Law Commons^™

The Poly Problem In Zoning: Redefining "Family" For A Changing Society, Aric K. Short, Tanya Pierce

Faculty Scholarship

Single-family zoning has long dictated not only where people may live but also with whom. Although extensively critiqued for perpetuating racial and economic exclusion, these laws also privilege relationships defined by blood, marriage, or adoption and marginalize nontraditional families. This Article focuses on a particularly overlooked group: polyamorous families who often face legal uncertainty, social exclusion, and housing discrimination due to restrictive zoning definitions of “family.”

As polyamory gains cultural visibility and increasing legal recognition—through West 49th Street, LLC v. O’Neill and municipal reforms in cities like Somerville and Cambridge—now is the time to examine zoningÊs role in reinforcing outdated …

Resilient Dispute Resolution Systems For International Energy Conflicts, Guillermo J. Garcia Sanchez

Faculty Scholarship

Energy-related conflicts are on the rise, spanning diverse issues such as the impacts of rare mineral mining on local communities, the impacts of sanctions on energy investments due to the Russia-Ukraine war, and the impacts of expanded subsidies on the electric vehicle and solar panel industries. Increasingly, companies, communities, and governments are clashing over the challenges of pursuing disparate and sometimes competing energy policies. This Article argues that dispute resolution mechanisms in the energy investment sector must be fundamentally rethought. Traditional semi-adjudicatory models, which focus on winners and losers, fail to accommodate the complex and multifaceted nature of contemporary energy …

Transforming Blood Management Systems In Developing Countries Through Technological And Artificial Intelligence-Driven Innovations, Sandeep Bhargava, Shaun Aaron Abram, Srividhya Ragavan

Faculty Scholarship

It is critical to ensure the safe and quality supply of blood among various stakeholders; however, this remains a significant challenge in today’s world, especially in developing countries. These countries face severe problems, including blood shortages, fragmented regulatory frameworks, and inconsistent quality control measures. To tackle these challenges, countries like India are trying to implement the use of artificial intelligence (AI) and its derivative platforms to transform blood collection, testing, storage, and distribution by enabling interoperability, real-time compliance monitoring, automated donor screening, optimized inventory management, and advanced component separation. The article argues that developing countries must adopt both regulatory reform …

The Exactions Illusion: Sheetz’S Missing Dissent, Lee Anne Fennell, Timothy M. Mulvaney

Faculty Scholarship

In April 2024, the Supreme Court unanimously handed down Sheetz v. County of El Dorado, a land use exactions case billed as narrow, inevitable, constitutionally compelled, and obviously correct.  It was none of those things. Sheetz instead ushered in an open-ended shift of policy control over the built environment from state and local legislatures to courts. By its terms, the holding extended the Court’s stringent “exactions” test—which requires the government to prove nexus and proportionality between development conditions and development impacts—beyond its original context of parcel-specific administrative bargains to reach an unspecified set of legislated property conditions. Yet the decision’s …

Cybersecurity Risk Shifting, Deborah R. Farringer

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

The Change Healthcare cyberattack of 2024 paralyzed the health care system for months, creating an exceedingly far reaching and devastating impact on providers, suppliers, and patients across the country. While the scope of the attack was unprecedented, the cyberattack itself was not new, unique, or isolated. Indeed, this attack came just months after the close of a year in which the United States’ Department of Health and Human Services’ Office for Civil Rights (OCR) recorded the highest number of reported breaches of protected health information and the highest number of breached records. With a medical record fetching nearly four times …

Patients Versus Profits, David A. Simon

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

Two motives drive much of American health care. The first is the motive to heal the sick—the patient motive. The second is the motive to generate financial gains—the profit motive. This Article asks the following question: where do these two motives intersect and diverge? Using three emerging technologies as examples, this Article provides a framework for answering this question. It then uses this framework’s insights to explain when and how legal and extra-legal institutions can be used to improve care, either by constraining the profit motive or aligning it more closely with the goals of patient care. This Article concludes …

The Privacy Law Jigsaw: Piecing Together Legal Compliance When Pieces Don’T Fit, Roy Wyman, Wesley Mcculloch

