Law and Society Commons^™

Three Kinds Of Fault: Understanding The Purpose And Function Of Causation In Tort Law, Marin R. Scordato

University of Miami Law Review

Causation is a concept of enormous importance in the law. In just the last two years, the United States Supreme Court has explicitly considered its importance and meaning on at least three occasions, in areas of the law as diverse as specific personal jurisdiction, Title IX, and Section 1981. It has also been the subject of sustained scholarly examination and debate.

In no area of the law is causation as foundational and omni- present as in tort law, and in no sphere within tort law is it more prevalent than in its dominant cause of action, negligence. Unsurprisingly then, the …

The Promise And The Peril: Artificial Intelligence And Employment Discrimination, Keith E. Sonderling, Bradford J. Kelley, Lance Casimir

University of Miami Law Review

Artificial intelligence (“AI”) is undeniably transforming the workplace, though many implications remain unknown. Employers increasingly rely on algorithms to determine who gets interviewed, hired, promoted, developed, disciplined, or fired. If appropriately designed and applied, AI promises to help workers find their most rewarding jobs, match companies with their most valuable and productive employees, and advance diversity, inclusion, and accessibility in the work- place. Notwithstanding its positive impacts, however, AI poses new perils for employment discrimination, especially when designed or used improperly.

This Article examines the interaction between AI and federal employment antidiscrimination law. This Article explores the legal landscape including …

Managing Mass Tort Class Actions: Judicial Politics And Rulemaking In Three Acts, Toby S. Goldbach

University of Miami Law Review

Judges take part in a variety of non-adjudicative tasks that shape the structure of litigation. In addition to their managerial functions, judges sit as administrative heads of court. They participate in civil justice reform projects and develop procedures for criminal and civil trials. What norms and principles ought to guide judges in this other work? In their casework we expect judges to be neutral and fair, setting aside politics and rationally following the law. Indeed, this article will demonstrate that there is good reason to insist on these qualities in both judges’ case-related and broader court-related reform activities. To test …

The Higher-Cost Problem: How The Case Act Addresses The History Of Inequity In The American Copyright Regime, Michael Newell

University of Miami Law Review

The legislative history of copyright law in the United States and its judicial interpretation resulted in a complex web of statutes and doctrine theoretically meant to further the constitutional goal of “promot[ing] the Progress of Science and the useful Arts.” But because of its complexity, enforcing rights against infringers in federal court became prohibitively expensive for most. The American copyright regime simultaneously allowed the music industry to unfairly profit from the creativity of the under-resourced—particularly, musicians of color.

This Note discusses the disparate impact of the American copyright regime. Then, the Note discusses the Copyright Alternatives in the Small-Claims Enforcement …

Before Yesterday We Could Fly: Reimagining Law For The Afro-Future, Norinda Brown Hayat, Roger Williams University School Of Law

School of Law Conferences, Lectures & Events

No abstract provided.

Balancing Testator Freedom With Reproductive Rights In A Post-Dobbs Illinois, Mary Webb

SLU Law Journal Online

When creating a trust, a grantor may attach conditions that beneficiaries must meet before receiving an inheritance. Some conditions can become so restrictive that they contravene public policy and are unenforceable by courts. In this article, Mary Webb balances Illinois public policy on testamentary and reproductive freedom to determine whether an Illinois court would uphold a beneficiary restriction clause that restricts a beneficiary's reproductive rights.

Justice For All: Demanding Accessibility For Underrepresented Communities In The Law: A Roger Williams University Law Review, Roger Williams University School Of Law

School of Law Conferences, Lectures & Events

No abstract provided.

Rethinking Constitutionally Impermissible Punishment, Nadia Banteka, Erika Nyborg-Burch

Notre Dame Law Review Reflection

In this Essay, we discuss how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected our understanding of constitutionally permissible punishment. We argue, first, that the protracted failure to act by those who have had authority to do so during this public health emergency created a high risk that incarcerated people would suffer severe illness—and even death—in violation of due process protections and the Eighth Amendment prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. Second, we suggest that a changed understanding of public safety in the context of detention and release during public health emergencies has the potential to shift the framework even after the emergency …

"A Sword In The Bed": Bringing An End To The Fusion Of Law And Equity, Brooks M. Chupp

Notre Dame Law Review

Those who called for the fusion of law and equity have, throughout the years, argued that the existence of a parallel court system for equity would be inefficient and confusing for parties. While there is limited merit to this viewpoint, the United States has been willing to create courts of limited jurisdiction to hear cases of a highly specialized or technical nature in other areas of the law (for example, tax and bankruptcy). This Note argues that the specialized-courts approach is viable as it relates to equity and that it is, in fact, preferable to the current system. This Note …

Law School Rankings And The Impossibility Of Anti-Racism, Rory D. Bahadur

St. Mary's Law Journal

This Article uses the U.S. News law school rankings to illustrate how powerful, invisible, and stubborn systemic racism is. This Article does not level allegations of intentionally blameworthy conduct at U.S. News, or any person or entity. More broadly, this Article does not address conscious and deliberate racism, or the examples of this type of racism with which America’s history is replete. Nor is this Article attempting to undervalue the significant impact of deliberately racist actions in American history on the economic disparity between white people and people of color.

