Law and Society Commons^™

Beyond A Boundary Of Systemic Anti-Black Racism In The Workplace In Canada, Adelle Blackett

Dalhousie Law Journal

In this lecture, I will, however, focus on one of the legacies of slavery, that is, the largely untold story of racial segregation in the world of work in Canada. We have come so effectively, and rightly, to focus on the effects of discrimination, that we may have inadvertently walked past the history. Reclaiming this history will comprise the first part of my talk.

The second part of my talk will reference the emergence of the duty of fair representation. I will seek to illustrate the weight of the erasure of anti-Black racism through this duty. In other words, far …

De/Reconstructing Delinquency, Eduardo R. Ferrer

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Hundreds of thousands of children are brought under the jurisdiction of delinquency courts every year in the United States. Despite the reality that most children engage in delinquent behavior during their adolescence, poor children, children of color, children with disabilities, and children who identify as LGBTQIA+ comprise a disproportionate number of those who become delinquency system-involved. These disparities exist by design. Their origins can be traced back to the flawed first principles upon which the juvenile court was built and, specifically, to the unduly expansive legal definition of delinquency that has undergirded the jurisdiction and power of the juvenile court …

Dobbs V. Brown, Benjamin H. Barton

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization1is the most important and impactful Supreme Court decision since at least Roe v. Wade, and potentially since Brown v. Board of Education. Past survey data show that most Americans can only name two Supreme Court opinions: Roe and Brown. Dobbs will surely join that list. This Article compares the history, drafting, and opinions of Dobbs and Brown to show what a missed opportunity Dobbs represents. Regardless of whether you agree or disagree with the opinion, it should be clear that Dobbs was one of those unique times (like that of Brown) where the Court …

Chronically Online: Apportioning Liability In Social Media Litigation Based On User Engagement, Rebecca Vangelos

Fordham Law Review

The average American teenager spends nearly five hours on social media every day. This result is by design: social media platforms like Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok deploy persuasive technologies—including infinite scroll, personalized content recommendation feeds, and dark patterns—to capture and retain teen attention. These intentional design features exploit adolescent vulnerabilities to foster social media dependency. Accordingly, a growing body of scientific evidence links the extensive use of social media to the teen mental health crisis in the United States.

Despite these negative effects, social media companies have largely evaded accountability for the harm they have caused to teens. Recent lawsuits …

The Role And Impact Of Forensic Evidence In The Prosecution Of Homicide Cases In The U.S., Afrah Dakhilallah A. Altubait

Theses and Dissertations

The role of forensic evidence in the criminal justice process is an important topic that is significant from both theoretical and practical perspectives. The present study is dedicated to a critical analysis of the role of this evidence in the U.S. criminal justice process with a focus on its significance in homicide cases. Specifically, this dissertation examines the implications of using DNA and fingerprint evidence for convictions in U.S. homicide cases by analyzing the role of DNA and fingerprint evidence in the prosecution of “hot” and “cold” homicide cases, discussing the main ways in which forensic evidence assists with prosecuting …

The Effectiveness Of The Hague Convention In Addressing International Child Abduction, Areej A. Dakelallah Althubiti

Theses and Dissertations

Parental child abduction is a growing concern fueled by immigration, cross-cultural marriages, evolving family dynamics, and gaps in the implementation and enforcement of developed international frameworks. This study examines the effectiveness of and challenges to the enforcement of the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction (HCCA), which was developed to address this problem. Specifically, the goal of this research is to assess the effect the HCCA has had on parental kidnapping, analyze its effectiveness in resolving international custody disputes, and identify the legal and practical obstacles that inhibit implementation. While the prevalence of parental kidnapping continues …

Bridging Movement Lawyering & International Human Rights Advocacy, Citlalli Ochoa

Scholarly Works

The human rights field is often criticized for its lack of enforcement and implementation, lawyering methodologies, and its roots in imperialism, exceptionalism, and Eurocentric values. In response to some of these critiques, human rights scholars and advocates have embraced more grassroots approaches that in many instances resemble the movement lawyering methodologies employed in social justice advocacy in the United States. In the same way that movement lawyers have centered impacted communities and engaged in long term, coordinated legal and political advocacy to achieve normative change, human rights advocates have used the international human rights framework to exert political pressure, facilitate …

Enforced Colorblindness, Goldburn P. Maynard Jr.

