Legal Writing and Research Commons^™

Measuring Lawyer Mental Illness: Evidence From Two National Surveys, Benjamin David Pyle, Clifford Rosky

Faculty Scholarship

The American Bar Association declared a “well-being crisis” among lawyers, but the empirical basis for this claim has been contested in recent years. This study systematically compares two high-quality, nationally representative surveys —the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) and the National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH)—to measure the prevalence of mental illness and alcohol misuse among lawyers. In both surveys, lawyers report elevated rates of alcohol misuse compared to the general public and similarly educated peers. The NHIS finds that lawyers experience psychological distress at rates lower than the general public and similar to, or moderately higher than, …

Translating The “Preposition + Which” Construction In English Legal Texts Into Indonesian, Doni Jaya

Paradigma: Jurnal Kajian Budaya

Legal text translation is challenging because of its emphasis on semantic and syntactic faithfulness, while ST structures do not always have correspondent TL equivalents. One of such structures is the English “preposition + which” (PW) construction. This construction can be difficult to translate into Indonesian because the language does not always have ready-to-use connectors to produce a structurally faithful translation, often forcing translators to take the easy way of using ungrammatical and unnatural connectors which becomes the hallmark of the Indonesian legalese style. This research seeks to examine various ways to translate PW constructions in a more grammatical and …

An Exception To Prove The Rule: Rebutting The Presumption Of A Consistent And Definitive Construction, Miles C. Skedsvold

Mercer Law Review

Because the State of Georgia has had ten constitutions since declaring independence from Great Britain, the history of those prior constitutions has a lot to do with understanding the Constitution in force today. In particular, when a provision is carried forward from one constitution to the next without material change, the Supreme Court of Georgia’s decisions interpreting that provision under an earlier constitution can be a key piece of evidence for understanding its meaning in the later one.

The Supreme Court of Georgia calls this piece of the historical inquiry the presumption of a consistent and definitive construction: the provision …

Orenstein To Receive 2026 John Henry Wigmore Award For Lifetime Achievement, Maurer School Of Law - Indiana University

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

Professor Aviva A. Orenstein, the Karen Lake Buttrey and Donald W. Buttrey Chair at the Indiana University Maurer School of Law, has been named the recipient of the 2026 John Henry Wigmore Award for Lifetime Achievement.

The John Henry Wigmore Award, presented by the Evidence Section of the Association of American Law Schools (AALS), honors individuals whose careers have made exceptional contributions to the field of evidence law. Previous recipients include leading scholars in evidence whose work has shaped teaching, scholarship, and practice.

“The award is presented to evidence scholars who have made leading contributions to the understanding of …

Rhetorical Strategies In Legal Argument: Their Influence On Judicial Decisions And Public Perception, Olivia Deluca

Honors College Theses

The relationship between rhetoric and law has long been debated by scholars, theorists, and practitioners. This project explores how rhetorical strategies used in judicial writing and legal discourse influence both judicial decision making and public perception of the law. Drawing on classical rhetorical theory, contemporary legal scholarship, and qualitative research, this study investigates how appeals to morality, precedent, and narrative shape legal legitimacy. The research incorporates interviews with legal professionals and textual analysis of landmark U.S. Supreme Court cases to examine how rhetorical language both reflects and constructs legal authority. Findings suggest that rhetoric functions not only as a persuasive …

Professor Yvette Butler Named 2026 Recipient Of Derrick A. Bell, Jr. Award, Maurer School Of Law - Indiana University

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

Indiana University Maurer School of Law Professor Yvette Butler has been selected as the 2026 recipient of the Derrick A. Bell, Jr. Award, the Association of American Law Schools (AALS) Section on Minority Groups announced late Friday (Dec. 12).

