Law and Legal Studies
The Future of Justice: The Next Era of AI Ethics and Law
Presenter: Allison Dayan Castaneda Moreno
Faculty Sponsor: Jean Kennedy
School: Quinsigamond Community College
Research Area: Law and Legal Studies
Location: Poster Session 1, 10:30 AM - 11:15 AM: Campus Center Auditorium [A8]

As artificial intelligence becomes increasingly embedded in legal systems, governance structures, and everyday decision‑making, questions of ethics and accountability grow more urgent. This project examines the evolving relationship between AI, law, and human values, with a particular focus on how traditional knowledge and historical frameworks can guide responsible technological development. While contemporary AI systems operate at unprecedented speed and complexity, they are still shaped by long‑standing social, cultural, and legal foundations. Understanding these roots is essential for building future systems that remain grounded, equitable, and aligned with human needs.

Within the legal field, ethics serves as both a constraint and a compass for the integration of artificial intelligence. As courts, law firms, and administrative agencies increasingly adopt algorithmic tools, the traditional pillars of legal ethics, professional responsibility, due process, transparency, and the protection of fundamental rights are being tested in new ways. AI systems challenge long‑standing assumptions about who exercises judgment, how accountability is assigned, and what it means for legal decisions to be fair, explainable, and grounded in human reasoning. 

“The War Abroad and on the Homefront: How the Vietnam War Redefined and Mobilized Black Resistance” “The War Abroad and on the Homefront: How the Vietnam War Redefined and Mobilized Black Resistance”
Presenter: Ryo Nozawa
Faculty Sponsor: Martha Yoder
School: UMass Amherst
Research Area: Law and Legal Studies
Location: Poster Session 1, 10:30 AM - 11:15 AM: Concourse [B3]

In the 1960s, the United States was defined by the Civil Rights Movement, the Vietnam War, and the counterculture movement. These turning points were transformative for the American people. More specifically, and much unknown to the public, is the undeniable influence of the Vietnam War abroad on the Black resistance movements at home and vice versa. This thesis will comb through first hand accounts and analysis by acclaimed authors to support the core assertion that the Vietnam War exacerbated the Black Power Movement and revealed the ills of American society that seemed to follow across the world. Black soldiers were faced with racist treatment in camps, high death rates, and an unexpected empathy for the Vietnamese being slaughtered. Such circumstances led young Black GIs to be suspended in this state of dissonance, where they struggled to reconcile what they expected military service to be and what it actually was. This work will look into the evolution of Black resistance through the legal lens of cases like Clay v. U.S. It will analyze the wars abroad and on the homefront and how they worked in tandem to redefine Black movements and how the war itself was shaped by them. It will touch on protests and race riots on both ends of the world and reveal how Black identity evolved as the war continued. These claims will be supported by first hand accounts from Black veterans, newspapers, and the draft case of Muhammad Ali. 

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Abortion Rights: A Case for the Equal Protection Clause
Presenter: Mila Yana Splawska
Faculty Sponsor: Martha Yoder
School: UMass Amherst
Research Area: Law and Legal Studies
Location: Poster Session 1, 10:30 AM - 11:15 AM: Concourse [B4]

The constitutional status of abortion rights in the United States has shifted dramatically over the past half-century. In Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court recognized abortion as a fundamental right protected by the Constitution and grounded the right to abortion in a broader right to privacy. The Court created the trimester framework to balance the interests of pregnant individuals and state interests in the fetus, which were found to be compelling in the third trimester. Although Planned Parenthood v. Casey reaffirmed Roe’s central holding, it abandoned the trimester framework, replacing it with the undue burden standard and relocated constitutional protection to the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause. In Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, however, the Court rejected the due process foundation altogether, holding that the Constitution does not protect any right to abortion and returning regulatory authority to the states.

This project proposes that the instability of abortion rights stems from the Court’s reliance on substantive due process arguments to protect abortion rather than the Equal Protection Clause. Drawing on feminist and intersectional legal theory, I argue that abortion restrictions constitute a form of discrimination that both mirrors and entrenches structural inequality. Such laws not only reflect a historical pattern of subordinating women, but also disproportionately burden low-income individuals and people of color, deepening racial and economic disparities. This research synthesizes feminist legal literature to advance an intersectional framework that highlights the discriminatory design and unequal effects of abortion restrictions and makes the case for renewed protection under the Equal Protection Clause.