Washington and Lee Law Review

The time for race consciousness is over, and the era of enforced colorblindness is upon us. The dawn of this new age is troubling because it closes the door on effective strategies to achieve racial justice, including efforts to grant federal reparations. This Article analyzes the areas in which courts have invalidated race-conscious measures, with a particular focus on recent racial equity efforts by the Biden Administration. Rather than treating the loss of race consciousness exclusively as a loss to the movement for equality, this Article argues for a silver-lining approach. While court-led efforts to remedy the effects of slavery …

I Hate Self-Care: A Criminal Defense Lawyer’S Lament, Abbe Smith

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Don’t get me wrong—I think people should take care of themselves. They should eat well, exercise regularly, and get a good night’s sleep. They should spend time with friends and family. They should have hobbies and interests. With any luck, they should find true love. But in the past decade or two, and especially since the COVID pandemic, there has been a disturbing turn inward. I’m talking about the “self-care” craze, which has become its own pandemic, or at least epidemic.

…

In this Essay, I share my concerns about what I regard to be an excessive focus on self-care …

Legislating Morality: The Historical Consequences Of The Mann Act On The American Public, Chance J. Harper

Wyoming Law Review

The Mann Act, officially titled the “White Slave Traffic Act of June 25 1910,” was a product of a time of immense social, ethnic, and political change. The Mann Act was presented as the solution to “white slavery”— an imagined crisis where white-American girls were forced into prostitution. This crisis was attributed to the influx of traditionally “othered” ethnic groups, which shocked the nation and prompted sweeping action by politicians to protect white-American values and culture in the name of stopping forced prostitution. In addition to perceived threats to American values, fears of immigrant power as a voting block and …

Diligent Influence, Carrie Stanton

Washington and Lee Law Review

Social media influencers wield astonishing marketing power. While influencing may be innocuous in some respects, scholars have argued that influencer marketing—which is uniquely high-touch, individualized, and intimate—raises novel consumer safety concerns. These concerns, in turn, beg crucial questions of risk allocation. In her excellent Note, Under the Influence: Duties, Deception, Disclosures, and Due Diligence of Social Media Influencers, Arianna Kiaei describes the psychological and economic impacts of social media influencing and makes a compelling case for influencer accountability. Kiaei argues that current regulations focus too narrowly on the companies promoting their products through influencers; instead, Kiaei suggests that the robust …

Social Murder And The Antisocial Contract, Marissa Jackson Sow

Law Faculty Publications

Social murder is widely understood as the reckless and calculated killing by the State of people who are considered surplus and thus made redundant by the State. It is not merely an outcome, however; social murder, is an antidemocratic process, and—certainly as it is manifesting in the United States under the second Trump Administration—is also an anti-constitutionalist project aimed at destroying society, eliminating social goods, and renegotiating an American social contract that is, definitionally, antisocial. Social murder is as much about the elimination of social life as it is about the interruption of physical life. And it is fueled by …

Empowering Women In The Richmond Legal Community, Lily Goodman

Law Student Publications

No abstract provided.

Mind The Gap(S): Mitigating Harassment In A Post-#Metoo Workplace, Jamillah Bowman Williams, Elizabeth C. Tippett, Anu Ramdin

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In a post-#MeToo workplace, harassment remains pervasive, and harassment law still fails to provide protection for the harms experienced by many workers—particularly those in the most vulnerable jobs. Even when reform efforts are introduced through legislation, courts, and agency guidance, it often does not provide greater power, autonomy, and dignity to women in ways that would more meaningfully protect them from workplace abuse. We are the first to create a database of state legislation, including over three thousand bills, that allows us to empirically analyze the extent to which lawmakers comprehensively address harassment following the rise of the #MeToo movement. …

Promoting Public Health And Public Safety By Ending The Exclusion Of Incarcerated Children From Access To Medicaid, Eduardo R. Ferrer

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This essay is a response to Professor Den Houter's article entitled Children are Not Inmates in which she effectively calls eliminating the exclusion of indigent incarcerated children from Medicaid coverage pursuant to the Medicaid Inmate Exclusion Policy (MIEP). This essay affirms and builds upon Professor Den Houter's recommendation. Part I of this response provides additional support for why ensuring system-involved youth receive timely, uninterrupted, high-quality behavioral health services is critical to improving both public health and public safety. Part II analyzes the benefits and risks attendant to excluding indigent incarcerated children from the MIEP. Part III proposes the implementation of …