Instead, I make an untrue assumption: All Americans of every …

Patriarchy’S Link To Intimate Partner Violence: Applications To Survivors’ Asylum Claims, Daniel G. Saunders, Tina Jiwatram-Negrón, Natalie Nanasi, Iris Cardenas

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

Eligibility for asylum for survivors of intimate partner violence (IPV) has recently been contested. We summarize social science evidence to show how such survivors generally meet asylum criteria. Studies consistently show a relationship between patriarchal factors and IPV, thereby establishing a key asylum criterion that women are being persecuted because of their status as women. Empirical support is also provided for other asylum criteria, specifically: patriarchal norms contribute to state actors’ unwillingness to protect survivors, and survivors’ political opinions are linked to an escalation of perpetrators’ violence. The findings have implications for policy reform and supporting individual asylum-seekers.

Algorithmic Governance From The Bottom Up, Hannah Bloch-Wehba

Faculty Scholarship

Artificial intelligence and machine learning are both a blessing and a curse for governance. In theory, algorithmic governance makes government more efficient, more accurate, and more fair. But the emergence of automation in governance also rests on public-private collaborations that expand both public and private power, aggravate transparency and accountability gaps, and create significant obstacles for those seeking algorithmic justice. In response, a nascent body of law proposes technocratic policy changes to foster algorithmic accountability, ethics, and transparency.

This Article examines an alternative vision of algorithmic governance, one advanced primarily by social and labor movements instead of technocrats and firms. …

The Romantic Author As Compelled Speaker, Sonya G. Bonneau

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The romantic author trope has been extensively criticized in the copyright context, yet it threatens to emerge as a new pillar of First Amendment compelled speech jurisprudence. Justice Thomas’s concurring opinion in Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission exemplifies the trope’s rhetorical power, and the costs of that approach. Casting the baker as an artist, Justice Thomas finds that creating custom wedding cakes was speech, and that applying a public accommodations law to require service to a same-sex couple triggered strict scrutiny review. This is an extraordinary result. Although the Court never adjudicated the compelled speech claim, it will …

A World Without Roe: The Constitutional Future Of Unwanted Pregnancy, Julie C. Suk

William & Mary Law Review

With the demise of Roe v. Wade, the survival of abortion access in America will depend on new legal paths. In the same moment that Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization has constrained access to abortion in the United States, other constitutional democracies have moved in the opposite direction, expanding access to safe, legal, and free abortions. They have done so without reasoning from Roe’s vision of the private zone of unwanted pregnancy. The development of abortion law outside the United States provides critical insights that can inform future efforts to vindicate the constitutional rights of women facing …

Balancing Rights And Responsibilities: The Role Of Government And Citizens In Combatting Gun Violence, Michael Ulrich

Faculty Scholarship

Congress passed the first federal legislation on firearms safety in decades at nearly the same moment that the Supreme Court issued its first major Second Amendment decision since 2008. It will take time to assess the effects of these actions on both gun safety and Second Amendment rights, but, with gun violence skyrocketing across the country, it is clear that finding a balance between rights and safety is desperately needed. The public is ill-equipped to protect itself against the broad harms of gun violence, so the government has a central role to play in addressing those harms and the racial …

Transnational Corporations And Climate Governance: A Case Study Of Amazon.Com’S Net-Zero Climate Pledge, Jason Maclean

Dalhousie Law Journal

“Net zero” has become the predominant way of framing global, national, and nonstate climate change commitments. Hundreds of countries and thousands of corporations promise to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050 or earlier. Hopeful as this may seem, early evidence suggests the need to carefully scrutinize corporations’ climate promises. Specifically, there is an urgent need to critically assess the claim that strategic collaboration and compromise at the science-business-society interface can deliver the transformative social, economic, and political change required to address climate change.

Analyzing Amazon.com’s net-zero pledge as a case study, this article argues that strategic conflict with—and within—transnational corporations is …

Integrating Doctrine And Diversity Speaker Series: Integrating Content On American Indian Law And Indigenous Identities, Roger Williams University School Of Law

School of Law Conferences, Lectures & Events

No abstract provided.

Racecraft And Identity In The Emergence Of Islam As A Race, Cyra Akila Choudhury

University of Cincinnati Law Review

Can a religion, over time and through its social and legal resignification, come to be a race? Drawing on Critical Race Theory (“CRT”), Critical Discourse Theory, the work of Karen E. and Barbara J. Fields and Cedric Robinson, this article argues that Islam has emerged as a race and Muslims as a racial group. To support the claim, Part I examines the theoretical basis for the argument. Applying the concept of “racecraft,” the article theorizes that racism produces both the racial group and race. As many have already argued, race is not based in biology; it is not a fact …

The Law Of Friends, Ezra Rosser

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

A serious law professor would not write an article about the TV show Friends, but having just written a book and an article, I’m on a “break.” Besides, I’m not that serious a law professor. And Friends is as good a topic as any. For those of us of a certain age—too young to have watched M.A.S.H. when it came out and old enough to remember watching broadcast TV and not just through a streaming service on a device—Friends was and is a big deal. It both captured a particular moment in history and helped make that moment.