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Rethinking Public Discourse in Schools
Presenter: Jonathan Goldin
Faculty Sponsor: Martha Yoder
School: UMass Amherst
Research Area: Law and Legal Studies
Location: Poster Session 1, 10:30 AM - 11:15 AM: Concourse [B5]

Courts in the United States repeatedly claim that students retain constitutional protections while in school, but legal doctrine increasingly gives administrators expansive discretion to engage in censorship and searches. This project focuses on the balance between student expression and administrative authority, highlighting that the Court has legalized administrative discretion by reframing schools as engaging in ‘managerial control’ or control in pursuit of a pedagogical goal. Drawing on the work of Robert Post, I explain how schools are in the business of controlling speech and expression while also acknowledging that Post empirically and structurally misrepresents the role of ‘public discourse,’ or politically important speech, in schools. Post’s domain theory treats schools as places of professionalism insulated from politically important speech, which, importantly, would justify the exclusion of First Amendment protections in schools. I, however, argue that schools inherently teach students to engage in public discourse by utilizing debate programs, civics curricula, student government, and classroom discussion of politics. Furthermore, because I argue students do engage in public discourse, I also argue relevant First Amendment protections should be applied. By interrogating Post’s argument about managerial control, we can determine whether the courts are justified in lending so much discretion to school officials or whether they have gone too far. 
From Buck to Dobbs: The Constitutional Logic of Reproductive Policing
Presenter: Sarah Elizabeth Ryan
Faculty Sponsor: Martha Yoder
School: UMass Amherst
Research Area: Law and Legal Studies
Location: Poster Session 1, 10:30 AM - 11:15 AM: Concourse [B8]

This thesis project examines the continuity of constitutional logic that governs reproductive rights in the United States. This logic has persisted since the early 20th century eugenics movement, specifically in the case of Buck v Bell (1927) to contemporary abortion rhetoric and jurisprudence. This thesis argues that a communitarian constitutional logic is one that elevates “public welfare” over individual reproductive autonomy, which I propose should also be considered “eugenic logic.” While eugenics as a pseudoscientific movement has been condemned by society and legal systems, the constitutional reasoning that justified state intervention over reproduction endures in contemporary laws that prioritize fetal life and collective social interests over women's bodily autonomy. Throughout three chapters, I will analyze how eugenic logic transformed as a means to justify sterilization of women speculated to produce undesirable offspring into a framework that rationalizes policing marginalized pregnant women for drug abuse. I connect these two circumstances of state control over reproduction by arguing that both the collective interest in preventing unwanted offspring, and protecting potential fetal life from harm, follows communitarian constitutional logic. I will place this argument in contemporary terms as well, explaining how the Dobbs v Jackson Women's Health Organization (2022) decision was a defining accelerant that reproductive choices are treated as a public interest rather than a matter of individual autonomy. Ultimately, the thesis argues that when the law elevates public welfare or fetal personhood interests above individual reproductive autonomy, the structural logic of eugenics is reproduced, even absent its overt racialized or class based rhetoric.


Manufactured Crises Justify Authoritarianism
Presenter: Alan Ying Chen
Faculty Sponsor: Martha Yoder
School: UMass Amherst
Research Area: Law and Legal Studies
Location: Poster Session 1, 10:30 AM - 11:15 AM: Concourse [B9]

My thesis will focus on government officials’ misuse of power during “times of crisis” to encroach on citizens’ constitutional rights throughout American history. It asks several questions surrounding this subject. What truly constitutes a time of crisis? Who gets to make that decision? What outside influences affect these people’s decisions? What would stop government overreach? In light of these questions, should people be willing to sacrifice their rights during these times? I will focus on how prejudices and political pressures heavily influence the government’s encroachment on citizens’ constitutional rights. It will center around government officials, primarily Supreme Court justices and the President, as many have created manufactured crises to falsely justify the deprivation of constitutional rights. Through this analysis, my thesis will conclude that the untrustworthiness of government officials indicates that it is never permissible to give the government the power to deprive citizens of constitutional rights. 

