Law Commons^™

Confronting Inequality: Three Eras Of Gender And Tax Scholarship, Bridget J. Crawford

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

Tax law is not neutral--it encodes social values and reinforces certain longstanding hierarchies. For over fifty years, legal scholarship at the intersection of gender and tax has exposed how seemingly neutral tax laws perpetuate gender inequality. This Article uses the metaphor of quilting to trace the evolution of this scholarly field across three distinct eras.   Part I names and defines the designing era (1971-1986), which began with Grace Blumberg's writing on the gendered impact of tax laws on marriage, labor, and caregiving; she framed taxation as a tool of social control over women. Blumberg's work laid the foundation for other …

Relentless: The Pressures Shortening Law School Deanships And What Must Change, Katie Kempner, Patricia E. Roberts

Faculty Articles

It is no small thing when a law school loses its dean. The departure triggers a national search, stalls institutional momentum, disrupts fundraising, and requires rebuilding years of relationships with faculty, alumni, and university leadership, all while the institution navigates one of the most turbulent periods in legal education's history. Approximately 25 percent of the nation's law schools transition to a new dean in any given year. That reality prompted this study.

This study combined a survey of 624 current and former law school deans, which yielded 256 responses and data on 294 deanships, with 70 qualitative interviews conducted between …

Operational Agency: A Permeable Legal Fiction For Tracing Culpability In Ai Systems, Anirban Mukherjee, Hannah H. Chang

SMU Science and Technology Law Review

Modern artificial intelligence (AI) systems act with a high degree of independence yet lack legal personhood—a paradox that fractures doctrines grounded in human-centric notions of mens rea and actus reus. This Article introduces Operational Agency (OA)—a permeable legal fiction structured as an ex post evidentiary framework—and Operational Agency Graph (OAG)—a tool for mapping causal interactions among human actors, organizations, and AI systems. OA evaluates an AI’s observable operational characteristics: its goal-directedness (as a proxy for intent), predictive processing (as a proxy for foresight), and safety architecture (as a proxy for standard of care). OAG operationalizes that analysis by embedding these …

Suing The Ghost In The Medical Machine, Jason R. Cheek

SMU Science and Technology Law Review

Devices that autonomously diagnose medical conditions, with no human interaction, have arrived. These self-operating systems incorporate artificial intelligence (AI), and include machines that diagnose preventable blindness, as well as some that write radiology reports. These devices feature AI-integrated software to make diagnosis decisions traditionally made by humans who have received extensive medical training. Soon, AI-driven devices will autonomously make treatment decisions.

What happens when these autonomous medical systems harm a patient? At the moment, most would expect product liability law to provide a path to recovery. But AI oftentimes uses multiple complex inputs and approaches, including statistical probabilities, to reach …

An Empirical Examination Of Law Student Attitudes Toward Legal Writing With Generative Ai, Abigail L. Perdue

SMU Science and Technology Law Review

Amid mounting predictions that generative artificial intelligence (AI) will substantially disrupt legal education, legal writing professors grapple with how and when to integrate generative AI into the classroom. While some believe that it should be woven into existing courses and integrated across the curriculum, even in the first year, others contend that it is better reserved for discussion in upper-level courses dedicated to AI-assistance. Yet it remains unclear which approach will best prepare graduates for the modern practice of law. Indeed, some scholars caution that permitting law students to use generative AI to complete their legal writing coursework, particularly in …

A Bankruptcy Resuscitation: Addressing Private Equity’S Role In Healthcare Insolvencies, Peyton K. Perry

Emory Bankruptcy Developments Journal

The healthcare sector, traditionally driven by a commitment to patient well-being and quality of care, has increasingly been influenced by financialization, particularly through private equity investments. This Comment explores the impact of private equity on healthcare companies, especially those facing bankruptcy by highlighting how private equity’s profit-driven motives often compromise patient care and lead to financial distress for healthcare providers and companies.

Specifically, this Comment examines the historical context of healthcare as a healing profession and the ethical implications of its financialization. It then delves into the mechanics of private equity as a business model and utilizes recent case studies …

Introduction: A Tribute To Jack Butler, Jackson A. Brown

Emory Bankruptcy Developments Journal

No abstract provided.

Priority Treatment Of Fraud Claims In Bankruptcy, John P. Hunt

Emory Bankruptcy Developments Journal

No abstract provided.

