Touro Law Review BLOG

Summary:

On January 21, 2026, the Supreme Court will hear oral argument in Trump v. Cook, one of two cases pending before the Court involving challenges to the President’s exercise of his Article II removal power. Cook arises from President Trump’s attempt to fire Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook, which, thus far, has been preliminarily enjoined by a federal district court in Washington, D.C. The district court stated, “Cook has made a strong showing that her purported removal was done in violation of the Federal Reserve Act’s ‘for cause’ provision.”

The other removal case before the Supreme Court is Trump v. Slaughter, which involves the termination of Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter of the Federal Trade Commission and was argued before the Court in December 2025. The issue in this case is whether the President has the authority to dismiss Commissioner Slaughter “at will” – that is, for any reason, including a policy disagreement – despite Congress’s restricting the President’s authority to remove a commissioner and a 1935 Supreme Court decision upholding that restriction.

The cases raise interesting and important questions about separation of powers doctrine, the President’s removal power, and Congress’s role in creating administrative agencies. Perhaps the most important question in Cook is whether, if at all, the Federal Reserve differs from other agencies regarding the President’s removal power.

Professor Ilan Wurman discusses the issues raised by both cases in this podcast discussion with Associate Dean Rodger Citron. Among other things, Wurman explains why he believes the Federal Reserve is not different from other agencies but discusses why a number of justices – perhaps a majority – may not agree with him.

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Learn More About Ilan Wurman:

Ilan Wurman is the Julius E. Davis Professor of Law at the University of Minnesota, where he teaches administrative law and constitutional law. He previously taught at Arizona State University. He writes primarily on the Fourteenth Amendment, administrative law, separation of powers, and constitutionalism. His academic writing has appeared in the Yale Law Journal, the Stanford Law Review, the University of Chicago Law Review, the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, the Virginia Law Review, the Duke Law Journal, the Minnesota Law Review, the Notre Dame Law Review, and the Texas Law Review among other journals. 

Professor Wurman practices law with the firm Tully Bailey. He has litigated a variety of administrative law and constitutional law cases, including cases involving COVID-19 restrictions, transmission lines, and Appointments Clause challenges. He also devised winning public nuisance theories to force city governments to address the increasingly challenging public camping crises throughout the country.

By Christina Mohan

I. INTRODUCTION

This paper will take an extensive dive into the history of discrimination and criminalization against the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (“LGBTQ+”) community. This paper will discuss several critical ideologies, all of which contribute to the wrongful convictions of countless individuals in this community. This includes key concepts such as the national hysteria of satanic rituals of abuse against children, the perception of homophobia in the criminal justice system, and the impact of intersectionality, focusing on the combination of race with LGBTQ+ identity.

The case of the “San Antonio Four” highlights each of these concepts and its powerful effect on wrongful convictions. In 1998, Elizabeth Ramirez, Cassandra Rivera, Kristie Mayhugh, and Anna Vasquez were wrongfully convicted in the Bexar County Criminal District Court located in San Antonio, Texas, for sexually aggravated assault and indecency with a child. All four Latina women were tried and convicted for child sexual abuse against Ramirez’s two nieces, V.L. and S.L. who were nine and seven years old at the time of the allegations. Ramirez was sentenced to thirty-seven and a half years, while Rivera, Mayhugh, and Vasquez were sentenced to fifteen years. This article will address the grave and unjust errors in the case which included: (1) false or misleading forensic evidence; and (2) perjury or false accusations. Additionally, this article will highlight prescriptive measures designed to help prevent similar miscarriages of justice such as the establishment of the Timothy Cole Advisory Panel, the Texas Criminal Justice Integrity Unit, and the Junk Science Writ. Lastly, this article will dive into the legal issues that presented obstacles in this case for the four women to obtain monetary damages, prior to their exoneration in 2016.

Read or download the full text of the article below.

By Tiffani Cao

I. INTRODUCTION

In an era with a multitude of environmental concerns, the intricate interplay of plastic production, plastic disposal systems, and the overarching issues of climate change have emerged as a pressing global challenge. While plastic provides versatility, convenience, and
durability, its hidden costs pose an alarming predicament. These costs contribute to greenhouse gas emissions and exacerbate climate change.

Exploring further how plastic contributes to climate change through production and disposal reveals that the material generates a cascade of greenhouse gases. These include carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide, all of which detrimentally impact our planet’s climate balance. The emissions associated with plastic are not limited to its production but also extend to its end-of-life management system. The disposal of plastic through recycling, incineration, and landfills releases an abundance of these potent pollutants, compounding the challenges posed by climate change.

