By Kerry Gibbons. Full Text. Americans’ charitable giving habits are changing. Since the 1990s, a new form of charitable giving (donor-advised funds, or “DAFs”) has skyrocketed in popularity. In 2018, DAFs held at least $72 billion in charitable dollars—representing a 200% increase from four years prior. DAFs’ ascendance can be attributed to their ease of…

By Brandie Burris. Full Text. Bail is not a fine, and it is not a punishment. In theory, bail serves a simple goal: it ensures an accused defendant will appear at their criminal hearings. Yet, as practiced, the American bail system is insidious. Bail bond agencies exploit their grossly unequal bargaining power, depress consumer access…

By Daniel P. Suitor. Full Text. Unhoused people are constantly and consistently mistreated by our society. Cities criminalize basic, life-sustaining activities of people experiencing homelessness, such as sitting down in public or sleeping in parks. Law enforcement bodies are quick to harass them, and residents are happy to look the other way in the name…

By Miriam Pysno Solomon. Full Text. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 both strive to reduce and eliminate discrimination on the basis of sex. While Title VII governs almost all employers in the United States, Title IX similarly governs almost all educational institutions.…

By Marra M. Clay. Full Text. The primary justification for intellectual property is simple: it exists to incentivize innovation. Creators, innovators, and inventors are motivated to create, innovate, and invent by the promise of exclusive rights to the fruits of their labor. The founding fathers believed these rights so important that they wrote them into…

By Nathan Webster. Full Text. Data breaches are increasingly common. As the frequency of data breaches increases, so too does the frequency of data privacy class action suits. However, as plaintiffs overcome longstanding obstacles to class certification, new challenges are emerging. One issue poses a particular challenge for data privacy plaintiffs: the heightened ascertainability requirement.…

By Meredith Gingold. Full Text. Nonprofit hospitals receive numerous state and federal tax exemptions. In return, communities expect that hospitals will give back what they can. This giving, called “community benefits,” can take many forms including money spent on educating a hospital’s doctors and residents, free or discounted care to low-income patients, and Medicaid shortfalls—the…

By Matthew E. Cavanaugh. Full Text. Facial recognition tracking is the use of facial recognition technology to track a person’s movements based on the appearance of their face at particular locations. It is one of many rapidly advancing technologies that are forcing a judicial reckoning with how the Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable searches applies…

By Ryan Plasencia. Full Text.  While universally condemned by the international community, state-sponsored torture and extrajudicial killing are still pervasive practices around the globe. This Note examines a specific form of state-sponsored torture and killing—those acts that are facilitated or aided by multinational corporations with profit motives. In 1992, the United States enacted the Torture…

By Olivia Levinson. Full Text. Every year, YouTube amasses billions of dollars in online advertising revenue. While many advertisements play before, in between, and after YouTube videos, there are often more elusive advertisements within the videos themselves. Embedded advertisements within videos pose unique consumer protection concerns, especially as they pertain to young audiences. Ryan’s World,…