Law Commons^™

Fingerprint Evidence In Court: How Flawed Error Estimations Disserve The Criminal Legal System, Brendan Max

DePaul Law Review

Estimations of rates of errors committed by forensic fingerprint

examiners play an important role in the criminal legal system.

Judges and jurors rely on error rate estimations as primary

indications of the probative value of assertions by fingerprint

examiners that they can reliably identify the people who deposit

latent prints at crime scenes. Recognizing the need to qualify

fingerprint identification claims with error estimations, the forensic

community has sought to conduct large-scale controlled testing of

fingerprint examiners in order to offer error estimations. One type

of error estimation generated from controlled testing is a false

positive rate, which expresses the …

The Supreme Court's Pragmatic Turn On The Separation Of Powers: Refining Appointments Clause And Nondelegation Doctrine, Peter Margulies

DePaul Law Review

Pragmatism is the hallmark of two recent Supreme Court

decisions on the separation of powers, Kennedy v. Braidwood

Management, Inc., and Federal Communications Commission

(FCC) v. Consumers’ Research. These cases, which dealt with the

Appointments Clause and the nondelegation doctrine (public and

private) respectively, reject a rigid, literalist approach. Instead,

these decisions strive to make government workable, in the process

facilitating implementation of Congress’s plans.

Both Braidwood and Consumers’ Research decline to require

Congress to recite “magic words” or lock in future executive branch

officials with mechanical formulas or caps on fees. Instead, each

decision looks at legislation …

Sample Article, Rhea Viewer

Journal of Environmental & Energy Law

This is my abstract.

Letter From The Editor, Thomas J. Stoodt Jr.

DePaul Law Review

No abstract provided.

Table Of Contents

DePaul Law Review

No abstract provided.

Kidfluencer Protection Laws: The Good, The Bad, And The Best Fit Legislative Safeguards Against The Harms Of Monetized Sharenting, Emma Lee

DePaul Law Review

No abstract provided.

Son Of Sam Laws And The Alternative Methods For Addressing The Underlying Policy Considerations: It Takes More Than Good Moral Intuition To Make A Good Law, Kyra Holzmacher

DePaul Law Review

No abstract provided.

Hail Kisor? Why Stinson Controls Sentencing And Courts Must Defer To The Commentary Of The U.S. Sentencing Guidelines, S. Tony Eyer

DePaul Law Review

No abstract provided.

To Defer Or Not To Defer, That Is The Question: Whether It Is Better To Follow The Bia's Interpretation Of Deportable Crimes Or Conduct An Independent Analysis Of Applicable Criminal Statutes, Kristen Dant

DePaul Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Black Hole Of Capital Gains: Etf Swap Funds, Jeffrey M. Colon

DePaul Law Review

ETFs have begun to challenge mutual funds as the dominant

U.S. public pooled asset vehicle. Their constant liquidity, exposure

to an ever-widening range of investment strategies, and highly

touted tax efficiency have driven the explosive growth in the assets

under management of ETFs over the last fifteen years. The tax

efficiency is due to Section 852(b)(6), which permits ETFs to

distribute appreciated property tax free and eliminate all fund-level

taxable gains even while making portfolio adjustments, which

mutual funds cannot do.

Fund sponsors have developed various strategies to exploit the

benefits of Section 852(b)(6), with the newest being the launch …

Table Of Contents

DePaul Law Review

No abstract provided.

Bloomington Community Brain Health Services Program: The Intersection Of Law Enforcement And Brain Health, Janet Yeats, Luke Campbell, Booker Hodges

Forensic Scholars Today

In 2023, the Bloomington Police Department launched the Bloomington Community Brain Health Services (BCBHS) program in response to increasing mental health crises, provider shortages, long wait times for services, and rising law enforcement involvement in crisis calls. The Bloomington Model integrates licensed therapists and supervised graduate-level interns directly within a police department structure. The program aims to reduce mental health-related calls, stabilize residents experiencing crisis, and eliminate cost barriers by offering up to 15 sessions of free, short-term therapy delivered in homes, schools, virtual settings, and community spaces.

