Public Law and Legal Theory Commons^™

The Law’S Failure To Protect Our Drinking Water From Pfas, Emily Levine

Indiana Law Journal

How did per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), the forever chemicals known to harm human health and appear in most Americans’ blood, spread so widely in drinking water? Why didn’t someone with the power and knowledge to stop this crisis step in sooner? Simply imposing limits on PFAS levels in public water systems is the bare minimum to protect American drinking water—a necessary step but only the starting point of a long path toward creating a regulatory framework that can withstand the whims of changing presidential administrations and political influences.

     It is too easy for the EPA Administrator, either out of …

Interrogating The Facts Of The Case, Anna Roberts

Indiana Law Journal

Buried within many criminal judicial opinions is the origin of their “facts”—the interrogation room. Criminal law pedagogy should expose this origin. If we treat the alleged product of interrogation as “what happened,” as criminal cases (and professors) sometimes do, we obscure the ways in which interrogators are trained to incriminate and to co-create confessions. We also risk obscuring subsequent layers of reporting by police, prosecutors, or judges.

Recent scholarly literature urges criminal law professors to teach differently, warning that we distort, sanitize, and bolster the carceral state when we erase governmental agents and bypass procedure. Treating the “facts of the …

Misinformation And The Jury, Gustavo Ribeiro

Indiana Law Journal

This Article bridges critical gaps between the growing body of social science research on misinformation and the persistent challenges jurors face in evaluating potentially unreliable evidence in courtrooms. Misinformation—a pervasive issue undermining decision-making in democratic societies—mirrors the difficulties jurors encounter in distinguishing truth from falsehood amid compelling but unreliable evidence. The consequences of such challenges are dire: wrongful convictions, racial disparities, and the erosion of public trust in the legal system.

This Article is the first piece of legal scholarship to provide a comprehensive discussion of current research on the psychological mechanisms underlying susceptibility to misinformation—such as the illusory truth …

The Criminalization Of Black Friendship, Kinship And Belonging, Reakash Walters

Dalhousie Law Journal

This paper posits that the Canadian state's attempt to target organized crime through the Criminal Code's criminal organization provisions has led to the criminalization of everyday expressions of Black life, including the criminalization of Black friendship. The statutory architecture of the regime incentivizes criminal legal actors with limited contiguity to Black culture to conflate bids for connection, association, and friendship within Black communities as gang activity.

Before the criminal organization provisions were enacted, Canada had no legacy of directly criminalizing organized crime. Localized violence in Quebec during the mid-1990s led to rushed amendments to the Criminal Code to target biker …

Board Of Registered Nursing, Sydney Verga, Katie Gonzalez, Marcus Friedman

California Regulatory Law Reporter

No abstract provided.

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California Regulatory Law Reporter

No abstract provided.

Transnational Corporate Liability Through The Lens Of Interlegality, Jaye Ellis

Dalhousie Law Journal

Pressure is mounting on courts in Canada, as in other jurisdictions, to address harms generated within global supply chains. These entities have no formal legal personality, so attempts to trace lines of responsibility and liability within them require the development of innovative argumentative strategies. Among the challenges is the integration of a range of sources, including international law, international policy initiatives, and privately constituted standards to promote human and labour rights and environmental protection. Working with the concept of interlegality, I seek to develop approaches for navigating overlapping and intersecting legal orders, and for facilitating interactions among them. Of particular …

Trolling The Rule Of Law: Presidential Lawfare, The Stalingrad Defense, And The Lawyers, David Luban

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This paper, part of a symposium on presidential lawfare, examines the so-called “Stalingrad Defense”—a strategy of total procedural obstruction—within the broader phenomenon of rule-of-law backsliding facilitated by legal professionals. By exhausting judicial resources and weaponizing procedural delays on behalf of political leaders, such lawyers do not merely defend a client; they actively participate in subverting the institutional foundations of democracy. I argue that the standard conception of legal ethics, which emphasizes neutral partisanship and zealous advocacy, is fundamentally inadequate to capture the wrongfulness of lawyers who use legal tools to dismantle the legal system itself. In its place, I propose …

Effects Of Expropriation Of Private Real Estate For Public Benefit In Saudi Law And Islamic Law, Hayat Mohammadali Hassan Nimir

Theses and Dissertations

The expropriation of private real estate for public benefit represents one of the most sensitive and complex legal issues, as it directly intersects with the protection of individual ownership rights while simultaneously addressing the demands of public interest and state development. This research provides a comprehensive analytical study of the legal framework governing expropriation in Saudi Arabia, examining both historical and contemporary legislation, while assessing its consistency with the objectives of Islamic Sharia, which grants strong protection to ownership rights but allows their restriction under strict conditions to serve genuine public needs.

