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  From Smoot-Hawley to the Synthetic Opioid Crisis: The United States Postal Service as a Conduit for International Fentanyl Shipments [Note]

  Sklar, Lily (The University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law (Tucson, AZ), 2025)

  Over the last decade, the United States postal system has become an unwitting conduit for the international trafficking of deadly synthetic fentanyl and its precursors. This form of fentanyl trafficking has been made possible by an illicit pipeline that runs through China, Mexico, and the United States postal system. This Note will explore how the synthetic fentanyl pipeline emerged from a confluence of U.S. trade policy loopholes, the rapid expansion of Chinese e-commerce, and troubled counternarcotics diplomacy with China and Mexico. This Note will then discuss how attempts by the U.S. government to interrupt the fentanyl pipeline have so far proven inadequate and, at times, capricious. Finally, this Note will advocate for comprehensive and transparent policy solutions to fortify the U.S. customs sector against international narcotics trafficking.
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  Filling the A.I. Gap: How Domestic and International Law Fails to Protect Artificial Intelligence Whistleblowers [Note]

  Kiefer, Alivia (The University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law (Tucson, AZ), 2025)

  As artificial intelligence (A.I.) development accelerates beyond the reach of current regulatory frameworks, whistleblowers in the A.I. sector, particularly those employed by privately held firms, face a dangerous legal void. This Note identifies a critical regulatory shortfall, termed the “A.I. Gap,” where employees seeking to expose unsafe but not explicitly illegal A.I. practices are left unprotected under both U.S. and EU law. Through a detailed analysis of high-profile whistleblower cases, including the 2024 “Right to Warn” letter and disclosures by former OpenAI and Microsoft employees, the Note demonstrates how existing laws, such as the Dodd-Frank Act, the False Claims Act, and the EU Whistleblower Directive, fail to protect individuals who raise concerns about speculative or ethical A.I. risks. The Note also examines how non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) are strategically used to suppress internal dissent and limit legal recourse. Ultimately, this Note proposes a multi-step reform framework to protect AI whistleblowers across internal, governmental, and post-disclosure stages, emphasizing the need for confidential, responsive, and independent reporting channels; statutory redefinition of whistleblowing to include risk-related concerns; and robust anti-retaliation safeguards. Without these reforms, the public remains vulnerable to unaccountable A.I. development practices and the individuals best positioned to expose them remain silenced.
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  Reconceptualizing Plastic Pollution Regulation in Nigeria, the U.S., and the U.K. from a Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Perspective [Article]

  Nwafor, Ndubuisi Augustine (The University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law (Tucson, AZ), 2025)

  Plastic pollution is an escalating crisis, yet Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) remains largely voluntary in certain countries. In Nigeria, weak regulations and a lack of corporate accountability worsen the problem. While the United States and the United Kingdom have stronger sustainability initiatives, CSR in these countries is still not explicitly legally mandated, resulting in inconsistent corporate efforts. Despite growing advocacy for stricter environmental policies, businesses are not legally required to take responsibility for plastic waste. This article explores how CSR can go beyond voluntary commitments to become a structured, enforceable approach to addressing plastic pollution. By comparing CSR models in Nigeria, the United States, and the U.K., the article assesses best practices that could help Nigeria develop stronger corporate sustainability policies. Ultimately, it advocates for a clear CSR framework that holds businesses accountable and ensures they actively contribute to reducing plastic waste and safeguarding the environment.
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  Balancing Innovation and Integrity: Australia's AI Ethics and Trust Regulation in Global Context [Article]

  Rahim, Mia Mahmudur; Chakraborty, Subrata (The University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law (Tucson, AZ), 2025)

  As artificial intelligence (AI) becomes increasingly embedded in society, ensuring its ethical use and public trust is a global imperative. This paper critically examines Australia’s approach to regulating AI ethics and trust, comparing it with frameworks in the United States, the United Kingdom, and the European Union. While these jurisdictions adopt varied strategies—ranging from risk-based and sector-specific to principle-driven models—Australia relies primarily on voluntary standards, such as the AI Ethics Principles and the Voluntary AI Safety Standard. Despite their intent, these frameworks lack enforceability, leading to inconsistent adoption and limited accountability. The paper highlights key ethical challenges, including privacy breaches, algorithmic bias, and the absence of legal safeguards in high-risk AI applications. It argues that Australia’s current regulatory landscape is insufficient to address the rapid evolution of AI technologies. To bridge this gap, the authors propose a meta-regulation approach—one that integrates legal oversight with organizational self-regulation, fostering both innovation and ethical responsibility. This model offers a flexible yet accountable framework for embedding ethical principles into AI development and deployment. The paper concludes by emphasizing the need for Australia to adopt a more robust, enforceable, and adaptive regulatory strategy to ensure trustworthy AI.
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  Editorial Foreword

