deep Learning-Based Artificial Intelligence System For Detecting Scientific Misinformation On Digital Platforms, Shorouq Al-Awawdeh, Ayah Al- Jafari

Middle East Journal of Communication Studies

Objectives: This study develops and evaluates an Arabic scientific misinformation detection system by fine-tuning AraBERT-base-v2. It examines the effects of early stopping and input sequence length on model performance, interprets selected linguistic characteristics associated with misleading content, and discusses the limitations of using machine-translated data.

Methodology: The study adopted a mixed-methods design, employing a systematic integration of quantitative and qualitative approaches, supported by an interpretive qualitative reading. The initial database consisted of 23,546 records, including 123 Arabic articles collected from the Akeed, Sheek, and Taqeen platforms, and 23,423 foreign-language records drawn from the GossipCop and PolitiFact collections within FakeNewsNet. After …

Getting A Special Education: Parents, Lawyers, And The Politics Of Disability In Postwar Pennsylvania, Emma Gabriel

Swarthmore Undergraduate History Journal

This paper explores the relationship between white parent advocates in Pennsylvania and public interest lawyers, whose litigation efforts legitimized the construction of an implicitly white disabled class in the mid-twentieth century. This analysis sheds light on the ways in which school reform became a key element in the simultaneous construction and renegotiation of intellectual disability and race in the postwar era, and foregrounded the adoption of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) in 1975.

The Past, Present, And Likely Future Of Shareholder Arbitration, Mohsen Manesh

Villanova Law Review (1956 - )

No abstract provided.

Grounded: How Doj Merger Analysis Left Consumers Stranded, Deja Graham, Christine P. Bartholomew

Villanova Law Review (1956 - )

No abstract provided.

Agents, Inc., Kevin Werbach

Villanova Law Review (1956 - )

No abstract provided.

Highway Robbery: The Eleventh Circuit Correctly Finds Fbar Willful-Violation Penalties Subject To The Eighth Amendment In United States V. Schwarzbaum, Claire Borland

Villanova Law Review (1956 - )

No abstract provided.

Ending Randomized Outcomes: Using Consumer Protection Laws To Regulate Video Game Loot Boxes And Monetization Practices That Target Children, Dennis Reilly

Villanova Law Review (1956 - )

No abstract provided.

Video Killed The Privacy Star: How The Sixth Circuit's Cabined Interpretation Of "Consumer" In Salazar V. Paramount Global Risks Gutting The Vppa's Privacy Protections, Nadine Fernando

Villanova Law Review (1956 - )

No abstract provided.

Ndls Communicator: Week Of 09.08.26, Notre Dame Law School

NDLS Communicator

The Latest News

• Notre Dame Exoneration Justice Clinic Client Iris Seabolt Exonerated
• Law professor Randy Kozel to succeed Tricia Bellia as Chair of Faculty Board on Athletics and NCAA Faculty Athletics Representative

Faculty Briefs

• Mary Ellen O'Connell
• Lloyd Mayer
• Derek Muller
• Kari Gallagher
• Msgr. John Paul Kimes
• David McIlroy
• Dennis Wieboldt '26 J.D.

Events

• Law & Economics Workshop - Janka Deli, UC Berkeley: Breaking Rules, Building Trade? Rule of Law Decline and Export Resilience in the European Union
• Faculty Colloquium - Clara Martins Pereira, ND London Law
• IGP: Lunch & Learn: Frederick Mostert 12:30 p.m., 1310 Biolchini Hall

Looking Ahead …

Brief Of Amici Curiae Criminal Law Scholars And Legal Organizations In Support Of Petitioner, Alabama Criminal Defense Lawyers Association, Florida Association Of Criminal Defense Lawyers, Kentucky Association Of Criminal Defense Lawyers, Criminal Defense Attorneys Of Michigan, North Carolina Advocates For Justice, Virginia Association Of Criminal Defense Lawyers, Due Process Institute, Ira P. Robbins, Kyle Singhal