“Professor Butler’s commitment to advancing racial justice and elevating the voices of marginalized communities embodies the highest ideals of our profession,” said Indiana Law Dean Christiana Ochoa. “Her work reflects the courage, clarity of purpose, and unwavering advocacy that defined Derrick Bell’s legacy. We are immensely proud to see her recognized with this award and look forward to the continued impact …

Platforms, Privacy, And Power: Examining Predictors Of Online Intimate Information Disclosure And Expression, Alexis Shore Ingber, Danielle Keats Citron, Jonathon W. Penney

Articles & Book Chapters

When intimate privacy is violated, self- and relational development is impaired to the detriment of individuals and society. Despite these costs, there is a lack of systematic empirical and theoretical study of intimate privacy and efforts to protect it. This research helps fill this void through two complementary studies. Through a longitudinal experimental design, results from Study 1 highlight that partner trust and response-efficacy were not only positively predictive of online intimate disclosure, but also strengthened following knowledge of intimate privacy protections. In Study 2, we find individuals are more likely to engage in public-facing online sexual expression if the …

Opening Brief For Plaintiff-Appellant Emery Barron, Steven Mitchell, Carolyn Sacco, Shaina Sikka, Madeline H. Meth

Faculty Scholarship

By the time Emery Barron sued Pennsylvania Department of Corrections officials in 2021, they had kept him caged for almost six years in solitary confinement without providing a pathway for him to reenter general population. Department of Correction policy calls for officials to review the ongoing need for solitary confinement after an initial ninety-day stint in disciplinary confinement. However, procedural carve outs allow officials to leave people like Barron in solitary indefinitely without an opportunity to be heard by a decisionmaker and without requiring officials to assert any legitimate penological interest behind the confinement.

Under this scheme, which violated both …

Language Of The Law: Understanding The Impact Of Code-Switching Within Legal Fields Through Legal Blog Analyses, Kira A. Johnson

Honors Program Theses and Research Projects

Code-Switching is a linguistic phenomenon that can occur between different languages, cultures, or dialects. This study focuses on code-switching within the legal field, specifically through an analysis of legal blog websites. Through searching the terms, “code-switching” and “foreign language”, this study will compare legal blog websites in their coverage of the phenomenon. The various websites’ definitions of code-switching, how the topic is written with context, and what implications are suggested in the writing will be considered when crafting a comparative analysis. Individuals who communicate using different languages or dialects depending on situations and interactions are important to understand within the …

Digital Scholarship Overview: January – December 2025, Yemisi Dina

Librarian Publications & Presentations

No abstract provided.

Opening Brief For Plaintiff-Appellant Jacob Julick, Aryssa Harris, Cameron Tong, Madeline H. Meth

Faculty Scholarship

For ten days in the middle of winter, officers at the Kentucky State Penitentiary (KSP) confined Jacob Julick in freezing cells, dressed only in paper boxers, and without access to hygiene products, a shower, cleaning products, bedding, or shoes. The reason? Mistaken retribution in response to a recent assault on an officer in which Julick was not involved.

When Julick reported experiencing suicidal thoughts, Defendant Officer Jason Denny mocked him, telling him to “kill [him]self and do them the favor.” Shortly after, Julick was moved from his first solitary cell to a strip cage where he was handcuffed, shackled, and …

Law School News: Coming Full Circle: A Career With The Hague 12-3-2025, Andrew Clark

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Keeping The Ball Rolling: Enhancing The Lrw And Skills Curriculum By Incorporating Nextgen Bar Foundational Skills And Ai Innovations, Donna L. Eng

UF Law Faculty Publications

As of fall 2025, Legal Research, Writing, and Skills Professors nationwide are at a pivotal moment: determining whether and how to update their course curriculum to incorporate the NextGen Uniform Bar's (NextGen Bar) Foundational Skills and the latest advancements in AI. This article discusses how Legal Research, Writing, and Skills Professors might revise their curriculum to incorporate the NextGen Bar's Foundational Skills and advancements in AI.