Looking back …

Climate Change And The Threat To U.S. Jails And Prisons, Laurie L. Levenson

Villanova Environmental Law Journal (1991 - )

No abstract provided.

Dicamba Is Gone With The Wind: The Ninth Circuit Blows Life Into Fifra In National Family Farm Coalition V. United States Environmental Protection Agency, Timothy Howley Keith

Villanova Environmental Law Journal (1991 - )

No abstract provided.

Wishing To Be Part Of That Court: How The Supreme Court's Decision In Bp P.L.C. V. Mayor Of Baltimore Lets Energy Companies Wander Free And Drown The Shore Up Above, Natalie Poirier

Villanova Environmental Law Journal (1991 - )

No abstract provided.

Blocking Nature's Vulnerable Calls For Help: The Tenth Circuit Dials Into The Telecommunications Act's Federal Environmental Preemption Clause In Santa Fe Alliance V. City Of Santa Fe, Samantha Speiss

Villanova Environmental Law Journal (1991 - )

No abstract provided.

Law School News: Should Prison Be Abolished? 10-6-2022, Michael M. Bowden

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Cle Working Paper No. 3/2022--What Is The Test For Interlocutory Injunctions Affecting Homeless Encampments? A Critique Of Vancouver Fraser Port Authority V Brett And Associated Case Law, Stepan Wood

Centre for Law and the Environment

Vancouver Fraser Port Authority v Brett (VFPA v Brett), decided in 2020, marked a new low in judicial responses to the intersecting crises of housing, homelessness, poverty, toxic drugs, mental health, racism and colonialism. By dropping to the ground the already low bar for granting interlocutory injunctions to evict homeless encampments from publicly owned land i n BC, this decision invites a critical assessment of BC courts’ approach to homeless encampment injunctions. In this paper I present the first comprehensive survey of 21st century BC homeless encampment interlocutory injunction applications, which shows that they have an extremely high …

The Role Of Law And Myth In Creating A Workplace That 'Looks Like America', Susan Bisom-Rapp

Faculty Scholarship

Equal employment opportunity (EEO) law has played a poor role in incentivizing effective diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) and harassment prevention programming. In litigation and investigation, too many judges and regulators credit employers for maintaining policies and programs rather than requiring employers to embrace efforts that work. Likewise, many employers and consultants fail to consider the organizational effects created by DEI and harassment programming. Willful ignorance prevents the admission that some policies and programming harm those most in need of protection.

This approach has resulted in two problems. One is a doctrinal dilemma because important presumptions embedded in antidiscrimination law …

Confronting State Violence: Lessons From India's Farmer Protests, Smita Narula

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

In December 2021, following a year of sustained mass protests, farmers in India forced the repeal of three controversial Farm Laws that attempted to deregulate India’s agricultural sector in service of corporate interests. Farmers feared that the laws would dismantle price supports for key crops, jeopardize their livelihoods, and facilitate a corporate takeover of India’s agrarian economy. This Article situates India’s historic farmer protests in the context of the country’s longstanding agrarian crisis and the corporate capture of agriculture worldwide. I argue that the protests arose in response not only to the Farm Laws, but also to decades of state-sponsored …

Get Your Head In The Game: Gamifying The Bar Examination, Donald E. Campbell

MC Law Review

During a recent administration of the bar examination, I observed the following: a student who had a child ten days before the exam passed; a student on law review failed; a student whose predictors indicated he should fail the bar exam passed; two students who were in the library every day studying failed. Even though these folks were all taking the same exam, their outcomes varied dramatically, and there did not seem to be a common variable that predicted whether they would pass or fail. My first inclination was to throw up my hands in frustration and chalk it up …

Social Media Harms And The Common Law, Leslie Y. Garfield Tenzer

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This article finds fault with the judiciaries' failure to create a set of common law norms for social media wrongs. In cases concerning social media harms, the Supreme Court and lower courts have consistently adhered to traditional pre-social media principles, failing to use the power of the common law to create a kind of Internet Justice.

Part I of this article reviews social media history and explores how judicial decisions created a fertile bed for social media harm to blossom. Part II illustrates social media harms across several doctrinal disciplines and highlights judicial reluctance to embrace the realities of social …

Without Accommodation, Jennifer Bennett Shinall

Indiana Law Journal

Under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), workers with disabilities have the legal right to reasonable workplace accommodations provided by employers. Because this legal right is unique to disabled workers, these workers could, in theory, enjoy greater access to the types of accommodations that are desirable to all workers—including the ability to work from home, to work flexible hours, and to take leave. This Article compares access to these accommodations, which have become increasingly desirable during the COVID-19 pandemic, between disabled workers and nondisabled workers. Using 2017–2018 data from the American Time Use Survey’s Leave and Job Flexibilities Module, I …