This article outlines the program’s development, implementation, and early outcomes, highlighting key …

Donald Trump’S Latest Tariffs Are Part Of A New Trade Strategy. The U.S. Has A Much Bigger Target Than Our Wine And Cheese, Barry Appleton

Other Publications

No abstract provided.

Allen V. State Of Nevada, 142 Nev. Adv. Op. 45 (July 22, 2026), Michael Martinelli

Nevada Supreme Court Summaries

In an alternative-suspect defense to sexual assault, evidence of prior similar sexual offenses by the alternative suspect is relevant to establish propensity thereby making the defense theory more probable.

The Role Of Online Disinhibition On Social Media Users' Privacy Concerns And Behaviors, Lisa Thompson, Sinyong Choi

Faculty Articles

As social media platforms become central to digital interactions, concerns about both privacy and the disclosure of personal information have evolved. Online disinhibition—the psychological detachment users experience in digital spaces that distance their online behaviors from offline consequences—may shape perceptions of privacy risks, particularly on social media platforms like TikTok. This study examines the relationships between online disinhibition and users’ privacy concerns and protective behaviors while accounting for individuals’ sense of gratification, media awareness, identity, and experience. By exploring dimensions such as anonymity and invisibility, we investigate how these factors are linked to self-disclosure and diminished privacy caution. Findings from …

"Distributed Voice" During Deliberations: What Real Juries Tell Us, Mary R. Rose, Shari S. Diamond

DePaul Law Review

Juries are supposed to represent the views of their community,

but securing representative bodies will not meet fair cross-section

aims if deliberations fail to actually produce contributions from a

wide variety of voices. This Essay develops the concept of

“distributed voice,” or the ability of a jury to spread out talk across

more jurors. Analyses examine what factors predict a jury’s

likelihood of producing more egalitarian distributions of speaking

turns and of words spoken. Data from actual deliberations of fifty

civil juries demonstrate that talk patterns on juries are more widely

distributed when there is a greater diversity of views …

Legal Analysis After The Behavioral Revolution, Russell Korobkin, Jeffrey J. Rachlinski

DePaul Law Review

The incorporation of behavioral economics and cognitive

psychology has profoundly challenged traditional legal

scholarship’s understanding of human decision making. This Article

explores how insights from the behavioral sciences have

fundamentally recast the academy's approach to legal doctrine in

the private law subjects that have long been the foundation of legal

training. By demonstrating systematic cognitive biases and

heuristics that deviate from rational choice theory, behavioral

research has upended the rational choice assumption that anchored

consequentialist analysis of law and left in its wake a more

contingent and context-dependent, and thus a fragmented,

normative landscape.

Procedural Justice And Body Worn Cameras, Yael Granot

DePaul Law Review

The extensive and rapid roll out of body cameras across

American police forces in the past decades was intended to improve

issues of accountability and transparency in policing. Trust and

perceptions of fairness of police are shaped, in large part, by how

one is treated by officers and departments—the fundamental

interpersonal work of procedural justice. This Article reviews

findings on public and police support for body cameras, as well as

research connecting body cameras to perceptions of procedural

justice. It then elaborates on past research with a vignette

experiment, aimed at isolating the unique and interactive effects of

just policies, …

What We Should Know About The Reliability Of Empirical Legal Studies, Kathryn Zeiler

DePaul Law Review

The findings of replication studies conducted in the early 2010s

led many to declare that science was in the midst of a “replication

crisis.” Since then, a growing number of reforms have been

proposed and tested. The field of empirical legal studies seems

behind other fields such as psychology, economics, political science,

medicine, biology, and others that have taken significant steps

toward uncovering the general reliability of the field’s empirical

work, investigating the causes of observed unreliability, and

instituting and testing the effects of various reforms. The purpose of

this Article is to summarize what we know about the reliability …

Reconstructing Reasonableness With Social Science, Kevin Tobia

DePaul Law Review

The social science of legal decision making often emphasizes

judgment bias. That empirical project reflects the legacy of legal

realism and grows in the shadow of law and economics, both of

which embody skepticism about legal concepts. These theoretical

influences encourage empiricists to “deconstruct” legal concepts by

identifying illicit, improper, or pernicious influences on judgment.

