Drive-By Mediation And Other Opportunistic Distortions Of Process,
2025
Texas A&M University School of Law
Drive-By Mediation And Other Opportunistic Distortions Of Process, Nancy A. Welsh
Faculty Scholarship
Many states in the United States, along with many nations, have implemented special benefits and privileges to encourage parties’ use of mediation to assist their communication, negotiation, and ultimate resolution of disputes. This is despite how loosely mediation is defined. This Article discusses how vague definitions, paired with special benefits and privileges, are incentivizing both the opportunistic distortion of mediation and the use of mediation for improper purposes. In Texas, for example, judges are extraordinarily limited in their ability to disapprove parents’ mediated child custody agreements—even if there is reason to worry that an agreement is contrary to the best …
The Crime Of Being Immoral,
2025
Texas A&M University School of Law
The Crime Of Being Immoral, Randy D. Gordon
Faculty Scholarship
Despite a general abhorrence of retrospective laws as a matter of legal theory and Constitutional dictate, US. courts continue-in es sence-to create new crimes by injecting fazzy moral considerations into determinations under the federal fraud statutes. They do so by deeming a failure to act with "moral uprightness" sufficient to consti tute criminal fraud. Under such an amorphous standard, the unwitting find themselves in a legal bind, even though their conduct may not in volve any of the traditional elements of common-law fraud. This Article traces the roots of novel fraud theories with tools drawn from legal theory, linguistics, and …
Security And Terrorism Vs Free Expression: Analytical Study On The European Court Of Human Rights,
2025
American University in Cairo
Security And Terrorism Vs Free Expression: Analytical Study On The European Court Of Human Rights, Mariam Adel Massoud
Theses and Dissertations
The 11 of September attacks provide a paradigm shift when it comes to protection of national security. It results in a trending vision that prioritized security over national security, which makes it essential to think about balancing national security with free expression as a pillar of democratization. This study focusses on how the balance between freedom of expression and national security interests is achieved. It studies the legal approached of the European court of human rights and its legal assessment to strike this balance. The findings of this analytical study asserts that in order for the ECtHR to achieve this …
Legal Realism, Legal Positivism, And Determinacy,
2025
Osgoode Hall Law School of York University
Legal Realism, Legal Positivism, And Determinacy, Dan Priel
All Papers
It is a commonplace that the legal realists argued that law is deeply indeterminate. According to this familiar account, the legal realists insisted that legal materials don’t constrain judges, who are therefore free to decide cases in almost any way they want. An influential argument has argued that the only way to explain this view is by showing that the legal realists presupposed a legal positivist theory of law. This Essay offers a different understanding of the relationship between realism, positivism, and determinacy, challenging this interpretation of the realists as both historically false and as philosophically unwarranted. I provide many …
Rights In The Eyes Of The Beholder: The Lived Hierarchy Of Rights In India's Democracy,
2025
Centre for Civil Society
Rights In The Eyes Of The Beholder: The Lived Hierarchy Of Rights In India's Democracy, Sehar Abdullah, Keerthana Satheesh, Prashant Narang
Socio-Legal Review
This paper examines how citizens in India perceive and prioritise fundamental rights, with particular attention to the six freedoms under Article 19(1) and the property right. While the freedoms of Article 19(1) remain central to democratic citizenship, the Forty-Fourth Constitutional Amendment of 1978 reclassified the right to property as a constitutional right under Article 300A. This shift prompts an important question: Does the diminished constitutional rank of property correspond to its place in popular hierarchies of rights? Our in-depth interviews with 26 respondents, whose livelihoods make them especially sensitive to changes in both categories of rights, reveal that citizens continue …
The Section 32(1) Analysis: Clarifying Eldridge In Light Of York Region District School Board,
2025
Osgoode Hall Law School of York University
The Section 32(1) Analysis: Clarifying Eldridge In Light Of York Region District School Board, Kate Glover Berger
All Papers
The Eldridge framework, a stable feature of Canadian Charter jurisprudence for decades, sets out part of the framework for determining when entities or activities qualify as “government” under section 32(1), the Charter’s application section. In light of this stability, the Supreme Court of Canada’s analysis of the section 32(1) issue in York Region District School Board v Elementary Teachers Federation of Ontario was surprising. It raised the question: Why did the Court in York Region deviate from well-settled law on the Eldridge framework and, in the process, seemingly change the framework’s thresholds? This question arises because the Court in …
Interpreting The Supreme Court: Finding Meaning In The Justices' Personal Experiences,
2025
University of Florida Levin College of Law
Interpreting The Supreme Court: Finding Meaning In The Justices' Personal Experiences, Amy Howe