My thesis will then showcase contemporary examples of this phenomenon in the United States. The declaration of a supposed national emergency at the Southern border and the sweeping federal government responses to it are among the most pressing occurrences. Trump's use of emergency powers to impose worldwide tariffs without prior congressional approval is another current-day example.
Reimagining Justice: Indigenous Justice Initiatives and What Western Justice Systems Stand to Learn
Presenter: Maxwell Skye Balkema
Faculty Sponsor: Martha Yoder
School: UMass Amherst
Research Area: Law and Legal Studies
Location: Poster Session 1, 10:30 AM - 11:15 AM: Concourse [B10]

In traditional Western law there is always a winner and a loser. In civil court this is done through monetary means; debts are satisfied with financial compensation. In criminal court debts are paid for in freedom; When a case is over and punishment has been doled out little is done to solve the issue that created that dispute or crime in the first place. Systemic issues are rarely solved through the courts, instead communities must face a reality where circumstantial wrongs are “remedied” with life changing consequences. Indigenous justice exists as a means of community based restoration. Instead of targeting the individual the society comes together to rectify the societal misdeed. This approach highlights collective responsibility and shifts away from shame and guilt in the individual. Unfortunately, because of the U.S government's historic nature of Tribal court takeover these justice methods have long been counteracted by U.S. systems. Examining some of these key decisions and thinking about the future of Indigenous peoples before the Supreme Court will lead to a deeper understanding of the Court's role in upending Tribal sovereignty and the pathway to a more equitable justice system. Ultimately, my thesis will aim to explore the Supreme Court’s continued subversion of Tribal power and sovereignty as well as what western law systems stand to gain from recognizing, respecting and rectifying Indigenous restorative justice practice.
Jury Impartiality and Its Epistemic Limits: Cognitive Constraints and the Sixth Amendment
Presenter: Keira M. Cook
Faculty Sponsor: Martha Yoder
School: UMass Amherst
Research Area: Law and Legal Studies
Location: Poster Session 1, 10:30 AM - 11:15 AM: Concourse [B11]

The Sixth Amendment guarantees criminal defendants the right to trial by an “impartial jury,” a principle the Supreme Court has long treated as foundational to fair adjudication. Yet the Court’s doctrine rests on implicit assumptions about juror cognition, namely, that bias can be identified and corrected through introspection, self-report, and traditional adversarial safeguards such as voir dire and cross-examination. This thesis argues that these assumptions reflect an outdated model of human rationality.

Drawing on contemporary cognitive psychology, memory research, and epistemology, this project demonstrates that bias, heuristic reasoning, and confidence inflation are predictable features of ordinary cognition rather than departures from it. Research on dual-process theory and reconstructive memory reveals that many influences shaping juror decision-making operate automatically and are often inaccessible to conscious reflection. Consequently, constitutional doctrine that relies on jurors’ self-assessments of impartiality may misapprehend the cognitive realities of belief formation.

Through analysis of Smith v. Phillips, Manson v. Brathwaite, Perry v. New Hampshire, and Pena-Rodriguez v. Colorado, this thesis identifies the Court’s operative conception of impartiality as both procedural safeguard and cognitive assumption. It contends that the meaning of “impartial jury” must be reevaluated in light of established cognitive limitations and reconceived as a structural constitutional guarantee.

Case Analysis: Tik Tok v. Garland (2025)
Presenter: Peyton Abigail Maloney
Group Members: Sean P. Daly
Faculty Sponsor: Laura W. Kane
School: Worcester State University
Research Area: Law and Legal Studies
Location: Poster Session 3, 1:15 PM - 2:00 PM: Campus Center Auditorium [A29]

TikTok v. Garland was a landmark case, involving the Chinese company Byte dance, and its global media platform, TikTok. The Chinese ownership of TikTok led to many concerns, primarily about the online safety of its users' data. The United States government argued that TikTok posed a national security threat due to the fact that Chinese intelligence laws could lead to the use of TikTok as a means to collect information/data on United States citizens. TikTok could access the sensitive data of its 170 million users, and Byte dance has close ties with the Chinese Communist Party, a direct threat to the U.S Government. The United States government demanded that Byte Dance either sell TikTok or shut down TikTok in the U.S.

This is a first of its kind case, as the Supreme Court never had to answer a question related to online security, regarding social media from foreign adversaries. This case involved the Foreign Adversary Control Act, and led to the question of if this act violated the first amendment rights of TikTok. Each of the Supreme Court Justices in this case made very in-depth and thoughtful remarks regarding foreign countries’ influence on national security as well as whether or not foreign countries reap the benefits of United States Constitutional protections and rights such as freedom of speech. We analyzed these justice’s decisions through the legal philosophy of Martha Minnow, Elizabeth Spellman, and Jerome Frank and their own interpretation of adjudication through the lens of neutrality, context, and mechanical adjudication.

