Abstract: The U.S. government has steadily constructed a restrictive corpus of immigration policy toward its border with Mexico, characterized by rigid border patrol and removal procedures to deter the arrival of migrants without valid documentation. Complementary to these objectives, the Trump administration’s Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP) invoke Section 235(b)(2)(C) of the Immigration and Nationality Act to temporarily return migrants arriving at the southwestern border to Mexico to await their immigration hearings. The MPP has sustained controversy for failing to provide due process to migrants and subjecting them to unsafe humanitarian conditions upon return to Mexico, plausibly amounting to violations of the international legal principle of non-refoulement. This article traces existing criticisms that the MPP neglects to provide sufficient safeguards against refoulement to a critical legal lacuna within Section 235(b)(2)(C) and the Immigration and Nationality Act at large. The article comprehensively examines federal statutes on temporary return and credible-fear screenings in relation to guidelines by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees and the Committee Against Torture for states to implement their non-refoulement obligations. Those findings dictate the article’s primary contention: Section 235(b)(2)(C) lacks durable procedures to assess migrants’ fear of persecution or torture in the contiguous territory to which they face return. Opinions by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and European Court of Justice on related return policies are subsequently synthesized to present a viable jurisprudential basis for amending Section 235(b)(2)(C) to standardize basic fear-screening procedures as a critical safeguard against refoulement.

Abstract: 8 U.S.C. §1326 criminalizes reentering the United States by previously deported migrants. In practice, Section 1326 facilitates the arrest and detention of unauthorized immigrants—an overwhelming majority of whom are Hispanic men—who are frequently held in overcrowded and unsanitary detention facilities. Consequently, people charged under Section 1326 have been challenging the law under the Arlington Heights standard, which requires plaintiffs alleging an Equal Protection violation to demonstrate that a facially neutral law was enacted, at least in part, with discriminatory intent. Plaintiffs pursuing such constitutional challenges have marshalled evidence from Congressional records, legislative history, and secondary sources to establish discriminatory motive and disparate racial impact. Plaintiffs found success in United States v. Carrillo-Lopez, 555 F. Supp. 3d 996 (D. Nev. 2021), where the U.S. District Court of Nevada held that Section 1326 was unconstitutional. Yet, when the case was appealed to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, the court reversed the lower court’s ruling, finding that Carrillo-Lopez failed to demonstrate Section 1326’s discriminatory intent. United States v. Carrillo-Lopez, 68 F.4th 1133 (9th Cir. 2023). This article argues that the Ninth Circuit’s analysis was flawed in two significant respects. First, the court improperly excluded Section 1326’s first enactment in 1929 from its historical inquiry. That is, the court analyzed Section 1326 by separating the statute from the Undesirable Aliens Act of 1929 which birthed the concept of illegally entering the United States. Second, the court misapplied Arlington Heights by fragmenting the evidence rather than considering its cumulative weight. This article discusses how the court deviated from the binding precedent in the Supreme Court case Washington v. Davis (1976) and the persuasive authority of an intercircuit court case North Carolina State Conference of NAACP v. McCrory (4th Cir. 2016). In either case, this article argues that the Arlington Heights standard requires the court to synthesize the evidence and observe patterns of discrimination, rather than analyzing each piece of evidence on its own. Through critical examination, this article illustrates how the Ninth Circuit distorted the Arlington Heights standard, selectively constructed Section 1326’s history, and failed to hold accountability for a law with a discriminatory origin and racially disparate effects.

Abstract: Legal violations in the context of emerging technologies consistently challenge the status quo, highlighting the often glaring discrepancies between the law and the societal standards that have evolved, and no subsect of law more ubiquitously captures that than intellectual property. Unlike other traditional forms of property, data exists in a unique space, defined by its widespread relevance in every networked system. The accumulation of data drives technological innovation, and as Large Language Models (LLMs) and other forms of artificial intelligence begin to redefine the ways in which individuals interact with technology, the value of data has scaled dramatically. The applications in which data is used, displayed, and accessed are highly variable, constituting the medium as unlike any other form of property. The source from which the data derives does define some level of clarification from a copyright perspective, but when it comes to its manipulation and derivation within artificial intelligence, the legal language becomes drastically unclear as to how to address these operations. As it stands, both intellectual property law under Title 17 and regulatory policy like the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) are significantly outdated, failing to account for the advances that have occurred within the digital ecosystem, especially in regard to first the accumulation of data to train LLMs, and second the manipulation of data to generate outputs in LLMs. The legal environment of artificial intelligence has been placed at the forefront of skepticism, with systematic disparities becoming all the more apparent in the advent of these models’ deployment as part of a networked ecosystem.

Abstract: This article examines the regulatory and socioeconomic consequences of the Supreme Court’s decision in Murphy v. National Collegiate Athletics Association (2018), which invalidated the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (PASPA). The main legal problem the Court addressed was whether PASPA was in violation of the tenth amendment's anti-commandeering doctrine and if so, should parts of the law be severed from those in violation of the doctrine. In the Court’s 6-3 ruling, they found PASPA to be in violation of the anti-commandeering doctrine, striking down the entirety of PASPA rather than severing the unconstitutional provisions. This article will demonstrate and quantify how the court’s incautious decision dismantled an established federal legal framework that once regulated online sports gambling. Beyond the legal holding of the case, this article will also assess the impacts of the Murphy decision in regard to the socioeconomic impact it has had on Americans across the nation. The article provides an evidence-based analysis on the post-Murphy America, detailing rising rates of personal bankruptcy, credit degradation, and public health issues, including gambling addiction and suicide. Additionally, this article explores the shift in professional sports leagues from opposing gambling to actively partnering with sportsbooks, leading to a broader societal normalization of sports betting. Ultimately, this article contends that several solutions are required at the federal level to create a more modernized framework to protect Americans from the growing risk of online sports gambling.