Florida Law Review
At his 2004 confirmation hearing, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. famously compared the role of a Supreme Court Justice to that of a baseball umpire and promised “to remember that it’s my job to call balls and strikes.” Roberts likely intended this to mean that he would serve as a neutral arbiter of the law, who simply applies the existing rules to reach the correct outcome. But in judging, as in baseball, that is not as easy as it sounds, especially when one of the primary criteria on which the Court relies to choose its cases is whether the …
Chapter 9 Bankruptcy: The Solution That Causes Problems,
2025
Brooklyn Law School
Chapter 9 Bankruptcy: The Solution That Causes Problems, Peter C. Alexander
Brooklyn Journal of Corporate, Financial & Commercial Law
There is a little-known form of bankruptcy called a “Chapter 9,” reserved for insolvent cities, villages, and other municipalities. Occasionally, one reads about a city or a county that has filed for Chapter 9 relief, like Detroit, Michigan, or Orange County, California; however, it is very hard to file a Chapter 9 case, in part, because existing law requires a municipality to obtain permission from its home state before it can file for relief in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court. An additional constraint is that the only option municipalities have when seeking bankruptcy relief is to file a Chapter 9 because …
Court Appointed Monitorships: Effective Remedy Or Modern Misstep?,
2025
Brooklyn Law School
Court Appointed Monitorships: Effective Remedy Or Modern Misstep?, Jean Joun
Brooklyn Journal of Corporate, Financial & Commercial Law
When a corporate entity or organization violates the law, there are several remedies the courts may enforce against the bad actor. Most common are damages—both compensatory and punitive—and injunctive relief. The class of injunctive relief that most are familiar with is the kind that restrains the bad actor from a conduct or behavior. However, courts in certain instances may decide, either on their own volition or after being asked to consider such a remedy by a prosecuting entity, to appoint a compliance monitor with the function of ensuring that the bad actor continues traversing a legally sound path. Although court-ordered …
The Guilty Plea Discount: An Elaboration On Singapore’S Guidelines,
2025
Singapore Management University
The Guilty Plea Discount: An Elaboration On Singapore’S Guidelines, Genieve Zhi Yi Wu
Singapore Law Journal (Lexicon)
Over the past two decades, a defining feature of Singapore’s sentencing regime has been the creation of structured sentencing methodology, with the aim of ensuring broad consistency and fairness across offenders. The exercise of judicial discretion in sentencing has largely been guided by statutory frameworks and guideline judgments. However, beyond the legislature and judiciary, an inter-agency body named the Sentencing Advisory Panel has also been formed to issue persuasive but non-binding guidelines. This article focuses on the first set of guidelines issued by the Sentencing Advisory Panel in 2023, concerning the sentencing of accused persons who plead guilty. It explains …
Constitutional Futurisms,
2025
Northwestern Pritzker School of Law
Constitutional Futurisms, Jeremiah Chin
Northwestern University Law Review
How do we reckon with the past? The Supreme Court’s recent embrace of originalism as a mode of constitutional analysis relies almost exclusively on a view of history and tradition that would bind us to an understanding of principles and ideals that legitimized the exclusion of minority voices. Cases such as New York State Pistol and Rifle Ass'n v. Bruen use flavors of originalism as a framework to define rights and governmental powers through their historical antecedents, but this broad standard of interpretation is notably absent in the Court’s recent discussions of histories and traditions of racism in the United …
Toward A Perpetual Practice Of Affirmative Action,
2025
Northwestern Pritzker School of Law
Toward A Perpetual Practice Of Affirmative Action, Sheldon Bernard Lyke
Northwestern University Law Review
Despite perceptions that affirmative action is “dead” following the Supreme Court ruling in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College (SFFA), this Essay argues that affirmative action remains crucial for addressing racial bias in admissions processes. This Essay examines the strict scrutiny standard, which requires that any use of race must serve a compelling government interest and be narrowly tailored to achieve that interest. Courts have interpreted the narrowly tailored prong of this standard to include a logical end point requirement, which mandates that race-conscious measures must have a clear and limited …
Crisis Convergence,
2025
Northwestern Pritzker School of Law
Crisis Convergence, Sarah Medina Camiscoli
Northwestern University Law Review
Progressive jurists and legal scholars have called the Supreme Court’s doctrine of colorblind constitutionalism that dismantled affirmative action in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard (SFFA) a crisis for constitutional democracy. However, scholars have not yet tended to students, particularly students mobilized for racial justice, to understand their interpretation of this race-evasive ideology and what insights those mobilized students might offer in this pivotal moment. Given the fact that a small coalition of dissenting conservative jurists, scholars, and mobilized students—the Federalist Society—spent decades crafting the doctrine, scholarship, and resources that drive colorblind constitutionalism …