For example, empiricists demonstrate hindsight bias in judgments

of reasonableness and recommend interventions to remove that

bias. Identifying legal biases, their sources and remedies are

critically important. But these are not the only social scientific

questions one could ask of legal concepts. This Essay poses …

Reflections On Danny Kahneman's Influence On Legal Scholarship, Jennifer K. Robbennolt

DePaul Law Review

No abstract provided.

Intuitions In Tort Law And Theory, James Macleod

DePaul Law Review

This Essay highlights the many ways that ordinary conceptual and moral intuitions shape the development of tort law. It further argues that, for a range of doctrinal and institutional reasons, such intuitions deserve a central place in tort theorists’ efforts to explain, predict, justify, and reform the law of torts. Finally, given the stakes for both positive and normative tort theory, the Essay emphasizes the need for more systematic empirical research into the content and operation of people’s tort-relevant intuitions.

The Open Science Movement And Its Implications For Expert Testimony, Robert J. Maccoun

DePaul Law Review

No abstract provided.

What The Law Can--And Cannot--Do About Bias In The Mind, Neil A. Lewis Jr.

DePaul Law Review

No abstract provided.

Procedural Justice In Trump's America, Rebecca Hollander-Blumoff

DePaul Law Review

No abstract provided.

Jury Consultants And Empirical Social Science: Framing A Modest Critique, Michael Heise, Nicole A. Heise

DePaul Law Review

Public and scholarly concerns about “integrity” issues relating

to empirical social science research, while already significant,

continue to grow. While problems with the status quo are relatively

obvious and easy to identify, less clear, however, is whether a fixed,

universal set of “norms” or “best practices” should be implemented

to address research integrity concerns or, in contrast, whether

important differences across empirical research genres, scholarly

fields, or research designs warrant different responses. Locating

jury consultants’ empirical work-product in the broader universe of

empirical social science genres provides necessary context, which

assists with the task of identifying which research integrity or …

Procedural Justice And Trial By Jury, Valerie P. Hans

DePaul Law Review

No abstract provided.

Probabilistic Injury And Presumptions Of Prejudicial Preferences, Erik J. Girvan

DePaul Law Review

No abstract provided.

Noneconomic Tort Damages And Biased Beliefs About Vulnerability To Harm, Roseanna Sommers, Nathan Cheek

DePaul Law Review

The American tort system aspires to provide fair compensation to injured plaintiffs, regardless of socioeconomic status, race, religion, or gender. Recent experimental evidence from psychology suggests, however, that factfinders consistently judge identical harms as less severe when experienced by individuals of lower socioeconomic status (SES). People presume, for instance, that a paper cut hurts a wealthy person more than a less well-off person, that domestic violence inflicts greater suffering on a high-SES woman than a lower-SES woman, and that bullying harms a fiveyear- old from a high-SES family more severely than one from a low- SES family. This Essay examines …

Subjective Due Process As A Legal Standard: Using Lay Judgments As A Basis For Evaluating Emerging Remote And Impersonal Civil Procedures, Tom Tyler

DePaul Law Review

The forums through which the civil justice system operates are

rapidly changing toward the adoption of remote and impersonal

procedures. These changes are being driven by efforts to manage

large case loads through a system which has limited resources.

Authorities supporting these evolving forums suggest that they

respond to litigant concerns for rapid and inexpensive case

management procedures. A review of research suggests that, in

contrast to this perspective, people are actually very sensitive to

whether they believe they receive due process. Such due process

concerns have been identified through the literature of procedural

justice. They reflect four judgments about …