Mankind has been fashioning laws for millennia. And while the form and substance of laws vary widely across times and places, all laws are unified by a fundamental reality that transcends the particular legal and political institutions of the day. To put it simply: laws only work if someone is prepared to enforce them.

As arbiters of the American legal system, state and federal judges are aware that—in order for a law to have the conduct-influencing effect it was designed to have—it must be supported by some version of an “or else” clause, a punishment or penalty sufficient to dissuade the public from ignoring the law’s content. Because of this reality, judges are necessarily placed in a difficult position when the legislature passes a law that proscribes certain conduct but fails to denote a penalty for violation.

This Note examines the application of statutes without sanctions in cases of evidentiary exclusion. To that end, this Note considers policies of default nonenforcement, causal relation analysis, and a basic purpose inquiry. Because the role of the judiciary is—at its core—to effectuate the will of the people as expressed by their legislative representatives, this Note concludes that applying a causal relation test or a basic purpose test is the best way for judges to navigate the application of statutes without sanctions.

This Note explores the growing legal and regulatory landscapes of web scraping in the United States and argues that web scraping should be regulated through a unified federal framework tailored to its unique technological and economic realities. Web scraping allows organizations to collect massive amounts of data essential to their operational needs—often without the consent of data holders. Thus, web scraping has become a powerful engine of innovation used across virtually every sector of the economy but with a serious risk to privacy and property interests. Yet the current U.S. legal framework lacks a coherent regulating structure. Courts and litigants are forced to rely on outdated federal law, state privacy laws, and various common law doctrines—none of which were designed to address web scraping.

Through a comparative analysis of U.S. and European law and a relevant case study, this Note suggests that the current U.S. approach is inadequate in protecting some of the most fundamental rights and interests. Instead, web scraping should be regulated through a unified federal framework, incorporating a tiered regulatory regime that distinguishes different types of data and methods of collection to balance innovation with individual rights.

The healthcare industry has become highly concentrated due to increased rates of consolidation. Mergers and acquisitions among healthcare providers have become extremely common, making dominant hospital systems the norm. When healthcare provider markets are highly concentrated, competition deteriorates, leaving patients to suffer the consequences: higher prices for lower quality care.

The federal antitrust agencies tasked with preserving competition have failed to combat the consolidation trends that are plaguing the healthcare industry. Vertical consolidation between hospitals and physician groups has especially gone unchecked. The Hart-Scott-Rodino Act, a federal antitrust law, requires merging parties to give the agencies pre-merger notice. This law, however, requires notice of only the largest transactions. Because most vertical hospital-physician acquisitions are too small to require reporting, hospitals and hospital systems can conduct several acquisitions without drawing attention from the antitrust enforcement agencies. As a result, hospital systems are able to gradually and quietly amass market power, thereby obtaining the leverage to increase prices, reduce innovation, and offer lower quality care. This is the process of “stealth consolidation.”

This Note examines the types of mergers and acquisitions that occur between healthcare providers. It then explains why antitrust enforcement in this industry has been insufficient and how acquiring parties have been able to successfully pull off stealth consolidation. This Note concludes by providing methods to address stealth consolidation and preserve patients’ access to affordable, quality healthcare.

Johnson & Johnson’s market cap is twice the GDP of Oklahoma. So, when Oklahoma hauled Johnson & Johnson and other behemoth pharmaceutical companies into state court for their participation in the opioid epidemic, Big Pharma’s resources created a David v. Goliath situation. Against all odds, Oklahoma stood toe-to-toe with Big Pharma and brought home more than $650 million in settlement funds.

Oklahoma’s success would be otherwise impossible without the assistance of three private law firms serving the role of “private attorneys general.” The State signed contingency fee arrangements with the firms, transferring the financial burden of litigation from the State to the firms, with the promise of a share of any recovery.

Critics argue that state attorneys general contracting with private law firms is akin to making a deal with the Devil. State attorneys general, sworn to public servitude, are thought to use litigation solely as a tool to protect citizens of their state. While private law firms are seen as businesses with the monolithic goal of increasing profit and maximizing shareholder value. The private attorney general model creates the natural concern that the underlying profit motive incentivizes law firms to litigate in a way that guarantees the highest recovery, not in the way that guarantees the most just outcome.