Bankruptcy’S Blind Spot: An Examination Of How The System Turns Its Back On Mentally Ill Debtors, Ashley Deady

Emory Bankruptcy Developments Journal

No abstract provided.

Fresh Start Or False Promise? Addressing Black Student Loan Debt Through Bankruptcy, Adji Ostin

Emory Bankruptcy Developments Journal

No abstract provided.

Table Of Contents

Saint Louis University Law Journal

No abstract provided.

The Prohibition Of Force Is The First Principle Of International Humanitarian Law, Mary Ellen O'Connell

Saint Louis University Law Journal

With the end of the Cold War, United States presidents have shown growing disinterest in complying with the United Nations Charter prohibition on the use of force. Their legal advisers have based justifications for resort to military force on ever thinner legal grounds to the point that justifications appear to focus only on the legal principles governing the conduct of military force, not on the right to resort to force in the first instance. Samuel Moyn captured the phenomenon in his book, Humane: How the United States Abandoned Peace and Reinvented War. The phenomenon of decline has not stopped with …

The Invalidity Of The “Shock The Conscience” Test For Evidence Gathered By Foreign Police, Kevin Valleroy

Saint Louis University Law Journal

Federal courts since the 1970s have often discussed the “shock the conscience” test in the context of transnational criminal investigations. This test purports to exclude from American trials evidence gathered by foreign police through “conscience shocking” methods. No doubt its creators sought to protect the rights of defendants amidst unclear evidentiary standards. But since the test’s creation, its proponents have failed to agree on a consistent explanation for the test’s constitutionality. Moreover, Supreme Court precedent since the 1980s has heaped doubt on the prevailing explanations for the test’s existence. While a lively debate on the “shock the conscience” test’s underlying …

Foreword

Saint Louis University Law Journal

No abstract provided.

United States Internal Displacement Policy In The Era Of Climate Change, Bashar Zaheer

Saint Louis University Law Journal

At the outset of 2025, the United States was greeted with a series of unprecedented wildfires sweeping through Los Angeles, causing immense damage to property and loss of lives, while thousands were forced to evacuate their homes. This came just months after flooding from Hurricane Helene hit North Carolina and surrounding States, causing at least 130 deaths and rendering many residences uninhabitable. Despite this deepening crisis, the identification and protection of the rights of climate refugees and Internally Displaced Persons (“IDPs”) remains a burgeoning topic internationally, and even more so in the domestic context of the United States. As described …

A Farewell To Space Arms Control, Eytan Tepper, James B. Romano

Saint Louis University Law Journal

This paper examines the nearly seven decades of attempts to adopt multilateral rules restricting space arms race and limit military uses of outer space. The paper presents the early success to introduce, as part of the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, basic key limitations, notably a ban on weapons of mass destruction and offensive military uses of celestial bodies, and the subsequent failure to expand these basic rules. Indeed, despite forty-five years since the early 1980s of work in various streams and frameworks attempting to prevent a space arms race, and despite many countries’ proclamations supporting space arms control, no meaningful …

Recalibrating The Threshold Of Niac? Aggregated Intensity And The Risk Of Over-Classification, Nathan Derejko

Saint Louis University Law Journal

The proliferation of armed groups poses significant factual and legal challenges to determining the threshold of Non-International Armed Conflict (“NIAC”). In response, a number of academics and practitioners have proposed a “cumulative” approach, under which the intensity of violence generated by multiple armed groups within a defined geographical and temporal context is assessed in the aggregate. This “aggregated intensity” approach departs from the established bilateral, case-by-case methodology inherent in the established Tadić test for NIAC. This paper offers a critical analysis of the “aggregated intensity” approach and its relevance to contemporary determinations of the threshold of NIAC.

Table Of Content

Saint Louis University Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Contract Drafting Classes Should Introduce Law Students To Real World Practice Like Other Legal Writing Classes, Ben L. Fernandez

Saint Louis University Law Journal

Contract drafting classes in law school should not just be about clear writing. They should also cover more of the process of drafting in the real world, including contributing to the substance of agreements, working with precedents, negotiating contract language, and handling a closing. A textbook author’s opinions about how various phrases should be drafted are valuable, but it must also be recognized that lawyers seldom draft from scratch. They are primarily involved with tailoring prewritten documents commonly used for business and financial transactions. And the conventions followed in those documents vary.