Existing Together From The Beginning: Freedom To Contract And Black Mutual Aid,
2025
Northwestern Pritzker School of Law
Existing Together From The Beginning: Freedom To Contract And Black Mutual Aid, Cara Mcclellan
Northwestern University Law Review
In a new wave of litigation, conservative legal organizations are attempting to rely on Reconstruction-era civil rights legislation to prevent nonprofits, charities, foundations, and other privately organized groups from engaging in race-conscious work. Unlike the Supreme Court’s recent rollback of affirmative action, which dealt with universities’ ability to consider race in admissions as state actors and as recipients of federal funding, a series of lawsuits now challenge the ability of private organizations to consider race in how they invest money and resources to create social impact. Adding fuel to the fire, on January 21, 2025, President Trump issued an Executive …
Not Colorblind,
2025
Northwestern Pritzker School of Law
Not Colorblind, Kimberly West-Faulcon
Northwestern University Law Review
This Essay criticizes the use of the term “colorblind” in reference to attacks on racial diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies. It argues it is inapt and unconscionably obtuse to use colorblindness terminology to selectively target inclusion-motivated race consciousness for automatic illegality. The Essay’s central project is to examine claims underlying attacks on racial inclusion policies such as the Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College lawsuit to expose the legal endgame that anti-DEI forces seek to make a centerpiece of America’s future. In so doing, it surfaces the differential scrutiny of race consciousness …
Standing On Stare Decisis After Students For Fair Admissions,
2025
Northwestern Pritzker School of Law
Standing On Stare Decisis After Students For Fair Admissions, Areeb Asif, Lindsey Roloff
Northwestern University Law Review
The Supreme Court recognized nearly half a century ago in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke that “the ‘nation’s future depends upon leaders trained through wide exposure’ to the ideas and mores of students as diverse as this Nation of many peoples.” Nevertheless, the Court seriously undercut efforts to bring such a future to life by striking down race-conscious admissions programs in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College and Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. University of North Carolina (collectively SFFA). Though SFFA’s binding effect is limited to educational institutions, …
A Framework For Interpreting Emojis In Legal Contexts,
2025
University of Ottawa
A Framework For Interpreting Emojis In Legal Contexts, Anne Merritt
Dalhousie Journal of Legal Studies
In the 2023 case of South West Terminal Ltd. v. Achter Land & Cattle Ltd., a Saskatchewan court found that a thumbs-up emoji, as a standalone item of communication, constituted the acceptance of a contract between a buyer and seller. The trial judge noted that such communication was “the new reality in Canadian society” for which courts should be prepared to interpret novel units of language arising in the digital age. However, an analysis of recent Canadian cases involving emojis shows that courts have not been prepared, with inconsistencies in how emojis are represented in evidence, how they are …
Volume 48 Masthead,
2025
Seattle University School of Law
Keynote Address: Community Over Constitution,
2025
Seattle University School of Law
Keynote Address: Community Over Constitution, Riddhi Mukhopadhyay
Seattle University Law Review
In this keynote address, Riddhi Mukhopadhyay challenges the veneration of the U.S. Constitution by highlighting its origins in exclusion and its continued failure to protect marginalized communities. Drawing from her experience in civil legal aid and gender justice, she argues that the Constitution was drafted to consolidate power among white, wealthy men and continues to reflect that legacy through racial, gender, and class-based inequities. While acknowledging the significance of constitutional amendments and landmark cases, Mukhopadhyay emphasizes that meaningful change has always come from community-led action, not top-down reform. Additionally, Mukhopadhyay calls on lawyers and legal advocates to center community, practice …
The Lost Child: A Critique On Transracial Adoption Rhetoric,
2025
Seattle University School of Law
The Lost Child: A Critique On Transracial Adoption Rhetoric, Hallie Conyers-Tucker
Seattle University Law Review
Transracial adoption in the United States reflects a deeply rooted history of colonialism, cultural assimilation, and racial hierarchy, masked by rhetoric focused on the “best interest of the child.” The author critiques that rhetoric and traces how adoption practices and policies, both domestic and international, have evolved to reinforce systemic inequities. Through historical analysis of the forced adoption of Native American, Black, and Asian children, it reveals how the best interest standard has been wielded not to protect children but to uphold political and racial ideologies. The author argues that the prevailing adoption framework relies on child-saving and color-blind narratives …