  Diamond, Evan (The University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law (Tucson, AZ), 2025)
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  Table of Contents

  The University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law (Tucson, AZ), 2025
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  Title Page

  The University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law (Tucson, AZ), 2025
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  An End to Unpaid Internships in Light of Loper Bright [Note]

  Puri, Arjun (The University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law (Tucson, AZ), 2025)

  Internships are prime opportunities for budding professionals to gain experience and get their foot in the door. Every year, almost two million people in the United States work as interns. This number continues to rise—from 17% of college graduates in 1992, to 50% in 2008, to 62% in 2023. However, many internships are unpaid. In fact, over close to half of Class of 2023 college seniors who took part in an internship during college were not paid for their work. A fundamental problem results—while internships are meant to increase opportunity for young professionals, unpaid internships price out too many of them. Indeed, unpaid internships concentrate opportunity among the few who are able to work without pay. This Note envisions the means to an end of the majority of unpaid internships. It summarizes the history of internships and discusses the trainee exception, the legal loophole that, since 1947, has allowed employers to exploit the free labor of interns under the pretext that they are purely training them. This Note further postulates that the Supreme Court’s ruling in Loper Bright, which put an end to Chevron deference, demarcates the issue of intern pay as especially ripe for litigation—judges are now empowered to decide whether to follow an existing Department of Labor (DOL) fact sheet, which has promoted this trainee exception loophole, or propose a new test altogether. Considering these issues which plague the law that governs internships, and in light of Loper Bright, this Note subsequently proposes a novel de minimis beneficiary test: if the employer obtains even a de minimis benefit from the intern’s presence, the intern must be considered an employee, instead of an intern, under relevant employment law. This test would conciliate the sparring employment law viewpoints of recent presidential administrations. It would further provide a viable workaround for a presently fractured and paralyzed Congress. Additionally, it would rectify legal malformations tied to the current model of internships, such as the fact that interns, currently viewed under the law as non-employees, are not legally protected against gender- and race-based discrimination in the workplace—the right to be free from the same is guaranteed by Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. Ultimately, this Note aims to advocate for internships that are in line with established labor practices of the modern day. By pushing for updates to a common law stuck in a bygone era, it advances a future where budding professionals of every background can partake in the intellectual and social training that internships provide while being fairly compensated for their contributions.
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  Tainted Waters, Tainted Trust: U.S. Legal Failures in Hawai'i and Guam Undermine Indo-Pacific Diplomacy [Note]

  Ross, Aouli (The University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law (Tucson, AZ), 2025)

  Under the message of a “free and open Indo-Pacific,” the U.S. has pledged to protect Pacific Island Countries’ (PICs) sovereignty, environmental security, and access to the rule of law. However, PICs distrust the U.S., in part because they observe its treatment of domestic Pacific islands as a “litmus test” of how they might be treated. This note examines the contradiction between U.S. foreign and domestic Indo-Pacific policy to reason that the U.S. has failed PICs litmus test: the U.S. has denied both Hawaiʻi and Guam their territorial sovereignty, contaminated their critical water sources in bad faith, and minimized their access to preventative or remedial legal redress. This note specifically explores U.S. bad faith regarding the safe removal and detonation of unexploded ordnance, and the safe operation of chemical storage and waste infrastructure. Accordingly, this note recommends that the U.S. extend negotiations with Hawaiʻi and Guam to become Freely Associated States (FAS). Among other benefits, this would legitimize the United States’ commitment to its “free and open Indo-Pacific” theme by bridging the gap between its actions domestically and promises abroad.
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  More Than Morrill: The Intertwined History of Indian Land Dispossession, Arizona Statehood, and University Enrichment [Article]

  Miguel-Stearns, Teresa; Ginsburg, Samantha; Cook, Kristen (The University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law (Tucson, AZ), 2025)