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

Over the past six years the United States has shifted from a relatively stable and laissez-faire privacy regime, anchored by a few, sector-specific federal statutes such as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, to an increasingly fragmented landscape dominated by numerous state-level consumer privacy laws. While these laws share commonalities, they also vary in important ways. This Article analyzes that patchwork legal regime and its impact on businesses through four points of friction: (i) statutory applicability and thresholds; (ii) notice-and-choice requirements; (iii) individual data-management rights; and (iv) controller–processor contracting obligations. This Article further explores how modern service-delivery models, especially …

Transforming Indigent Appellate Advocacy, Rachel T. Goldberg, Estelle M. Mckee

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Indigent appellate advocacy has long been confined to a narrow, technocratic model—one that prioritizes legal expertise over client autonomy and treats appellate cases solely as isolated legal battles rather than opportunities for systemic change. Unlike their trial-level counterparts, appellate attorneys representing indigent clients have received little scholarly attention, leaving critical questions about client participation, ethical representation, and social justice largely unexplored.

This Article challenges the status quo, arguing that appellate attorneys should rethink their role in ways that empower clients and confront the broader injustices shaping their cases. We introduce two alternative frameworks—client-centered appellate representation and participatory appellate representation—that draw …

“Take A Seat”: Overcoming The Enforceability Challenges Of Crowdsourced Blockchain Arbitration, Anna-Sophie Hochgürtel

Journal of Dispute Resolution

This essay addresses the recent phenomenon of Crowdsourced Blockchain Arbitration (CBA). Within the landscape of new digital dispute resolution tools, I argue that CBA stands out as a cost-effective adjudicative dispute resolution forum for online consumer disputes. I then provide an overview of existing CBA platforms and address the question to what extent CBA constitutes a form of arbitration. Only if it does can CBA arbitration agreements and arbitration awards be enforced domestically and internationally under the New York Convention of 1958. I demonstrate that while CBA proceedings correspond to a conceptual understanding of arbitration, they fall outside the international …

Description

Journal of Dispute Resolution

No abstract provided.

Masthead & Table Of Contents

Dalhousie Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Conditions Of Vulnerability: Interpreting Social Condition Discrimination, Colleen Sheppard, Geneviève Plumptre, Hannah Reaburn

Dalhousie Law Journal

At a time of deepening structural inequality, it is important to develop human rights categories that respond to the needs of diverse social groups living in conditions of vulnerability. One source of protection, aimed at countering the exclusion and maltreatment of people who are socially or economically disadvantaged, is the addition of “social condition” as a prohibited ground of discrimination. Québec, the Northwest Territories, and New Brunswick have such protection in their anti-discrimination laws. In this article, we argue that the social condition ground is an important tool for redressing intersectional, group-based vulnerabilities that do not fit readily into traditional …

Empowering The Energy Transition In Rural Electric Cooperatives, Katrina Smith

North Carolina Law Review

No abstract provided.

Misjudging A Reasonable Jury: Evidence That Courts Dismiss Meritorious Harassment Claims, Elizabeth C. Tippett, Jamillah Bowman Williams

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Courts assessing summary judgment motions in Title VII harassment claims commonly grant the motion on the basis that the alleged harassment is insufficiently “severe or pervasive” to meet the legal standard. This mixed-methods study empirically tests whether there is a gap between how judges and potential jurors assess the same set of facts on the severe or pervasive element of a Title VII harassment claim. We presented study participants with facts from 80 federal harassment cases. In each case, the defendant employer moved to dismiss the case, arguing that no reasonable jury would find the alleged harassment sufficiently severe or …

Specialization And The Permanence Of Federal Bankruptcy Law, Rafael I. Pardo

BYU Law Review

Traditional historical accounts posit that federal bankruptcy specialization in the United States first developed under the system established by the Bankruptcy Act of 1898. That view assumes that the structural and temporal conditions necessary to foster specialization did not exist under the nation’s earlier federal bankruptcy systems—those created by the Bankruptcy Acts of 1800, 1841, and 1867. This Article theorizes that federal bankruptcy specialization very likely occurred under the pre-1898 systems and marshals evidence to that effect, primarily focusing on the Bankruptcy Act of 1841 (the 1841 Act). That statute marked a critical turning point in federal bankruptcy law, shifting …