While these challenges are often examined separately, this research highlights the urgency of addressing the connections between plastic and climate change to create a sustainable and eco-friendly environment. It investigates the synergy between plastic production, disposal practices, and the broader climate crisis, underscoring the interdependence of these issues.

Additionally, this research paper delves into several key recommendations or potential solutions, including the creation of a comprehensive global treaty or policy for regulating plastic pollution, promoting zero-waste policies and embracing a circular economy, banning single-use plastics, ending plastic subsidies, and mandating the extended producer responsibility policy. These measures are explored to develop more comprehensive and effective strategies to address the environmental crises of our time, reduce plastic pollution, and mitigate climate change. By implementing these measures, we can transition towards a future where plastic is either holistically eliminated or serves its intended purpose without compromising the health of our planet and the well-being of current and future generations.

Read or download the full text of the article below.

What’s at Stake

By Jorge Roig 

In a few days, the Supreme Court will hear oral argument in Cox Communications, Inc. v. Sony Music Entertainment, a case that asks whether an Internet service provider may be held secondarily liable for copyright infringement simply for continuing to provide service after receiving infringement notices. At first glance, it seems like a limited fight between sophisticated corporate entities over music piracy and subscription accounts. But a closer look reveals how an unfortunate holding could have broad implications on the architecture of speech in the digital age – and whether the marketplace of ideas can survive the collision between copyright power and expressive freedom.

For over forty years, the Court has insisted on a careful balance. In Sony Corp. v. Universal City Studios (1984) the Court held that technology with “substantial non-infringing uses” may not be strangled simply because some users commit infringement. Then, in MGM Studios v. Grokster (2005), the Court made clear that secondary liability requires intentional, affirmative steps taken to promote infringement, not merely awareness of wrongdoing. That standard reflects a constitutional equilibrium: protect creative incentives without suffocating innovation and access.

The Fourth Circuit’s rule in Cox breaks that equilibrium. Under its reasoning, knowledge alone, plus continued service, can support contributory liability. If that becomes the national rule,internet service providers (ISPs) – fearful of massive statutory damages – will act not as neutral conduits but as copyright sheriffs. And when sheriffs tremble, they over-police. They shut doors before asking questions. They choose safety over liberty.

What happens then? A chilling breeze sweeps through the creative ecosystem. Fair use – the doctrine that protects commentary, criticism, education, parody, and analysis – becomes a whisper rather than a shield. Already, creators on platforms such as YouTube report removals and demonetization of videos that are plainly transformative and critical. According to reports in Broadband Breakfast and Medium, in 2023, more than a billion copyright claims were processed on YouTube, the vast majority triggered automatically. Many creators admit they now self-censor to avoid losing their channels. That is how freedom erodes: silently, algorithmically, without headlines.

And what of the First Amendment? The Court reminded us in Packingham v. North Carolina (2017) that the Internet is today’s public square. But what good is a public square if the gatekeeper’s hand trembles at every knock on the door? What kind of democracy is built on silence born of fear?

Supporters of the Fourth Circuit’s approach argue that large ISPs profit from infringement and must bear responsibility. They invoke the ongoing reality of online piracy and the importance of copyright enforcement. Those concerns are real. But enforcement cannot come at the price of collapsing the fair-use space: a space necessary for new ideas to emerge and old ones to evolve. Copyright law was never intended to build a wall around culture. Copyright law was meant to incentivize and sustain a living, breathing creative society.

Will the Court preserve the balance struck in Grokster or surrender to a regime where intermediaries preemptively erase expression to protect themselves? One path leads to innovation, dissent, and a public square vibrant with remix, critique and transformation. The other to silence disguised as caution. 

The Supreme Court must reaffirm the requirement of intentional inducement and reject liability built on mere knowledge. If not, we may soon find that the lights in the public square dimmed without notice, that voices disappeared not by force but by frightened hands at the switch.

Jorge Roig is an associate professor of law at Touro Law Center. He used Artificial Intelligence (AI) to assist with writing this article.  

The Issues Before the Supreme Court and How It May Rule

By Howard Leib

On December 1, the Supreme Court will hear oral argument in Cox Communications, Inc. v. Sony Music Entertainment (Cox v. Sony). At issue is what showing a rights holder like Sony must make to prevail on a claim of copyright infringement against an internet service provider (ISP) like Cox.