  Through the federal government’s university land-grant programs, which began with the Morrill Act in 1862 and continue today, Congress has systematically allocated millions of acres of land in the western United States to states to create endowments to support the public higher education of its citizens. In Arizona, land was taken from Indigenous people, communities, tribes, and nations by treaty, act of congress, executive order, and force to accomplish this. As a result, by the time of statehood in 1912, the state of Arizona had accumulated approximately 850,000 acres of land around the state on behalf of higher education including the University of Arizona, then the state’s only university and its designated land-grant institution. Today, the Arizona State Land Department still holds and manages 688,706 acres of land in trust for the benefit of public higher education. All three of Arizona’s public universities receive distributions from the revenue generated by these trust lands. The goal of this paper is to explore and analyze the University of Arizona’s historical and ongoing enrichment from land taken from Indigenous peoples by the federal government and transferred to the territory and, later, the state of Arizona for the benefit of institutions of higher education in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. A comprehensive understanding of Arizona’s history and the state’s current holdings and financial benefits is required to examine the policy implications and moral and legal obligations that Arizona and its universities have to Indigenous peoples in Arizona.
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  Editorial Foreword

  Ross, Aouli (The University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law (Tucson, AZ), 2025)
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  Table of Contents

  The University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law (Tucson, AZ), 2025
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  Should Central Park Have Standing? Applying the Urban Rights of Nature Doctrine to the Urban Environmental Context [Article]

  Lee, Nathan (The University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law (Tucson, AZ), 2025)

  Expanding conceptions of legal personhood and the pressing need for creative approaches to remedying environmental damage have led to a resurgence in the Rights of Nature Doctrine. Under the Rights of Nature framework, the environment itself becomes a plaintiff with recognizable rights and causes for action. The Rights of Nature literature has thus far largely concerned itself with natural objects that are pristine and untouched, perhaps newly threatened by human activity. This Article considers how the Rights of Nature Doctrine might be adapted to the urban context, where environmental issues are almost always seen as secondary to human usage and need. It advances the premise that the heightened protection of natural spaces is compatible with human flourishing. The Article first explains the background of the Doctrine, then explores how it might be applied to urban environments like cities. The Article then proposes a rudimentary balancing test for determining when legal standing should be conferred to “natural objects” located within or near cities. Lastly, the Article considers the benefits and concerns tied to this application. As a case study, it looks at how various environmental issues in New York might have been resolved differently if the Rights of Nature Doctrine was applied.
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  Poseidon's Executive: How the Unitary Executive Theory Could Impact Coastal Fisheries [Note]

  Vertesch, Austin (The University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law (Tucson, AZ), 2025)

  Recent constitutional challenges to Regional Fishery Management Councils have trimmed away various minor powers that council members previously possessed to regulate coastal fisheries. Currently, district and appellate courts have shown restraint by refusing plaintiffs extreme remedies that threaten to disrupt the unique system of appointments that allow for state and tribal governments to negotiate for regulatory plans suitable for their unique local circumstances. With the ascendency of Unitary Executive Theory at the Supreme Court, this Note examines how an increasingly powerful Office of the President may negatively impact the profitability, sustainability, and inclusivity of coastal fisheries.
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  Safety or Shelter: The Costs and Benefits of Excluding Domestic Violence Shelters from The Fair Housing Act [Note]

  Muller, Lucas E. (The University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law (Tucson, AZ), 2025)

  Following the Supreme Court’s decision in Grants Pass v. Johnson, the options for survivors of domestic violence to escape abusive situations are fewer than ever. Survivors may now be forced to choose between remaining in place or fleeing to a domestic violence shelter, possibly populated by those who resemble their abuser. To remedy this choice using existing extra-circuit case law, this Note argues that the Ninth Circuit should take a bifurcated approach when determining whether a domestic violence shelter is a “dwelling” under the Fair Housing Act. Short-term shelters—escape shelters—should not be considered “dwellings”; thus allowing shelters to be more exclusive and careful with their admission policies. Whereas longer-term shelters—rebuilding shelters—should be considered “dwellings.” Such a rule would both remove a point of hesitation for those fleeing dangerous situations and help to reacclimate those on the precipices of reentering society.
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  Table of Contents

  The University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law (Tucson, AZ), 2025
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  Safeguarding American Ingenuity: A Comparative Analysis of International Trade Regimes in Mitigating Chinese Intellectual Property Theft [Note]

  Urban, Bella (The University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law (Tucson, AZ), 2025)

