Legal Writing and Research Commons^™

Contributing Author Biographies, Editorial Team

Florida Atlantic University Undergraduate Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Reimagining Justice Without Execution: Should The Death Penalty Be Abolished?, Tanvi Desai

Florida Atlantic University Undergraduate Law Journal

Surrounded by controversy, the debate regarding the preservation, or lack thereof, of the death penalty in the United States has sparked intense discourse. It has remained the subject of profound controversy since its beginning during colonial times. Stemming from issues surrounding the ethicality of the capital punishment and the irreversible essence of it, many Americans have begun reevaluating the cruel punishment at hand and favoring the abolishment of the death penalty. As human life becomes increasingly vital in this generation, this paper will argue against the preservation of the death penalty for a multitude of reasons. These compelling reasons include …

Donna Nagy To Receive Sonneborn Award, James Owsley Boyd

Keep Up With the Latest News from the Law School (blog)

For the third time in history, a faculty member of the Indiana University Maurer School of Law will be honored with the university’s Sonneborn Award.

Donna Nagy, the C. Ben Dutton Professor of Law and executive associate dean, will be recognized with a number of other distinguished award-winners at a ceremony this fall. She follows Leandra Lederman, William W. Oliver Chair Emerita in Tax Law (2019), and Walter W. Foskett Professor of Law Susan H. Williams (2014) as law faculty who have earned the honor.

The Tracy M. Sonneborn Award honors faculty for accomplishments in the areas of teaching and …

Thusi Selected As John Hope Franklin Prize Recipient, James Owsley Boyd

Keep Up With the Latest News from the Law School (blog)

The Law and Society Association will honor an Indiana University Maurer School of Law professor this week at its 2024 Annual Meeting in Denver from June 6-9.

Professor India Thusi will receive the John Hope Franklin Prize, recognizing exceptional scholarship in the field of Race, Racism and the Law.

Thusi’s winning work, “The Racialized History of Vice Policing,” was published in the UCLA Law Review in 2023.

“The article provides an enduring scholarly contribution at the intersection of policing, abolition, and legal history,” according to the LSA. “Thusi adopts an abolitionist framework and provides a much-needed analysis of vice policing …

Language Models, Plagiarism, And Legal Writing, Michael L. Smith

The University of New Hampshire Law Review

Language models like ChatGPT are the talk of the town in legal circles. Despite some high-profile stories of fake ChatGPT-generated citations, many practitioners argue that language models are the way of the future. These models, they argue, promise an efficient source of first drafts and stock language. Others make similar claims about legal writing education, with a number of professors urging the acknowledgment of language models. Others go further and argue that students ought to learn to use these models to improve their writing and prepare for practice. I argue that those urging the incorporation of language models into legal …

Feedback Loops: Upward Appreciation., Patrick Barry

Articles

When was the last time you tried to make your boss feel welcome? Last week? Last month? Never?

How about the last time you tried to make one of your mentors feel welcome? Your mom? Your dad? A particularly helpful pastor, rabbi, imam, or other religious leader?

Interview With David Webber: Reflections On The Past, Present, And Future Of Labor's Capital, Alvin Velazquez, David H. Webber

Faculty Scholarship

ALVIN VELAZQUEZ: Good afternoon! My name is Alvin Velazquez. I am an Associate General Counsel at the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), where for the last fifteen years I have given advice on bankruptcy, corporate law matters, and tech matters. I’m also an adjunct professor at Georgetown Law School where I have taught employment law and am teaching a seminar called Systemic Racism, Colonialism, and Bankrupt Governments.1 Before arriving at SEIU I worked as a litigation associate at several large law firms. I also admit, rather sheepishly, that I am one of the few graduates of Cornell in the labor …

Fischman Elected To Defenders Of Wildlife Board, James Owsley Boyd

Keep Up With the Latest News from the Law School (blog)

An environmental law professor at the Indiana University Maurer School of Law has been elected to the board of directors of a national conservation organization dedicated to the protection and restoration of imperiled species and their habitats in North America.

Rob Fischman, the George P. Smith, II Distinguished Professor of Law and an adjunct professor at the O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs, was elected to the Defenders of Wildlife board on Tuesday, May 21.

His teaching, research and service align closely with the organization’s conservation vision of a future where diverse wildlife populations in North America are secure …

Artificial Intelligence: Legal Reasoning, Legal Research And Legal Writing, S. Sean Tu, Amy Cyphert, Samuel J. Perl

Minnesota Journal of Law, Science & Technology

No abstract provided.