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Philosophical and Legal Analysis of Free Speech Coalition Inc. v. Paxton
Presenter: Hind I. Mustafa
Group Members: Natalie G. Nayfeh
Faculty Sponsor: Laura W. Kane
School: Worcester State University
Research Area: Law and Legal Studies
Location: Poster Session 3, 1:15 PM - 2:00 PM: Campus Center Auditorium [A30]

In Free Speech Coalition Inc. v. Paxton, the Supreme Court ruled that a Texas law requiring age verification to access pornography is constitutional (Jouvenal & Oremus, 2025).  In this research paper we provide legal and philosophical analysis of the case of Free Speech Coalition Inc. v Paxton. We detail the ruling, the majority, and the dissenting opinion, focusing on the legal reasoning exercised by Supreme Court judges. We also explain the legal reasoning behind the original decision of the district court. Furthermore, we describe the legal arguments put forth by the plaintiffs and defendants. We explain the three different types of legal scrutiny, as well as why Supreme Court and District Court judges chose differing levels of scrutiny. We also detail the situations in which judges typically choose to exercise certain levels of scrutiny. Furthermore, we provide an account of Ronald Dworkin's rights-based theory of law, his law-as-integrity theory, and Judith Jarvis Thomson's non-absolutist theory of rights. Finally, we analyze the majority and dissenting opinions thrice each, through the lens of these three legal philosophies. Judith Thompson would likely have stood on the side of the majority, as she believed that infringing on individual rights was justifiable due to extenuating circumstances (Thompson, 1977). Dworkin would argue that the majority weakened the First Amendment by prioritizing a collective goal over individual rights. He would also have contended that the majority and dissenting opinions ruled differently based on the different ways they balanced aesthetic judgments, principles, prior decisions, and community moral standards.

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Protective or Punitive?: The Dual Nature of Domestic Violence Law
Presenter: Ella Katherine Masciarelli
Faculty Sponsor: Kathleen A. Brown-Perez
School: UMass Amherst
Research Area: Law and Legal Studies
Location: Poster Session 5, 3:15 PM - 4:00 PM: Campus Center Auditorium [A64]

Domestic violence is one of the most pervasive crimes as well as a major public health crisis across the globe. One in four women in the United States will experience a form of domestic violence in their lifetime, and the issue continues to escalate. The Covid-19 pandemic significantly worsened this crisis, and rates of domestic violence surged due to isolation and economic instability. Despite these increases, the legal frameworks intended to address domestic violence have remained unchanged. The United States is reliant on arrest and prosecution as their main forms of intervention in Domestic Violence. This paper examines the implementation of various domestic violence policies, analyzing their justification and potential consequences. While initially intended to minimize rates of domestic violence and serve as a form of deterrence, domestic violence policies have instead mimicked the forms of control which victims experience in their abuse.

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Information Is Power: The U.S. Government's Unregulated Data-Sharing Partnerships with Technology Corporations During an Era of Innovation and Democratic Destruction
Presenter: Susan Reynolds
Faculty Sponsor: Kathleen A. Brown-Perez
School: UMass Amherst
Research Area: Law and Legal Studies
Location: Poster Session 5, 3:15 PM - 4:00 PM: Campus Center Auditorium [A67]

This research compiles evidence of the capacity of surveillance capitalism and private-public data sharing partnerships in the United States to reduce the American expectation of privacy to violate due process rights with disparate impacts predicated on race and citizenship status. Using peer-reviewed journal articles and analytical research on the history of mass surveillance from America’s founding to the information age, modern surveillant private-sector and state infrastructure are contextualized and critiqued as tools of social control, racialized mass e-carceration, and profiteering from the generation of an exploitable, incarcerated workforce. This research also draws from multidisciplinary sources within the social sciences to articulate how the technological and legal advancements in risk assessment tools and predictive policing algorithms perpetuate systemic racial inequality. Finally, legal theory around the Fourth Amendment and the American expectation of privacy is analyzed to produce recommendations for federal government data privacy regulations that can keep up with rapid technological innovation. The rationale for the research was to open the eyes of everyday Americans to the broad scale of personal information collection by the private companies you interact with online and how your data is unknowingly taken by third-party data brokers and the U.S. government. Overall, the purpose of the research is to inform public opinion on violations of privacy rights and to inspire the uptake of everyday data privacy protection strategies.
Examining Generative Artificial Intelligence in Legal Practice Through a Public Interest Technology Framework
Presenter: Aaditi Padhi
Faculty Sponsor: Carolina Rossini
School: UMass Amherst
Research Area: Law and Legal Studies
Location: Poster Session 6, 4:15 PM - 5:00 PM: Room 163 [C30]