This article will summarize the procedural history of Cox v. Sony, describe the legal issues before the Supreme Court, and offer a prediction on how the Court will rule. Of course, predicting how the Court will rule is a speculative exercise, especially in advance of oral argument. My best guess is that the Court will rule in favor of Cox.

Cox v. Sony in the Lower Courts

In 2019, numerous content creators, led by Sony, sued Cox in federal district court, alleging that numerous Cox subscribers repeatedly shared copyrighted songs, infringing on the rights of the copyright holders. The plaintiffs, through their agent MarkMonitor, provided Cox with more than 160,000 notices of infringement, with sufficient information for Cox to identify who these infringers were. Out of all those identified infringers, Cox terminated only 32 subscribers, however, allowing the rest to continue receiving internet services (and infringing).

Cox’s failure to take further action in response to the notices of infringement prompted plaintiffs to sue. The Digital Millennial Copyright Act (DMCA) includes a “safe harbor” provision that is intended to promote an ISP’s ability to provide services with minimal policing of its customers, so long as the ISP is responsive when notified of infringement. Before the trial, the district court ruled that Cox could not assert a defense based upon the Act’s safe harbor provisions.

Subsequently, plaintiffs presented their claims of vicarious and contributory infringement to a jury at trial. Cox was found liable for both vicarious and contributory copyright infringement for over 10,000 works, and plaintiffs were awarded $1 billion in statutory damages for willful infringement.

Cox appealed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, which reversed the vicarious liability verdict on the grounds that Cox did not directly profit from its subscribers’ infringing activities but upheld the contributory liability finding. Cox had adopted a thirteen- strike policy, with sanctions ranging from an email warning to a temporary suspension of a user’s account. The Fourth Circuit viewed Cox’s response as willful blindness to its subscribers’ infringing activities, constituting a material contribution to the subscribers’ infringement. Thus, the Fourth Circuit held that Cox was a contributory infringer.

The Fourth Circuit also vacated the damages award because the jury had not distinguished between which damages were for vicarious infringement and which for contributory infringement. Accordingly, the Fourth Circuit remanded the case back to the district court for a new trial on damages.

The Questions Before the Supreme Court

Though Cox obtained some relief from the Fourth Circuit, it nevertheless filed a petition for certiorari with the Supreme Court, which granted review on the following two questions:

The Court’s ruling in this case could drastically alter the statutory balance between ISP protection and ISP liability and with it the balance between ISPs and rights holders. Were the Court to rule in favor of Sony and the other plaintiffs, some or all of the following could occur:

(1) ISPs, in order to avoid potentially huge damages, as seen in this case, would likely adopt aggressive termination policies for users accused of repeated infringement. Such policies could have unintended consequences as entire households could find themselves without internet access due to infringing acts by a child. Businesses could be cut off from the internet for the unauthorized infringing activities of an employee. Further, ISPs would, at least at the outset, experience business uncertainty as the courts decide which policies regarding repeated infringers were legally sufficient and which were lacking.

(2) A ruling for either party could lead to pressure on Congress to revisit or clarify safe harbor rules generally. Such reconsideration could have implications beyond the DMCA. Section 230 of the Communications Act of 1934, see 47 USC § 230, which has been referred to as the “twenty-six words that created the internet,” provides limited federal immunity to providers of interactive computer services. This statute provides service providers such as X, Facebook, Instagram, and others protection against liability for its users’ postings. Section 230 has been a frequent target of the current President (although his Truth Social benefits greatly from this safe harbor); he has repeatedly called for its repeal.

(3) The second question approved for review addresses the definition of “willfulness” in the context of copyright damages. The Fourth Circuit’s definition of “willfulness” would allow for such a finding if an ISP knows that specific users are infringing and does not terminate their service. A finding of willfulness triggers the possibility of much higher statutory damages under the Copyright Act, potentially up to $150,000 per infringement. This amount contrasts with the maximum of $30,000 per non-willful infringement. Acceptance of the Fourth Circuit’s standard would certainly make ISPs more likely to implement stricter policing policies regarding their subscribers.

(4) In addition to repercussions regarding infringement, a decision upholding the Fourth Circuit’s ruling could have economic effects on both the ISP industry and even on non-infringing users. Requiring an ISP to more stringently police its customers could increase the company’s costs, which likely would be passed on to customers in the form of higher prices for internet access.

On the investor side, greater potential liability for ISPs would add more risk and uncertainty to the market, potentially driving down ISP stock prices. This could well be exacerbated by a ruling in favor of Sony. Furthermore, a decision in favor of rights holders could encourage them to become more aggressive in litigating infringement
claims.