The dissertation explores the theoretical foundations of property …

Asset Forfeiture As An Animal Welfare Law: A Case Study On South Carolina's Bond-Or-Forfeit Statute, Morgan Mercer

Animal Law Review

This Comment examines South Carolina’s 2024 bond-or-forfeit statute (H.B. 3682) as a case study in the growing trend of extending existing legal frameworks to promote animal welfare. Traditionally, asset forfeiture treats animals purely as property subject to seizure. However, by shifting the costs of caring for seized animals from public agencies to the animals’ owners, H.B. 3682 embeds a concern for animal well-being into a framework historically focused on economic and property interests. This Comment argues that bond-or-forfeit statutes are part of a broader trend toward recognizing animals as sentient beings with welfare interests distinct from their owners’ property rights. …

A Mandate With Teeth: Biting Back At The Neglect Of New York's Humane Education Law, Mei Brunson

Animal Law Review

New York passed its compulsory humane education law in 1917, which obligates school districts to provide weekly instruction in the “humane treatment and protection of animals” to all elementary school students. Though this mandate is clear, New York school districts routinely ignore it and deprive students of the humane education that they are statutorily entitled to. To make matters worse, the New York Commissioner of Education has abdicated their responsibility to enforce this minimum educational standard. Over the years, the laudable efforts of advocacy groups, educators, and legislators have brought about some instances of district compliance. Nevertheless, widespread district noncompliance …

Health Care Governance And Structural Exclusion In Florida: A Human Rights Analysis Of Access For Latinx Communities, Natalie Medrano

Honors Undergraduate Theses

Access to health care in the United States is a complex system shaped by statutory programs and the discretionary powers of state governance. This thesis examines how Florida’s healthcare system structures access through administrative design, with particular attention to its impact on Latinx communities. Although formally race-neutral, Florida’s reliance on Medicaid non-expansion, managed care delivery, and complex eligibility processes produces systemic barriers that limit access for low-income populations. Drawing on the international right-to-health framework articulated in General Comment No. 14 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, alongside Latinx Critical Race Theory (LatCrit), this study analyzes how …

The Impact Of Social Media Movements On Policy Changes Made In The United States, Michelle Levy Korine

Honors Undergraduate Theses

This study focuses on researching the relationship between social media movements and policy changes in the United States. Over the last decade, digital platforms such as TikTok, Instagram and X have become important tools to encourage political involvement. These platforms have led to an increase in public participation, movements to become more popular and to organize protests. Many current studies focus on the social and cultural aspects of online activism, but fewer examine wither these movements lead to the legislative change asked for.

This thesis relies on the question, "To what extent does social media activism contribute to policy change …

Two Dogmas Of Free Speech Doctrine, David R. Dow

Oklahoma Law Review

No abstract provided.

Oklahoma’S Bible Policy: The Evolving Establishment Clause From Lemon To Kennedy, Carson Douglas Shaw

Oklahoma Law Review

No abstract provided.

A Preemptive Strike Against The Misinterpretation Of The 2023 Amendment To Federal Rule Of Evidence 702(D): The Importance Of Preserving The Requirement For A Showing That The Expert Has Properly Applied His Or Her Methodology, Edward J. Imwinkelried

Oklahoma Law Review

No abstract provided.

Sidelining The Public, Anya Bernstein, Glen Staszewski, Wendy E. Wagner

Faculty Scholarship

This Article challenges the widely held view that Congress is the American government’s institution closest to the people, while administrative agencies are unaccountable and unresponsive. Providing a systematic, side-by-side institutional analysis, we compare the actual practices and capacities of these two institutions to engage affected publics in policymaking. We find that despite the democratic bona fides of an elected legislature, agencies possess superior capacities, more evolved practices, stricter rules, and stronger incentives for meaningful public engagement. Yet these capacities have been eroded—particularly over the last 50 years—by intensifying legal, political, and managerial obstacles. The Supreme Court and political actors have …

A Trusteeship Theory Of Pro Bono: Versions And Perversions, David Luban

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This chapter develops a trusteeship justification of pro bono, arguing that lawyers, as trustees of a public legal system created through democratic self-authorship, have a moral obligation to help address the persistent justice gap affecting persons of limited means. It evaluates multiple forms of pro bono — including voluntary, mandatory, low bono, and state-compelled service — evaluating how well each aligns with the trusteeship model. The chapter contrasts the trusteeship theory with, and criticizes, two alternative justifications for pro bono: presumed lawyer consent rooted in professional tradition and a quid pro quo based on state-authorized privileges. It concludes by distinguishing …

Let’S Talk About The Biological Reality Of Sex, Baby, John Parsi

FIU Law Review

Sex is at the very core of individual identity. It affects the conception of the self and the way others view the individual. Every day, one’s sex may open and close doors, access to communities, and opportunities. Laws that define sex may affirm scientific knowledge and protect people, or threaten to unravel the facts and the reality of sex. A deep unmooring of sex is underway, and this Article aims to halt it. On day one of the current presidential term, January 20, 2025, President Trump signed an Executive Order on “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological …

Cruel And Unusual Punishments And The Constitutional Status Of The Idea Of Progress, R. George Wright

FIU Law Review

To this point, we have developed some idea of what progress might have meant to the constitutional Framers, ratifiers, and later judges. We need not attempt the fruitless task of doing any precise head count of the variations of the concrete meaning, perceived likelihood, or value of progress among those parties. Doubtless some persons were more optimistic than others.178 But we need only assume that enough constitutional Framers, ratifiers, and judicial interpreters sufficiently shared any mainstream understanding of progress. Any such constitutional legitimacy of the idea, or the multiple ideas, of progress licenses the language of progress embraced in Trop.