  The ever-present tension between the United States and China has heightened in recent years due to a rise in the theft of American intellectual property from Chinese semiconductors. Pharmaceutical intellectual property is at the crux of this issue, as a hit to this valuable market comes with severe penalties for the United States. Neither legislation from the World Trade Organization nor the more recent Phase One Trade Deal can present a viable solution for this issue, resulting in the need for a structural rebirth in international trade legislation. Previous discussions on this issue have touched on the need to rebalance the TRIPS Agreement and reassess the United States’ trade relationship with China. These arguments do not clarify the need to reformat the WTO as a whole and recognize the institution for what it is—a system that was not created to support the levels of innovation and technology that exist today; a system that certainly did not account for China’s contrasting market structure. This paper examines a new dynamic goal that would require 1) the WTO to hold China fiscally and criminally responsible for its unfair market practices; 2) the United Nations to create a new, encompassing multilateral trade agreement in the future; and 3) the United States to develop a concrete plan to decouple from China.
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  Contrasting the Republic of Cuba's "Codiga de las Familias" with Outcomes in the United States of America [Note]

  Madrid, Gabriel (The University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law (Tucson, AZ), 2025)

  The Republic of Cuba’s “Códiga de las Familias,” passed in 2022, marked a watershed moment in the country’s history, both in the mass involvement in the Code’s creation and in the Code’s enshrinement of rights for the island’s gay, disabled, women, elderly, and youth populations. Most prescient are the “alimentos,” or “nourishments” in this context, that citizens owe one another. This recent triumph is ripe for comparison with the country approximately 90 miles to Cuba’s north: the United States of America. Case law and material conditions for analogous populations in the United States are troubling. Jurisprudence in the United States rests upon a common notion of individual rights being asserted, a “bundle of sticks” from which one may exclude others rather than a series of duties one owes to their fellow countrymen. The scope of this paper is to argue that the Cuban Family Code and Cuba’s institutions provide greater exercise in the democratic process for its citizens than the United States through mass organizations, leading to better outcomes for Cuba’s LGBTQI+, elderly, youth, and disabled populations. A conclusion will follow and discuss prospects for how to improve both procedural and substantive outcomes for these marginalized groups in the United States.
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  Understanding the Scope of Protections Against Domestic Violence Available to Immigrant People in the United States and Other Countries Based on Relationship Status Versus the Nature of the Abuse [Note]

  Ramirez, Rachel Bunning (The University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law (Tucson, AZ), 2025)

  Relationships and immigration status have always been closely intertwined in our nation’s history. The relationship one is in can determine the types of immigration visas one can access and what protections they might be afforded. A foreign spouse of an American citizen gets priority for a visa and is extended protections should their American spouse abuse them. However, for immigrants with insecure status and no formal relationship with an abuser, these protections are much harder to obtain. By limiting protections based on one’s relationship status to their abuser rather than by focusing on the nature of the abuse itself, America is hindering domestic violence victims from accessing the help they need. This note looks at the domestic violence protections in America, the United Kingdom, Australia, and Sweden for immigrants with insecure status who are not married to their abusers and argues that when countries take a narrow approach in defining domestic violence and limit its protections to spouses, they are not protecting victims of abuse as they claim they want to. It also argues that by broadening the definition of domestic violence and removing relationship status requirements, more people will seek protection against their abusers.
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  The Rise of Distinct "Common Law" Financial Zones in Islamic Countries [Article]

  Huang, Flora; Yeung, Horace; Sa’dievich Narziev, Otabek; Kholmirzaev, Utkirbek (The University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law (Tucson, AZ), 2025)

  This article investigates four instances of the transplantation of English commercial law (broadly defined) into a different legal environment. The financial centers in Dubai (UAE), Abu Dhabi (UAE), Doha (Qatar), and Astana (Kazakhstan) have adopted a legal regime based on English Common Law, despite their national civil law and Islamic traditions. This choice on the face of it seeks to create an attractive business environment through optimal protection of market participants’ rights. This research appraises comprehensively, through a comparative perspective, the unique institutional and regulatory model adopted and practiced by the four zones: the Dubai International Financial Center (DIFC), Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM), Qatar Financial Center (QFC), and Astana International Financial Center (AIFC). There are three dimensions of comparison: (1) comparing the centers’ rules and regulations with their U.K. counterparts to reveal the degree of legal transplantation; (2) comparing the centers’ rules and regulations with their domestic counterparts to explore a potential regulatory gap between the two systems; and (3) comparing the four different regimes to reveal their potentially different experiences. Through a rigorous comparative examination of the experiences of the four zones, this research provides fresh perspectives to the need for robust law in economic and financial development, through legal transplantation to achieve such purpose. The four zones have provided an excellent natural experiment for these enduring theoretical debates.

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