Reentry Realities: Examining The Role Of Aftercare Programs In Supporting Justice-Involved Youth, Lynda Girven

Honors Undergraduate Theses

The current study examined if aftercare and reentry programs helped to reduce recidivism among youth who have been involved in the juvenile system, and specifically, youth released from residential placement facilities. Different components of aftercare programs were also examined, such as the inclusion of mentoring or family support, how many services were offered, and if the program followed the Risk-Need-Responsivity (RNR) model. Through completing a systematic review of studies published since 2008, five studies met the inclusion and exclusion criteria. All five studies found that the youth who received services through aftercare programs were less likely to reoffend than youth …

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Celebration Lecture January 24, 2025, Roger Williams University School Of Law

School of Law Conferences, Lectures & Events

No abstract provided.

On Snow's Intellectual Property And Immorality, David O. Taylor

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

In this Essay, I consider the “why” and “how” of Professor Snow’s controversial, countercultural, important, and relevant position that immorality may result in the denial of intellectual property protection. First, I highlight how surprising it is that Professor Snow’s argument springs from the theories underlying intellectual property protection, rather than the theories underlying the morality and ethics he believes ought to be considered in determining intellectual property protection. No one (that I know, at least) goes to the Environmental Protection Agency seeking better regulations to protect the environment and uses the labor desert theory of property rights as an argument. …

Who Regulates Abortion Now?, Nathan G. Cortez, Joanna L. Grossman

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

Contrary to both conventional wisdom and recent Supreme Court pronouncements, abortion is not simply a matter of state oversight. For a quarter century now, the federal government has been intimately involved in “regulating” abortion through the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s approval and continued oversight over mifepristone and other abortion medications. This Article considers the extent to which federal abortion law both coexists and conflicts with state law, as it does with most areas of medicine. We evaluate which body of law is better able at achieving the goals of modern medicine that is evidence-based, ethical, consistent, and individualized.

Why Domestic Violence Offenders Don't Give Up Their Guns, Natalie Nanasi

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

Perpetrators of intimate partner violence are barred by federal law and many states' laws from possessing firearms. While such prohibitions enjoy popular support, they are sporadically and inconsistently enforced, placing the lives of survivors at risk when offenders do not voluntarily comply. Many experts, including this author, have offered legal and policy solutions to increase the likelihood that perpetrators of domestic violence will either willingly relinquish their guns or otherwise be dispossessed of them. But these proposals may have been premature.

This Article is the first to take a step back and inquire why offenders do not surrender their firearms …

Who Decides: The Role Of Parental Rights In Abortion And Gender-Affirming-Care Decisions For Minors, Joanna L. Grossman

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

The American legal system presumes that children’s interests are best protected by their parents and, secondarily, by the state’s parens patriae authority. Yet this structure falters when parental authority and state power are infused with political and ideological agendas. This Essay examines how these dynamics have distorted decision-making authority in two contexts—minors’ access to abortion and gender-affirming medical care—and allowed children’s welfare and autonomy to be sacrificed to partisan aims. The law is inconsistent on the role of parental rights—typically empowering parents to grant or withhold consent to a minor’s abortion but categorically stripping them of the power to consent …

Rethinking Juror Impartiality, Anna Offit

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

Jury impartiality in the contemporary court often justifies the perpetuation

of exclusionary selection practices that make juries more—not less—biased.

This Article calls for a rethinking of this important but flawed concept. Constitutional

interpretations and conceptions of “impartiality” frame it as a transient

orientation toward particular evidence or parties. Yet, during voir dire, the prevailing

conception of jury impartiality is that it is an immutable character trait

that must be discovered—if not created—by professional legal actors. What voir

dire creates is not an impartial jury, but precisely the opposite: a venire shaped

by the strategic biases of lawyers.