A (Speculative) Prediction

This Supreme Court has been notoriously business friendly. In this case they are presented with two large and powerful business interests. This makes predicting an outcome more difficult. Indeed, predicting how the Court will rule in such a case may be a fool’s errand, especially in advance of a sense as to which way the wind is blowing at oral argument. Nonetheless, I will be brave.

I think it is likely that the Court will reject the Fourth Circuit’s ruling that actual knowledge coupled with a failure to cut off service is sufficient to find contributory liability. It is possible, however, that given the specific facts of this case, the Court could find that Cox’s “thirteen strikes and you’re out” approach here is beyond acceptable limits; the Court could uphold the jury’s verdict on this issue without articulating a general rule as to how many “strikes” would be acceptable.

If the Court does address the issue of the finding necessary for “willfulness,” I believe it likely to require something additional, perhaps a specific act facilitating infringement, or possibly willful indifference, but only in a way that goes beyond mere failure to deny service.

If I turn out to be right regarding these points, it is unlikely that the Court will allow mere knowledge of another’s direct infringement to suffice for a finding of willfulness under 17 U.S.C. § 504(c).

It will be months before I can celebrate my predictive abilities or must eat crow for the lack of them. In either case, I will be listening to the oral arguments and, like any good lawyer, reserve the right to change my mind thereafter.

Howard Leib is an intellectual property and entertainment attorney, an educator who has
taught as an adjunct professor at Touro Law Center, and a consultant with his own practice in both New York City and Ithaca, NY.

Summary:

The Supreme Court will hear oral argument on November 5 in two cases involving challenges to President Donald J. Trump’s tariffs imposed pursuant to the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA). Professor Susan Morse discusses the legal issues raised by the cases and how the Court may address them. Ultimately, Morse concludes, the safest (and perhaps most likely) path for the Court may be to decide the case as a matter of “ordinary” statutory construction without resorting to either the major questions doctrine or the nondelegation doctrine.

Brought to you by the Touro Law Review

Learn More about Susan Morse:

Susan Morse is the Associate Dean of Academic Affairs and the Mark G. and Judy G. Yudof Chair in Law as the University of Texas at Austin School of Law. Along with Professors Shu-Yi Oei and Diane M. Ring, Professor Morse is co-author of “The Origination Clause and the President’s Tariffs,” forthcoming in the Washington University Law Review, available at https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5632071

Professor Morse teaches tax classes and 1L Property. She also originated and teaches the “Financial Methods for Lawyers” class at Texas Law and won the Women’s Law Caucus Teacher of the Year award in 2016, 2020, and 2024. Professor Morse writes about tax, administrative law, and regulatory design, is a regent of the American College of Tax Counsel and a member of the board of the Tax Law Center, and co-edits the tax section at JOTWELL.com.

Summary:

This episode explores the intersection of fiction writing and the practice of law. Victor
Suthammanont, a writer and attorney, discusses his first novel, Hollow Spaces, published earlier this year. Hollow Spaces explores race and racism, the legal system and the search for truth, and, perhaps more than anything else, family – the enduring impressions, connections, and relations between husband and wife, parents and children, and brother and sister. In his conversation with Associate Dean Rodger Citron, Suthammanont describes his journey from student actor to experienced attorney and published author. Even now, Suthammanont continues to draw on skills he developed as an actor in his legal practice. Suthammanont then discusses various aspects of the novel, including the characters’ efforts to learn the truth about the underlying events that shape the stories told in the novel. Whether you are an attorney or a law student, a writer or a theater kid considering a career in law, you will enjoy listening to this episode.

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Learn More About Victor Suthammanont:

Victor Suthammanont is a writer who practices law in New York City. He attended New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, where he studied at the Atlantic Theater Company Acting School. After graduating from NYU, Suthammanont founded a theater company and performed in theater for a number of years. Suthammanont then attended New York Law School, where he eventually served as an Articles Editor on the Law Review and graduated with a number of awards. After law school, Suthammanont clerked for the Hon. Maryanne Trump Barry on the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, worked at a Wall Street law firm, and served for ten years on the staff of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in the Division of Enforcement. During Suthammanont’s his time at the SEC, his positions included Senior Trial Counsel and Enforcement Counsel for Chair Gary Gensler. Suthammanont left the SEC in January 2025 and is now a partner at Kostelanetz LLP.