Incorporating Ai Into The Contract Drafting Process: A Classroom Exercise, Kristen V. Hardy

UF Law Faculty Publications

I recently read the Three Blind Drafts: An AI-Generated Classroom Exercise, by Margie Alsbrook and Ashley Chase. I was trying to create an AI-related assignment for my spring contract drafting class. The article inspired me to attempt a conceptually similar assignment in an AI contract drafting exercise. This article will summarize Alsbrook’s and Chase’s original idea and describe how I adapted it for the contract drafting classroom; the student outcome; and my thoughts about what I would do differently the next time I attempt the assignment.

Feedback Loops: Fly On The Wall, Patrick Barry

Articles

I recently turned to an interesting source to get some feedback on the way I communicate when leading meetings and speaking to large groups: artificial intelligence (AI) tools. Born into a family of fast-talking New Yorkers who don’t always wait for you to finish your thoughts before they jump in with theirs (my mom grew up in Manhattan and my dad grew up in Long Island), I recently realized that I have developed what the linguist Deborah Tannen calls a “high-involvement” conversation style, especially when I take the lead in meetings or teach my classes. I nod as other people …

Codification In Mississippi: Nineteenth Century Efforts For A Mississippi Civil Code, Milton J. Hernandez Iv

MC Law Review

No abstract provided.

Interdisciplinary Research Is Hard And Other Lessons From Debt’S Grip, Pamela Foohey, Robert M. Lawless, Deborah Thorne

Brooklyn Journal of Corporate, Financial & Commercial Law

This symposium spotlights recent book-length treatments of household finance. Its organizers asked us to write an essay that would add to our recently published book, Debt’s Grip. At first, we were at a loss. The book documents what it means to live in financial precarity after decades of risk shifting onto households in the United States. We had spent a couple of years writing the book, which in turn is built on over a decade of teamwork in data collection. If we had something more to say, we would have said it in the book. For those looking for new …

Social Media Participation And Scholarly Success In Law, Julian Nyarko, David E. Pozen

Faculty Scholarship

Using a novel dataset on Twitter activity as well as a novel corpus of law journal publications, this paper examines the impact of social media activity on the scholarly success of U.S. law professors. We find that joining Twitter increases citation counts by an average of 22% per year and improves article placements by up to 10 ranks for law professors, relative to a synthetic control group. These positive returns apply across nearly all classes of scholars and are magnified for those who post frequently about their own work. The identified citation boost would be even larger than 22% if …

What's Appealing In Mississippi?, Virginia C. Carlton

MC Law Review

No abstract provided.

Learning By Doing: The Importance Of Thoughtful And Limited Generative A.I. Use In The Il Legal Writing Classroom, Luke Repici

Faculty Publications

Technological advances that impact lawyers day-to-day work are nothing new. From typewriters, dictaphones, and computers to electronic legal research, email, and e-discovery, new technologies have changed the nuts and bolts of how lawyers practice for decades. Previous technologies may have replaced the pen with the typewriter and supplanted the letter for the email, but the lawyer remained the one doing the work. For more junior lawyers, this meant assigned tasks – reading cases, drafting motions, dictating client updates, summarizing discovery, and creating deposition outlines – could not be outsourced to technology.

The emergence of generative artificial intelligence (“Gen AI”) presents …

Replacement Opening Brief For Plaintiff-Appellant Timothy Olmos, Ciara Gerendas, Noah Goldstein, Eli O'Neal, Madeline H. Meth

Faculty Scholarship

Today, nearly everyone relies on a cellphone. Many use their phones to store a wealth of private information, including conversations over text messages and emails; photographs of family, friends, pets, and joyous occasions; and confidential banking and medical records. The Supreme Court, therefore, regards a cellphone search as one that “typically expose[s] to the government far more than the most exhaustive search of a house.”