Corpus Enigmas And Contradictory Linguistics: Tensions Between Empirical Semantic Meaning And Judicial Interpretation, Peter Henderson, Daniel E. Ho, Andrea Vallebueno, Cassandra Handan-Nader

Minnesota Journal of Law, Science & Technology

No abstract provided.

A Legal Scholarship Jubilee, Brian L. Frye

Northwestern Law Journal des Refusés

No abstract provided.

An Old-Fashioned Bluebook Burning, Paul Gowder

Northwestern Law Journal des Refusés

No abstract provided.

Library Guide: National Library Week: April 8-12, 2024, Roger Williams University School Of Law Library

Law Library Guide

No abstract provided.

Surveys: Who's Asking? Who's Answering? Is Anybody Listening?, Virginia C. Thomas

Library Scholarly Publications

The author examines the historical impact of surveys and opinion polls on the U.S. Congress.

Persistent Identifiers And The Next Generation Of Legal Scholarship, Aaron Retteen, Malikah Hall-Retteen

Faculty Scholarship

This article discusses the importance of the most common persistent identifiers in scholarly communications—the digital object identifier and the ORCID identifier—to legal scholarship. Persistent identifiers help preserve and disseminate academic content and data-driven services that leverage this information standard are now integrated into the publication process. Because legal publishers have not widely adopted persistent identifiers, the legal discipline cannot enjoy the benefits offered by this system. This article looks at barriers to implementing persistent identifiers among legal publishers and provides an anecdotal example of creating a sustainable workflow between the law library and student-run law journals.

Expectation V. Reality: Practical Problems With The Right Of First Refusal As A Defense Against Eminent Domain, Aerin Christensen

BYU Law Review

In the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Kelo v. New London, many states enacted new laws to protect property owners from eminent domain. One possible defense for property owners is a statutory right of first refusal. In theory, this is a common-sense protection that ensures that if property is not needed for a public use, it is returned to the original owner. Unfortunately, in practice a right of first refusal is not always an effective protection for property owners.

The plaintiff’s experience in the Utah case Cardiff Wales, LLC v. Washington County School District demonstrates Utah’s statutory …

"They Just Needed To Be Given The Opportunity": Judicial Perspectives Of Drug/Dui Courts In South Dakota, Ryleigh A. Christopherson

Honors Thesis

Drug/DUI courts have existed in the state of South Dakota since 2007 when the state became the last to implement a drug/DUI court program. Currently, South Dakota has 17 problem-solving courts which include drug, DUI, mental health, and veterans courts. The drug/DUI court model works to circumvent participants out of the criminal justice system by targeting the root cause of their criminal behavior. The role of the judge in this model is essential. Previous research has found that how participants view the quality of their interactions with the presiding judge is one of the most influential factors for their success …

Table Of Contents & Masthead, Sophie Nelson

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

Pretrial Commitment And The Fourth Amendment, Laurent Sacharoff

Notre Dame Law Review

Today, the Fourth Amendment Warrant Clause governs arrest warrants and search warrants only. But in the founding era, the Warrant Clause governed a third type of warrant: the “warrant of commitment.” Judges issued these warrants to jail defendants pending trial. This Article argues that the Fourth Amendment Warrant Clause, with its oath and probable cause standard, should be understood today to apply to this third type of warrant. That means the Warrant Clause would govern any initial appearance where a judge first commits a defendant—a process that currently falls far short of fulfilling its constitutional and historical function. History supports …

Table Of Contents And Masthead, Sophie Nelson

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

W&L Law Library Newsletter, Vol. 3, Iss. 2 (Apr. 2024), The Law Library At Washington And Lee University School Of Law

W&L Law Library Newsletter

W&L Law Library Newsletter, Volume 3, Issue 2 (April 2024).

A New Hope: Perez V. Sturgis Public Schools Opens The Courthouse Doors To Children With Disabilities, Richard Marsico

Belmont Law Review

This article addresses what happens when the exhaustion

requirement for IDEA claims intersects with the exhaustion requirement for

related federal laws. Specifically, compensatory monetary damages are

not available for IDEA violations but are available for violations of

related federal laws. This raises a question: if a plaintiff wants to file a

complaint pursuant only to the related federal laws alleging disability

discrimination and seeking monetary damages for actions that also arguably

violate the IDEA, must the plaintiff exhaust the IDEA administrative

process first?