Publicity Rights After Warhol, Mark Bartholomew

Journal Articles

Andy Warhol has been proclaimed the most important artist of the twentieth century, but his influence extends farther than the art world. Given his renown, judges have cited his work, including his reworkings of celebrity photographs, as quintessentially protected expression. But this may be changing with the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Andy Warhol Foundation v. Goldsmith, which curtails the ability of creators to claim “transformative” fair use when they borrow aspects of a copyrighted work for commercial purposes. Moving beyond the decision’s copyright implications, this Article explores its potential ripple effect on publicity rights law. Although publicity rights …

Crypto-Influencer Liability, Nicole Pecharsky, Moin A. Yahya

William & Mary Business Law Review

The growth of celebrities endorsing cryptocurrencies over the past few years has resulted in many lawsuits and regulatory actions against them. This Article examines some of these recent actions using Google Trends as well as insights from scholarly marketing literature. We suggest that while celebrities can have an influence on the public in terms of searches and interest in cryptocurrencies, such influence is more nuanced. The impact of celebrity endorsements depends on how the public perceives the celebrity both in terms of their fame and their expertise. As such, any legal or regulatory actions will have to account for these …

Mutual Fund Fees, Stewart L. Brown

William & Mary Business Law Review

Investors pay billions annually in fees for actively managed mutual funds, despite the availability of far superior, cost-effective alternatives like index funds. Mutual funds, with their unique legal structure, insulate management fees from competitive pressures, thereby enabling fund sponsors to maintain high fees. Contrary to the assumption that legal, regulatory, and governance mechanisms adequately protect investors, this Article demonstrates that such safeguards are largely ineffective. The competitive forces that would ordinarily drive fee reductions are rendered impotent by structural conflicts of interest, ineffective regulatory oversight, and the passive role of independent directors. Fund sponsors capitalize on economies of scale, reaping …

From Amateurism To Open Markets: The Ncaa's Reckoning With Antitrust Lawsuits, Jesse Giffin

William & Mary Business Law Review

Throughout the 2000s the National College Athletic Association (NCAA) has been the subject of many high-profile antitrust lawsuits regarding the financial restrictions imposed on student athletes. The aftermath of some of the most recent decisions has given athletes new ways to earn compensation while competing in college athletics. In House v. NCAA, another historic antitrust lawsuit against the NCAA, the Court for the Northern District of California was tasked with deciding whether student athletes can be paid directly for their athletic performance. By comparing these NCAA antitrust lawsuits with other blockbuster antitrust cases such as the Microsoft antitrust case, …

Through The Lens Of Natural Selection: Understanding The Development And Adoption Of Legal Forms Of Business Organization, Brent J. Horton

William & Mary Business Law Review

This Article makes three contributions to the scholarship on the development and adoption of legal forms of business organization (LFBO). First, this Article examines how Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection (i.e., variation, selection, and inheritance) can provide an overarching framework that can integrate previous theories of LFBO evolution propounded by Hurst, Blair, Hansmann, Kraakman, and Squire.

Second, Hurst, Blair, Hansmann, Kraakman, and Squire focused primarily on the evolution of joint stock companies and corporations during the American Industrial Revolution. This Article uses the lens of natural selection to explain the development and adoption of more recent forms of business …

Changing Duress: Giving Heirs Of Holocaust Victims An Easier Path To Recover Their Predecessors' Property, Jonathan M. Woolston

William & Mary Business Law Review

As claimants continue to come forth asserting claims for artworks their predecessors owned before the Holocaust, they run up against difficulties in trying to reclaim the property. While oftentimes it is not difficult to negotiate an informal return of property due to the immense public pressure and stigma on Nazi-looted works, more complex cases arise when artworks were sold to finance escape from the impending horrors of the Holocaust. In these situations, claimants face much greater difficulties in reclaiming the artworks. For one, the doctrine of duress prevents contracts from being voided if that duress was not applied by a …