This Note analyzes Oklahoma’s bout with Big Pharma and the efficacy of the private attorney general model by reviewing every publicly available settlement and calculating the contingency fee awarded to the private law firms. The Note sets aside the black and white analysis of state attorneys general as purely altruistic actors and private law firms as purely money-hungry entities. In the end, this Note concludes that the private attorney general model can be exploited by corrupt players on either side but, with the appropriate safeguards, can produce massive rewards for states willing to accept the risk.

Once limited to entertainment and disinformation, deepfakes are now extending into the financial sector, where voice and facial impersonations exploit biometric authentication systems to facilitate fraudulent transactions. This evolution exposes gaps in existing legal and regulatory frameworks, raising critical questions about consumer protection and institutional safeguards. This Note argues for a reconceptualization of deepfake harms as both a privacy and a financial security issue. It examines the illusion of consent generated by synthetic impersonation and insufficient statutory protections. The analysis examines the patchwork of federal, state, and international laws governing data privacy and artificial media, highlighting the gaps that allow biometric exploitation to exist. Finally, this Note proposes a two-pronged solution: enactment of comprehensive federal privacy legislation with biometric protections that incorporate robust notice-and-choice standards coordinated enforcement between state and federal authorities, and implementation of a public-private key infrastructure within financial institutions to authenticate identity against deepfake interference.

In order to keep America’s armed forces deadly, ESC must be decriminalized. The MCM’s 2019 update to start including non-heterosexual marriages and affairs tragically expands the reach of ESC. This Note presents new data on charging patterns of ESC in the Marines, highlighting the crime’s active use. ESC continues to overcompensate for behavior prejudicial to good order and discipline or service discrediting; this overcompensation results in subjecting non-prejudicial and non-service-discrediting behavior to criminal action, simultaneously infringing on service members’ constitutional rights and serving as fodder for public outcry. Military leaders should decriminalize ESC and alternatively penalize the behavior by administrative action or Administrative Separation. It’s time to save Private Unfaithful.

Litigation finance is globally abundant and largely unregulated in the United States. The mechanics behind third-party litigation finance are simple: The funder fronts litigation costs in exchange for a promised share of the proceeds if the litigant succeeds. While the normative debate about the value of these contracts in society endures, the litigation finance industry has new players in hedge funds and other opaque investment firms seeking high returns from risky litigation. Many scholars agree on whether to regulate these third-party litigation finance firms. The key debate rages on how to rein in an unbridled industry.

To add to this debate, this Note theorizes a standard third-party litigation finance contract as a derivative contract—a financial instrument that derives value from the performance of an underlying asset. This novel approach examines the structure and features of third-party litigation finance arrangements, particularly in commercial and mass-tort contexts, and argues for their classification as derivatives within the regulatory framework of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (“CFTC”).

By framing litigation finance contracts as derivatives, this Note proposes a regulatory solution that leverages existing financial structures rather than creating new oversight bodies or legislation. Rather than envisioning a new oversight body or legislation for this type of finance, this Note advocates that the United States leverage its existing financial structures to guide this escalating industry forward while maintaining market integrity. It is high time for regulation of the third-party litigation finance (“TPLF”) industry, and this Note provides a potential solution to a growing regulatory conundrum: using existing tools of financial regulation to address a new problem.

The development of generative artificial intelligence (“GAI” or “generative AI”) introduces compelling benefits and capabilities to filmmakers and artists, but also brings complications regarding copyright of creative works. The American film and media industry in particular illustrates the scope of GAI’s legal, economic, and ethical implications. Though GAI may exhibit characteristics of independent agency or intent, GAI models are best understood as a new set of tools that serve a diverse range of applications in the creative process. The potential benefits of this set of tools can only be realized, then, if the filmmakers who use them are not unreasonably denied the authorship and ownership rights necessary to capitalize on their works. Copyright law can fulfill its utilitarian purpose in the context of the film industry with a balance of practical authorship requirements and dynamic licensing regimes for AI-assisted works. Through the right combination of legislation, policy, and best practices, copyright law can further facilitate the effective implementation of GAI in film and media while also recognizing its relevant challenges and risks.