Amicus Briefs & Court Filings

SUMMARY OF THE ARGUMENT: The Sentencing Guidelines are, in practice, the most consequential legal text in federal criminal law. Yet this Court has abstained from interpreting the Guidelines for decades. That practice is anomalous in the federal judiciary and should end. District courts must correctly calculate every defendant’s guideline range at every sentencing hearing. Courts of Appeals routinely hear appeals asserting guideline mistakes. And differences of appellate opinion over purely legal, highly consequential questions often arise. This Court apparently declines to hear such cases because the Sentencing Commission could resolve those conflicts. See Braxton v. United States,500 U.S. 344, …

Reconstructing The Enforcement Of The Code Of Ethics For General Elections In Indonesia: A Prophetic Law Perspective, Fradhana Putra Disantara, Ratih Listyana Chandra, Aan Efendi, Iwan Rachmad Soetijono, Souad Ahmed Ezzerouali

Padjadjaran Jurnal Ilmu Hukum (Journal of Law)

This research examines the reconstruction of ethical code enforcement for election organizers in Indonesia through the perspective of prophetic law, arguing that ethical adjudication should extend beyond procedural compliance by integrating humanization, liberation, and transcendence as normative foundations of substantive justice. Employing doctrinal legal research, the study uses statutory, conceptual, case, and comparative approaches. It compares Indonesia's regulatory framework with the ethical governance systems of India and the United States to identify institutional models that strengthen integrity while respecting distinct constitutional traditions. The findings demonstrate that ethical adjudication differs fundamentally from administrative law: it governs the forum internum of election …

Mmu: 09/07/26-09/13/26, Student Bar Association

Monday Morning Update

This Week @ NDLS

Mass Times

Commons Daily Menu

Saint of the Week

General Announcements

More Than A Call: Why The Martha Wright-Reed Act Falls Short In Reforming Prison Communication, Carrington Wilkes

Georgia Criminal Law Review

In response to widespread criticism of exploitative prison communication costs, Congress enacted the Martha Wright-Reed Just and Reasonable Communications Act of 2022 (the “Act”). This legislation tasked the Federal Communications Commission (“FCC”) with establishing fair rates for phone and video calls made by inmates in jails, prisons, and immigration detention centers. While the Act marks a critical step in reducing financial burdens on incarcerated individuals and their families, it does not cover other widely used communication methods, such as electronic messaging, emails, and tablet-based platforms. These newer services remain largely unregulated, enabling private companies to impose excessive fees due to …

Manipulation Leading To Criminalization: The Need To Expand Georgia’S Survivors First Act, Taylor Hoying

Georgia Criminal Law Review

Nicole was seventeen when she met Juan, and they began a romantic relationship. “He was gorgeous and he had charm. I just wanted someone in my life to show me attention . . . .” He suggested that she start seeing other dates for money and sent her out onto the streets. Seven months later, when Nicole was raped by a john, Juan beat her, pepper-sprayed her, and put her in a cold shower for three and a half hours. If Nicole had been told to see another john the next day and was arrested for prostitution, would the arrest …

Sit, Stay, Overturn: How New Canine Science Is Challenging Courtroom Convictions, Kerolls Gadelrab

Georgia Criminal Law Review

Courts increasingly rely on cadaver dog evidence in criminal trials, treating canine alerts as a reliable form of forensic evidence. This naive acceptance of cadaver dog evidence, coupled with courts’ continued application of out-dated admissibility standards, threatens to perpetuate wrongful convictions in an era of rapidly advancing scientific understanding. This Article argues that courts must develop a new framework for evaluating cadaver dog evidence that incorporates modern scientific research on ca-nine olfaction and scent detection capabilities. While scholars have extensively analyzed various forensic evidence standards post-Daubert, the literature has largely over-looked how recent scientific advances in understanding ca-nine olfaction should …