By Setyo Laksono*

In late 2022, Indonesia passed a New Criminal Code. Supporters of the New Code claim that the Code better reflects Indonesian values and morals. However, many critics are concerned with a number of controversial provisions, including those related to morality such as cohabitation and sexual relationships. The controversy of Indonesia’s New Code provides a case study of the relationship between domestic and international law. While Indonesia, like all other nations, has the right to establish its own legal system, Indonesia is still a party to various international treaties. The Code’s morality provisions may breach these international agreements, specifically those codifying an individual’s right to privacy as a human right 

This Article will discuss the origins of the New Criminal Code and its controversial morality provisions. This Article argues that the morality provisions should be modified or removed because of the risk of discretionary enforcement, corruption, and extortion. Additionally, the Article will discuss the strong international response against the provisions and the provisions’ potential impact on the post-Covid Indonesian economy. Finally, the Article will evaluate the morality provisions’ impact on American citizens traveling to Indonesia and how to best navigate the new rules. 

By Dwyer Arce*

Since Congress granted the Virgin Islands the authority to adopt a constitution in 1978, several drafts have been proposed. Each of them was rejected either by Congress or the voters in the Virgin Islands. In January 2025, the delegates to the Sixth Constitutional Convention of the Virgin Islands will convene to try again—and hopefully succeed where their predecessors did not. 

This Article examines some of the reasons for the inability of the previous constitutional conventions to adopt a constitution and attempts to provide a roadmap for the success of the Sixth Constitutional Convention. This includes the full text of a proposed constitution for consideration by the Sixth Constitutional Convention. This Article advocates for the adoption of this proposed constitution, creating the Commonwealth of the Virgin Islands, a political entity in the model of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands. The concept of a “Commonwealth” as applied to the governments of America’s territories brings with it a long legal history with well-developed legal principles. This will afford the Virgin Islands a level of internal control and autonomy never seen in a century under the American flag. 

The efforts to adopt a constitution for the Virgin Islands, and the continuing legal complexities that accompany its status as a territory, highlights perhaps the most significant hinderance in developing Virgin Islands law—the absence of a law school in the Territory. This Article concludes by examining the negative consequences of the lack of legal education in the Virgin Islands and advocates for the creation of the University of the Virgin Islands School of Law to facilitate the development of constitutional law in the Commonwealth of the Virgin Islands. 

By Cori Alonso-Yoder*

 Immigration law dominates national headlines and policy debates while immigrant communities struggle to secure legal representation. Law students are increasingly aware of these issues, often bringing lived experiences of the immigration system into the classroom. As immigration law professors seek to engage these students with doctrinal and clinical coursework, they often struggle to incorporate policy priorities and executive actions that shift with the political winds. In this tumult, many immigration law professors fail to realize there is an entire body of U.S. immigration law they are not teaching—the immigration law of the U.S. territories. Indeed, many professors may not know that two of the five territories are not even subject to U.S. immigration law. 

Yet, the operation of immigration law in American Samoa, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, Guam, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands offers a wealth of examples that reinforce existing themes and concepts in immigration law. 

This Article lays forward some of the central concepts taught in immigration legal doctrine and describes the immigration systems of the U.S. territories, including those exempt from federal immigration law. It then ties the legal principles at play in each system, including the central concept of the federal political branches’ “plenary power” over the territories and noncitizens alike, to topics presently taught in immigration law coursework. 

By Kristen David Adams & Brooke J. Bowman*

 “There are easy cases and there are hard cases, and this is a hard case.”  The newly minted law school graduate looked confused. 

Analogical reasoning is at the core of legal education, but it is not the only form of legal reasoning that lawyers employ. Lawyers can also expect to face open questions of law that will require skills and strategies not emphasized in the traditional pedagogy for first-year law students. These same skills and strategies are also crucial competencies for members of moot court boards, who are faced with open questions of law, or cases of first impression or circuit splits, in competitions every year. The Virgin Islands Supreme Court case of Banks v. International Rental & Leasing Corp. provides a tool to assist law students and practicing lawyers alike in presenting compelling, persuasive, well-organized arguments whenever open questions of law arise. In this Article, we propose that the traditional law-school pedagogy be modified to incorporate the Banks analysis as a teaching tool.