The Supreme Court also recognizes that despite the legal status of people subject to probation conditions, probationers still retain Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches. And this Court has held that probationers, who like almost …

Distilling The Language Of The Law, Stacey A. Tovino

Kentucky Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Smu To Build Open Legal Database With Support From Ministry Of Law, Singapore Management University

SMU Press Releases and News

The Singapore Management University (SMU) will be developing Singapore’s first open empirical legal database with support from the Ministry of Law (MinLaw). Housed at SMU’s Centre for Digital Law, the three-year project will compile and release machine-readable datasets containing key statistical information about Singapore court decisions, statutes, legal scholarship and court structures. Named Singapore Open Legal Informatics Database (SOLID), the database will be freely accessible to researchers worldwide through a public website and Application Programming Interface (API), positioning Singapore alongside leading jurisdictions around the world that have invested in building up their legal data infrastructure.

Law Library Blog (November 2025): Legal Beagle's Blog Archive, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Law Library Newsletters/Blog

No abstract provided.

Living Property, Joseph William Singer

Seattle University Law Review

The Supreme Court has increasingly defined property rights that are per se exempt from regulation in the absence of compensation, most recently in Cedar Point Nursery v. Hassid (2021) and Tyler v. Hennepin County (2023). The Court claims that it can identify property rights that are categorically protected from regulation by reference to history, tradition, and precedent. Yet this approach is oddly ahistorical; it is inconsistent with the fact that property law changed dramatically over U.S. history, as well as varying tremendously among the states. It is also inconsistent with the historical context of the Founding era. At that time, …

Table Of Contents

Seattle University Law Review

Table of Contents

The Roots Of Credit Inequality, Andrea Freeman

Seattle University Law Review

Debt oppression began before the United States became a country. Settlers enslaved Africans and Indigenous people, treating them as property that they could buy and sell for their economic and personal benefit. When enslavement became illegal, new economic systems and laws that included sharecropping, Black Codes, and Jim Crow kept Black people in servitude. Laws that prohibited enslaved people from owning property or selling goods to white people evolved into restrictions on Black people’s occupations and market participation, both formal and informal. When Black entrepreneurs overcame these obstacles and built wealth within Black business enclaves, white people enforced their racist …

“A Plain Denial”: Reclaiming Equal Protection In American Juvenile Law, Addie C. Rolnick, David S. Tanenhaus, Justin Iverson, Danielle L. Silvestri

Seattle University Law Review

Juvenile courts are based on the premise that children are different from adults and should therefore be treated differently. Children may be treated more informally by courts, punished for different purposes, and brought before the court for different behaviors. Since In re Gault, the Supreme Court has been clear that there are limits to how different juvenile courts can be. Juveniles are entitled to many of the same procedural protections as adult criminal defendants, although the Court has preserved some procedural differences where it has determined that their benefit is outweighed by the need to preserve the informality, flexibility, …

Redefining Section 230 Immunity, Lucas Dini

Seattle University Law Review

Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act has provided broad immunity to online platforms for third-party content which was the foundation for the internet's growth. However, the rise in the use of artificial intelligence (AI) to produce algorithms to curate content to users of online services has blurred the line between being a passive host of third party content and active editorial control. This Note examines the legal, policy, and constitutional implications of applying Section 230 immunity to platforms that use AI to curate and promote third-party content. This analysis argues that algorithmic promotion of third-party content constitutes a platform's …

Overcrowding The System: Rethinking Juvenile Justice In Washington State, Mckenna White

Seattle University Law Review

The recent crisis at Green Hill School highlights the detrimental consequences of severe overcrowding in Washington State’s Juvenile Rehabilitation system—a problem exacerbated by the implementation of the JR to 25 legislation. This Note argues that the juvenile rehabilitation system, which is currently struggling to manage a wide age range of offenders, necessitates a fundamental rethinking of juvenile justice practices. By examining neurological research indicating continued brain development into the mid-twenties, along with the high prevalence of trauma among justice-involved youth, this Note proposes the creation of a dedicated third system of care within the Department of Children, Youth, and Families …