This Article offers …

The Impact Of Covid-19 Pandemic Demands On By-Law Officer Wellness And Work, Harveen Randhawa

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

This research sheds light on how the rapid demand to enforce transitioning pandemic-related (and reopening) mandates impacts the wellness of bylaw officers in the context of resource strain. Ontario bylaw officers are at the forefront of the province’s response, enforcing lockdown rules to ensure community safety. This research is imperative in understanding how bylaw officers maintain their roles in municipal enforcement, while enforcing rapidly shifting COVID-19 regulations and moving forward into a post-lockdown climate. The research focuses on identifying and understanding the demands and resources that currently typify bylaw officers working in Southern Ontario. It further examines how the COVID-19 …

Perceptions And Treatment Decisions For A Drug Offender Based On Social Class, Cocaine Type, Personal Characteristics, And Compassionate Love: A Vignette Study, Yasmin A. Odeh

Theses and Dissertations

Problem: The shift from a focus on rehabilitation to the more punitive, “tough on crime” approach to illegal behavior in the U.S. has been enacted in no small way by policies connected to the use and abuse of drugs. The disparities between crack and powder cocaine—two chemically similar substances—have headlined this shift (Vagins and McCurdy 2006). However, research is scarce on laypeople’s approval of deterrence approaches for drug offenses, including as a function of types (e.g., powder vs. cocaine possession). This study examined people’s perceptions of prosecutorial decisions for drug offenders—whether they are punished, rehabilitated, or both—and whether people perceived …

Addressing Witness Coaching By Cross-Examination, Gregory C. Sisk

St. Mary's Journal on Legal Malpractice & Ethics

In preparing a witness, may a lawyer script the testimony by taking the witness through repeated rehearsals to fabricate a narrative in the form directed by the lawyer and to use words that the lawyer suggests are more favorable for the represented party? Suppose the lawyer believes a suggestion to the witness regarding the specific substance or word choice of testimony does not introduce a falsehood but rather produces a more favorable spin on the witness narrative. May the lawyer justify that shaping of testimonial content as legitimate zealous representation of a client?

Given that any such suggestion by the …

Our Ai, Ourselves: Illuminating The Human Fears Animating Early Regulatory Responses To The Use Of Generative Ai In The Practice Of Law, Margaret Raymond

St. Mary's Journal on Legal Malpractice & Ethics

Generative artificial intelligence is changing the way lawyers work, and with those changes have come questions and concerns about how it should be regulated. Those questions and concerns, particularly on the individual level, are driven by fears about the implications of the use of generative AI. This Article identifies and explores the fears that drive these regulatory responses: fear of exposing judicial fallibility, anxiety over AI replacing human lawyers, and concerns about missing out on AI’s potential benefits. Ultimately, effective regulation of the use of generative AI in legal practice needs to be attentive to the fears and hopes surrounding …

Trading Places: An Education For Legal Employers: A View From The Perspective Of A New Generation Of Legal Talent, Michele N. Struffolino

St. Mary's Journal on Legal Malpractice & Ethics

Most lawyers remember the stress associated with walking into their first job interview. The goal being to get the interviewer to “pick me.” Today, legal employers need to be prepared to be more of the interviewee than the interviewer in the hiring process. Over the past few decades, much focus has been on identifying the skills essential to success in the legal profession—mainly those skills and traits legal employers view as important when hiring new associates. These findings led to changes in legal education in order to prepare law students for entering the employment market and successfully securing a position. …

Artificial Intelligence In Texas: Navigating The Risks, Benefits, And Uncharged Boundaries Of An Emerging Technology, Jordanna Tobias

St. Mary's Journal on Legal Malpractice & Ethics

No abstract provided.

Self-Regulation In Emerging And Innovative Industries, Daniel E. Walters, Hannah J. Wiseman

Faculty Scholarship

Self-regulation—governance of firm behavior by private entities—has a long history both in the United States and globally, and there is an extensive literature on the topic. But there has been far less attention paid to the role self-regulation can play in spurring and enabling innovation and growth within emerging industries. These industries—both currently ascendant ones such as hydrogen and artificial intelligence, as well as formerly new (but now well established) activities in hydraulic fracturing and Internet communications—plausibly benefit from self-regulation’s ability to coordinate economic actors and reassure often skeptical publics. Examining the ways that self-regulation impacts this special type of …

The Globalization Of Copyright Exceptions For Ai Training, Matthew Sag, Peter K. Yu

Faculty Scholarship

Generative AI, machine learning and other computational uses of copyrighted works pose profound questions for copyright law. This article conducts of global survey of how different countries have attempted to answer these questions in relation to the unauthorized use of copyrighted works for training. Although the world has yet to achieve international consensus on this issue, an international equilibrium is emerging. Jurisdictions with common law and civil law traditions, and with varying economic conditions, technological capabilities, political systems, and cultural backgrounds, have found ways to reconcile copyright law and AI training. In this equilibrium, countries recognize that text data mining, …