From Garcetti To Kennedy: Teachers, Coaches, And Free Speech At Public Schools, Emily G. Waldman

Belmont Law Review

This Article analyzes Kennedy’s implications for educators’ free speech rights at school. It is important to note, at the outset, that the Kennedy majority’s description of the actual facts at issue is highly debatable. Indeed, the majority presented a sanitized account of what actually occurred on the ground, minimizing the highly public nature of Kennedy’s prayers and the football players’ involvement in them. That said, if we take the facts as the majority presented them, and then move to the majority’s assessment of those facts, we emerge with an interesting gloss on Garcetti. Synthesizing Garcetti and Kennedy points toward a …

Too Young To Suspend: Ending Early Grade School Exclusion By Applying Lessons From The Fight To Increase The Minimum Age Of Juvenile Court Jurisdiction, Peggy Nicholson

Belmont Law Review

In many respects, the evolution of juvenile court reform and school discipline reform follow similar trajectories. This Article begins by tracking those respective evolutions. Part I outlines the evolution of the juvenile court system in the United States and focuses on the fledgling system’s distinction of children from adults and its “rehabilitative ideal” that children could outgrow challenging behavior if given the right treatment and services. After a long period of “adultification” of the juvenile court in response to rising crime rates, more recent reform efforts have focused on returning to the early court’s rehabilitative model, including policies that would …

"Exceedingly Unpersuasive" - Discrimination, Transgender Students, And School Bathrooms, Mark Dorosin

Belmont Law Review

In 2015, the St. Johns County School District adopted a policy which prohibited transgender students from using the restroom matching their gender identity and required that they use either single stall restrooms or the multi-stall restroom corresponding to their gender listed on their birth certificate (their “biological” sex). Similar policies targeting transgender students had been implemented by school districts across the country; and like many of them, St. Johns’ policy was quickly challenged by a transgender student who asserted that the policy violated his civil rights. In late December 2022, a divided Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals, sitting en banc, …

Democracy And State Education Governance, Quinn Yeargain

Belmont Law Review

This Article lays out the hundred-year-plus trajectory of state constitutional and statutory changes that transitioned education from a near universally democratized area of policymaking into one that unevenly balances democracy and professionalization. Part I begins by sketching out the starting position of democracy in state education governance: the initial creation of elected state education administrators and the pressures to reform these systems in the early twentieth century. Then, Part II explores the slow process by which the structure of statewide education governance shifted, discussing the methods by which reforms were proposed and the content of the proposed changes. Part III …

What Will Happen To Cleo In The Wave Of Affirmative Action Litigation, Erin Lain

Belmont Law Review

The Students for Fair Admission (“SFFA”) decision has upended how law schools conduct admission, changing the decades-old practices of considering race as one of many factors in the admissions process. Despite the narrow use of race in the admission process, the legal profession is still almost 81% white, suggesting the use of affirmative action has not been a substantial boost to minority enrollment in law school. Despite the low impact, the United States Supreme Court proceeded with a sweeping decision declaring the use of racial checkboxes unconstitutional and limiting the use of race in admissions to evidence of nonracial attributes …

Maximizing The Educational Choice Wave By Rethinking State And Local Regulations, Shaka Mitchell

Belmont Law Review

This Article will first survey the flurry of education choice activity in 2023, touching on several of the factors that drove legislation. Next, it will examine both the dispositional and practical impediments to choice reforms. This Article concludes with recommendations for modernizing local and state policy to best achieve the goals of recently enacted educational programs.

Taking Our Position: Repairing The Breach In The Pipeline To The Legal Profession By Transforming The Impact Of Bias Against Black Girls In Student Discipline, Hon. Tiffany W. Brewer

Belmont Law Review

This Article implores the legal profession to intervene in promoting accountability in remediating implicit bias and discrimination in school discipline decisions disproportionately impacting Black girls’ educational outcomes, given their significant impact in disrupting the pipeline to the legal profession. The lack of accountability for disparate school discipline policies has resulted in little progress in decreasing the school-to-prison pipeline for Black girls. As a result, failures to eradicate implicit bias and discrimination in educational systems threaten the pipeline of future Black women law students, lawyers, and judges. This Article contends that if the bias in current school discipline policies toward Black …

Learning Together: Modern Developments In Education Law, Angie Sanders, Jordyn Conley, Lauren Bush

Belmont Law Review

Panel Discussion from legal practitioners discussing the various challenges and processes of working in the field of education law.