The emergence of artificial intelligence (“AI”), particularly Generative Artificial Intelligence (“GAI” or “GenAI”), in the legal field has had far-reaching implications on every corner of the legal edifice, from academia to practice. GenAI is being increasingly adopted across law firms to perform tasks ranging from legal research to summarizing case law, freeing attorneys and paralegals to focus on high-value, strategic work. Larger law firms are investing in proprietary, closed-source, or internally hosted large language models and integrating them into day-to-day workflows and high-level operational practices. Meanwhile, private practice attorneys and smaller firms are adopting general-purpose AI tools, such as ChatGPT and Clio, to increase efficiency and keep up with the rapidly changing technological landscape.
While GenAI tools can streamline legal workflows and expand access to justice, they also introduce structural risks embedded in large language model design. Courts have increasingly confronted AI-generated hallucinations in filings, while bar associations have begun issuing guidance regarding the use of GenAI in practice. Drawing on scholarship and qualitative semi-structured interviews, this review identifies a framework for legal AI governance through the lens of public interest technology (PIT) principles. It argues that effective integration of GenAI requires technical safeguards that are implemented with the interests of the actors that use and are affected by the technology.
Re-Evaluating Section 230 in the Social Media Age
Presenter: Leyna Summers
Faculty Sponsor: Douglas Rice
School: UMass Amherst
Research Area: Law and Legal Studies
Location: Poster Session 6, 4:15 PM - 5:00 PM: Room 163 [C31]

This thesis examines how the Internet is regulated in the United States and how the legal framework for Internet regulation has evolved in response to the modern digital age. The definitive Internet law in the U.S. is Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which grants internet service providers immunity from being legally responsible for third-party content hosted on their sites and for taking measures to screen objectionable content. Section 230 was passed in 1996 and has been instrumental in ensuring freedom of speech online, but since its passage several decades ago, the Internet has grown vastly in its capabilities and social impact. The rise of algorithm-based social media has precipitated issues on the Internet that could not have been anticipated at the time of Section 230’s creation. As a result, both case law and legislative proposals have reflected a desire to limit the scope of 230 and hold social media companies accountable. This thesis analyzes the legal history of Section 230 and the conflict between mitigating the spread of harmful content on social media and upholding free speech online. To buttress this analysis, I conduct a survey assessing public support for increased regulation of social media and its relation to free speech beliefs. Based on the findings, I conclude that modern social media sites have created both the circumstances and the means to weaken Section 230’s liability shield, though free speech concerns should still be considered.

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Sentencing the Famous: Do Celebrities Have it Easier in Criminal Sentencing than Non-Celebrities?
Presenter: Caleb Jonathan Cruzado
Faculty Sponsor: Paul Collins
School: UMass Amherst
Research Area: Law and Legal Studies
Location: Poster Session 6, 4:15 PM - 5:00 PM: Room 163 [C32]

In 2025, dozens of celebrities left the silver screen and the red carpet to take center stage at a criminal defense table, where audiences of fans and detractors watched in person and online. These celebrity criminal trials lead to much speculation as to the extent to which celebrities may be advantaged or disadvantaged in the criminal justice system. In this research, I help answer this question by exploring whether celebrity criminal defendants who are found guilty or plead guilty receive harsher or more lenient sentences than non-celebrities. To investigate this, I compare the sentencing of celebrities to non-celebrities, while controlling for the type of criminal offense, jurisdiction, previous criminal history, race, gender, and other factors. This research also distinguishes among the types of celebrities who engage with the U.S. criminal justice system and examines how the media’s classification of their offenses prior to a verdict may influence society's perception of fairness and equal protection within the courts. I conclude that celebrities do not have it “easier,” but rather face a unique set of challenges of their own. This research is important as it invites further inquiry into the fairness of the American legal system and how it maintains equal protection in criminal sentencing.