From Classroom To Closing Table: Strategies For Teaching Transactional Drafting And Preparing Law Students For Practice And The Nextgen Bar Exam, Keisa M. Johnson Monroe

Saint Louis University Law Journal

Undoubtedly, at the end of each semester on the final evening of my Transactional Drafting course, a student approaches me to share feedback and reflections on the class. Their feedback often ranges from expressions of surprise—”This class was actually more enjoyable than I expected”—to reconsiderations of their initial intentions—”I’m going to be a trial lawyer, so I wasn’t even going to take this class, but I’m so glad I did!”—to newly discovered interests—”I think I’m actually interested in pursuing a career as a transactional lawyer now.” These student reflections are helpful as they offer valuable insights as I am constantly …

The Release: An Ideal Vehicle For A Short Runway, Dana M. Malkus

Saint Louis University Law Journal

Students in my Entrepreneurship and Community Development Clinic (“ECD Clinic”) often have opportunities to practice their drafting skills during their time with me. While students typically work on a wide variety of drafting projects, I have found that client matters that involve drafting what this essay will refer to as a “release” tend to present the best opportunities for students to practice a variety of core transactional skills in a short amount of time. Two recent client matters in the ECD Clinic illustrate why these kinds of drafting projects work well. In this essay, I describe those two recent projects, …

Breaking The Huddle: Judicial Deference, Antitrust, And The Ncaas Path Forward, Zeke Stockton

Saint Louis University Law Journal

The University of Tennessee Men’s Basketball team entered Week Ten of the 2024–25 college basketball season ranked number one in the country. The Southeastern Conference’s leading scorer going into Tennessee’s game against Texas that week was Tennessee’s Chaz Lanier. On the first play of the second half, Lanier launched a pass into Tennessee’s bench instead of taking an open jump shot. Rick Barnes, Tennessee’s head coach and one of the winningest coaches in college basketball history, immediately took Lanier out of the game. Barnes said in the post-game press conference, “[t]hat play was designed for that shot. I told him, …

Good Transactional Drafting Isn’T Just About The Nuts And Bolts, Joan E. Neal, Michelle M. Drake

Saint Louis University Law Journal

To create practice-ready transactional lawyers who can be valuable and valued advisors to their future clients, teaching technical nuts-and-bolts drafting is critical but not sufficient. Rather, transactional drafting professors need to embed other important lessons into the content for their students, including emphasizing the importance of forming a forward-looking or planning mindset and developing their students’ ethical awareness. To do this, these lessons and mindsets should be a part of the debriefs of all drafting exercises, so that the professor can model these ways of thinking when discussing drafting decisions. These additional lessons are particularly important because students may have …

Transactional Lawyering: Pro Bono Meets Digital Innovation, Patricia Hureston Lee

Saint Louis University Law Journal

The rapid expansion of digital innovation (i.e., cloud computing, the Internet of Things, artificial intelligence (“AI”), blockchain, voice recognition, large language models (“LLM”), and other virtual and augmented reality) enhances the possibility of more pro bono lawyering and greater access to justice. At the same time, the presence of lawyers is even more important and threatened than in previous eras because of the proliferation of digital innovation. The current dilemma is exacerbated by the convergence of three phenomena: the continuation of under-resourced and disadvantaged clients needing pro bono transactional legal services, the ever-present capacity constraints of legal service providers, and …

Masthead

Saint Louis University Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Both Sides Now—A Holistic Approach To Transactional Drafting (The Case For Better Preparing Our Students For A Business Transactions Practice), John G. Boyle

Saint Louis University Law Journal

I have much to be grateful for professionally.

For starters, St. Louis University School of Law (“SLU”) took a chance on me in the Fall of 1977. With the discipline, encouragement, and, yes, sometimes humor, dispensed by SLU faculty and administration over the following three years, I learned how to think like a lawyer: Analytical. Fact-based. Objective. Grit.

Birthing Inequality: How U.S. Midwifery Laws Perpetuate Racial And Socioeconomic Disparities, Miranda Martin

Saint Louis University Law Journal

“In our nation . . . more women are facing death because of childbirth than in any other developed nation.” “Black women are three times more likely to die in connection with childbirth . . . Native women twice as likely . . . [and] rural women are one and a half times more likely to die,” warned Vice President Kamala Harris, emphasizing the country’s maternal health crisis. Despite efforts to improve maternal health, access to safe and effective care remains uneven. In the United States, there is confusion among legal and healthcare professionals regarding the different types of midwives …

Table Of Contents

Saint Louis University Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Masthead

Saint Louis University Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Me Note

Saint Louis University Law Journal

No abstract provided.