From Care To Capital: Rethinking Resilience In The Philippine Labor Export System, Alexa J. Abendano

Senior Theses

Global migration has been a defining feature of the neoliberal world economy due to its ability to transform how nations manage care, labor and survival across borders. Within this system, the Philippines stands out as a country that has institutionalized labor migration as a development strategy since the 1970s. This paper examines how the Philippines states labor export policy shapes the vulnerability and resilience of migrant care workers, specifically those employed as domestic helpers in Hong Kong. By drawing on scholarship about global care economies, remittances, precarity, neoliberalism and resilience, this paper analyzes how emotional and reproductive labor are commodified …

Law Library Blog (February 2026): Legal Beagle's Blog Archive, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Law Library Newsletters/Blog

No abstract provided.

Wellness Connection Newsletter February 2026, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Fbi National Stolen Art File: Lost Artifacts And Missing Data, Allison N. Arnold

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This data exploration project studies the FBI’s National Stolen Art File (NSAF). The NSAF is a repository for information on stolen artistic and cultural objects. By design, the objects in the NSAF should have distinguishing features and some monetary value, with a present minimum of $5,000 USD. As a public awareness tool, the objects in the NSAF should have a reasonable chance of being identified and potentially restituted in the future.

Using object data taken from the NSAF on August 25, 2024, my data exploration work includes a narrative of the data preparation process and a series of data visualizations. …

Recommendations For Developing A Regulatory Sandbox And A Comprehensive Legal Framework For Fintech In Vietnam - Part I, Sue M. Altmeyer, Phan Dang Hai

Akron Law Faculty Publications

Fintech, a product of the 4.0 revolution, has experienced rapid growth in Vietnam, attracting significant attention from investors and government agencies. In encouraging innovation, the authors write, the need for a practical legal framework to regulate fintech activities has become a critical issue. The authors believe that this new legal framework should include a regulatory sandbox, which would allow fintech startups to test their products in a controlled environment, helping to mitigate risks, foster creativity, and enhance regulatory oversight. This two-part article discusses challenges in creating and implementing a regulatory sandbox and provides recommendations for overcoming these hurdles. This first …

Book Review: Jessica Lake, Special Damage: The Slander Of Women And The Gendered History Of Defamation Law, Tracy A. Thomas

Akron Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Legal Reform And Cultural Resistance: Examining The Role Of Law And Custom In Ending Fgm In Egypt, Souhaila Hafez Abo Seada

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the persistent gap between legal reform and social practice in efforts to end Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) in Egypt. Although FGM has been criminalized since 2008, with stronger penalties introduced in 2016 and 2021, the practice continues, revealing the limits of law when it operates alongside powerful social, religious, familial, and medical norms. Using a qualitative case-based approach grounded in legal pluralism and Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis, the study draws on 11 semi-structured interviews with participants from civil society, religious institutions, the legal profession, the medical sector, and communities where FGM persists, alongside legislative, demographic, and documentary …

Abuse Of Contract: A Proposal For A New Cause Of Action, Miriam A. Cherry

William & Mary Law Review

With the growth of online commerce and the platform economy, many companies are including provisions in their online terms and conditions that extend far beyond what reasonable consumers would expect. Some terms and conditions purport to bind customers to separate contracts in future transactions that have little to do with the first contract. Other boilerplate purports to cover family members of the customer who created an account. Some retailers have argued that people shopping in their brick-and-mortar stores are subject to terms and conditions because those shoppers had at some point previously created an online account. For example, Disney argued …

Medical Device Dangers: Choosing Ignorance In The Courts And At The Fda, George Horvath

William & Mary Law Review

Medical devices save lives and improve well-being but have caused as many as 83,000 deaths and 1.7 million injuries in a recent decade. Decisions of critical importance—patients’ decisions whether to have a device implanted, doctors’ decisions about which device to use, insurers’ decisions whether to reimburse for those devices—depend on information about risk that is provided by manufacturers. But producing this information is costly. Injured patients, through private lawsuits under state products liability theories, can incentivize device manufacturers to incur these costs and to produce and disclose information about device risk. Unfortunately, courts are making it increasingly unlikely that this …