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Robyn Powell, Reproductive Justice for Disabled People During COVID-19 and Beyond, in Routledge Gender Companion to Gender and COVID-19 (Routledge, 2024)Clicking on the button will copy the full recommended citation.
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Kirsten K. Davis, A New Parlor is Open: Legal Writing Faculty Must Develop Scholarship on Generative AI and Writing (2024)Clicking on the button will copy the full recommended citation.
Generative artificial intelligence likely represents a paradigm shift in legal communication teaching, learning, and practice. What we know (so far) about generative AI suggests that law school legal writing courses will need to teach generative AI skills to be used as part of a hybrid human-generative AI legal writing process. Accordingly, legal writing faculty will need to understand how generative AI works, its implications for legal writing practices, and how to teach legal writers the knowledge and skills needed to use generative AI ethically and effectively in their work.
As a community of scholars, legal writing faculty should lead the inquiry into the connections between generative AI and legal writing products, processes, and practices. This is an exciting time; there are many unanswered questions to explore about the relationships between human writers and machine writing tools.
Unlike other essays in the Unending Conversation collection, this essay does not join a conversation. Instead, it is a conversation starter; it is meant to “open the parlor door” and encourage legal writing scholars to research at the intersection of generative AI and legal writing. As legal communication experts, legal writing faculty are well-situated to be frequent and expert speakers in this conversation.
This essay explains why generative AI represents the beginning of a paradigm shift in legal writing that requires scholarly exploration and presents some ideas for the “big issues” that will need investigation.
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Francis J. Mootz et al. (eds.), Classical Rhetoric and Contemporary Law: A Critical Reader (University of Alabama Press, 2024)Clicking on the button will copy the full recommended citation.
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Will Bunting, Consumer Voice and Optimal Firm Size, 72 Buff. L. Rev. 617 (2024)Clicking on the button will copy the full recommended citation.
This Article examines the question: How can a consumer hold a seller to account in an exchange relationship when expectations have not been met. The Article’s first contribution is to recognize that, in the case of small firms, an employer business can provide a higher level of conflict resolution compared to a non-employer business. Unlike a consumer, an employer has the level of control necessary to compel an employee to remedy a product or service failure. Rather than engage in a costly personal confrontation with an employee, a dissatisfied consumer can simply request that the employer make the employee perform as promised. In this way, the existence of an employer-employee relationship allows a dissatisfied consumer to transfer or otherwise delegate conflict resolution to a person with greater power to remedy a product or service failure.
The Article’s second contribution is to recognize that, in the case of large firms operating in markets with imperfect competition, a large firm is likely to provide a suboptimal level of conflict resolution. When consumers are locked into an exchange relationship because switching costs are sufficiently high due to a lack of available market alternatives, consumers often have limited voice and no other feasible dissatisfaction response—a state of powerlessness that this Article terms “consumer captivity.” This Article argues that antitrust authorities ought to include consumer captivity more consistently in the mix of non-price consumer harms cognizable under U.S. antitrust law. To increase the level of conflict resolution of large firms in imperfect markets, this Article identifies two potential regulatory strategies informed by the analytic framework: (1) indirectly reduce the cost of consumer voice, and (2) directly increase the probability that a dissatisfied consumer receives a compensatory remedy.
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Kirsten K. Davis and Francis J. Mootz, Contemporary Law Through the Classical Lens, in Classical Rhetoric and Contemporary Law: A Critical Reader (Francis J. Mootz et al. eds., University of Alabama Press, 2024)Clicking on the button will copy the full recommended citation.
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Kirsten K. Davis, Qunitilian: The Lawyer, Speaking – The Lawyer as “Perfect Orator”, in Classical Rhetoric and Contemporary Law: A Critical Reader (Francis J. Mootz et al. eds., University of Alabama Press, 2024)Clicking on the button will copy the full recommended citation.
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Robyn Powell, Care Reimagined: Transforming Law by Embracing Interdependence, 122 Mich. L. Rev. 1185 (2024)Clicking on the button will copy the full recommended citation.
Building upon the foundation laid by All Our Families: Disability Lineage and the Future of Kinship, this Review examines the complex issues surrounding care and their relevance to people with disabilities. Part I delves into the contrasting perspectives of the disability rights movement and disability justice. By juxtaposing the emphasis on independence with a focus on interdependence, I unravel the intricate dynamics shaping the care experiences of disabled people. Part II presents a descriptive analysis unveiling the current realities of care. In doing so, I seek to expose the limited availability and access to care, the legal and bureaucratic impediments hindering effective care delivery, and the pervasive inequities faced by both unpaid and paid caregivers. Finally, Part III proposes a normative vision for reimagining care. I suggest strategies for broadening availability and access to care, challenging legal and bureaucratic impediments to care, confronting caregiver inequities, and fostering mutual aid networks within disabled communities. This Review’s analysis of care issues and transformative proposals aims to enrich disability, health, and family law discourse, providing valuable insights and shaping discussions and actions toward more inclusive and equitable legal frameworks and practices.
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Robyn Powell, Disabled and Disenfranchised: The Fight for Reproductive Freedom and Democracy Post-Dobbs, 46 Cardozo L. Rev. 1385 (2024)Clicking on the button will copy the full recommended citation.
The Supreme Court has thrust abortion onto ballots nationwide, transforming fundamental rights into political battlegrounds. In the aftermath of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, people with disabilities face a perfect storm of eroded reproductive freedoms and persistent barriers to democratic participation. This Article exposes the hollow promise of the Court’s purported deference to “the people’s elected representatives,” revealing instead a landscape where those most affected by abortion restrictions struggle to have their voices heard. The Court’s invocation of democracy is arguably disingenuous, serving more as a rhetorical device than a genuine commitment to democratic principles. Nevertheless, engaging with this framing is crucial, as it now shapes the terrain on which reproductive freedom must be defended and advanced. The Dobbs decision not only dismantles reproductive rights but also lays bare the deep inequities in our democratic processes. For disabled people, this opinion amplifies existing challenges, subjecting them to heightened health risks, diminished healthcare access, increased economic insecurity, and further assaults on their bodily autonomy—all while their ability to influence relevant policies remains constrained
This Article contributes to the post-Dobbs discourse by proposing a radical reimagining of reproductive justice and disability rights advocacy within the imposed democratic framework. It introduces a dual strategy that combines tactical engagement with existing democratic systems and bold efforts to transform entrenched injustices. The Article outlines concrete pathways for empowering people with disabilities in the reproductive justice movement, including methods to shape public opinion, leverage lobbying, mobilize voting power, and increase disabled representation in political office. This innovative framework aims to achieve true reproductive freedom—grounded in bodily autonomy, self-determination, and dignity for all. Ultimately, it argues that confronting the democratic deficits facing the disability community is not just crucial for safeguarding reproductive freedom but essential for exposing and dismantling the Court’s flawed reasoning in Dobbs. With abortion rights now subject to the vicissitudes of electoral politics, this Article charts a course toward a more inclusive democracy—one that amplifies marginalized voices and reimagines reproductive justice in the complex post-Dobbs era.
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Louis J. Virelli, The Underappreciated Virtues of the Supreme Court’s Ethics Code, 52 Hofstra L. Rev. 657 (2024)Clicking on the button will copy the full recommended citation.
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Robyn Powell, Reproductive Justice for Disabled People Post-Dobbs: A Call-to-Action for Researchers, 17 Disability and Health Journal 101572 (2024)Clicking on the button will copy the full recommended citation.