"There is no good writing; there is only good rewriting."
~ Justice Louis D. Brandeis
Welcome to the Brandeis University Law Journal!
We, at the Brandeis University Law Journal, strive to publish thought-provoking law-related articles.
The Brandeis University Law Journal, founded in 2008 by Judah Marans ’11, is one of the only undergraduate-edited legal publication in the country that is unaffiliated with a law school. We solicit, edit, and publish the work of Brandeis students. Our articles cover a diverse array of topics with a shared grounding in law and law-related material.
The Brandeis University Law Journal is run by and focused on undergraduates. We produce original, rigorously researched papers on a variety of legal topics.
In Spring 2020, a group of undergraduates revived the Brandeis University Law Journal and have since been building on Judah’s legacy. As part of this revival, the journal is now registered in the Library of Congress both for its print and electronic versions as well as being featured on the Brandeis Library website. In 2023, the Journal began an initiative to be the first undergraduate law journal in the country to cite in The Blubebook Citation System.
Submissions
Our journal requires all submissions of articles and abstracts to be:
- Original and from the Brandeis community.
- Related to law and/or using legal reasoning.
Please include a title, author, and author’s biographical information (relation to Brandeis, etc).
We accept all submissions for publication at any time. We highly encourage undergraduate scholarship. We will work with undergraduates interested in learning about legal writing, research, and scholarship to develop these skills.
All those interested in involvement through writing, editing, or administrative roles are welcome.
Please send any questions, submissions, or inquires to deislawjournal@gmail.com
Spring 2022 Issue with Articles:
Book Review: Jan Nisbet’s Pain and Shock in America: Politics,
Advocacy, and the Controversial Treatment of People with Disabilities, Daniel Breen
Abortion in the United States: The Road to Vague Legislation, Gianna Bruno
Roe v. Wade was one of the first landmark cases instituting abortion policies in the United States. While legislation regarding abortion has been modified since 1973, the state of the nation has also changed as it has become increasingly polarized. Abortion legislation was introduced as an attempt to solve a privacy issue. However, over time, the discourse around abortion turned away from its legality in terms of privacy to also include discussion about healthcare and the morality of the legislation itself. Vague legislation yields uncertainty for the future of abortion policies.
Ensuring the Power of the Beth Din: Creation of the Halakhic Prenuptial Agreement, Anna Fernands
One purported solution to the agunah problem is the halakhic prenuptial agreement. This paper examines the process that created the halakhic prenup through focusing on the Conservative movement’s adoption of the Lieberman Clause, the Koeppel v. Koeppel case, and the growing Orthodox feminist movement. In examining the cultural forces that led to the creation of the halakhic prenup, it becomes clear that the Orthodox Rabbinate designed the halakhic prenup to secure the power of the Orthodox Beth Din. The halakhic prenup was created as a direct result of increasing numbers of Jewish women turning to secular courts for a solution to the agunah problem.
What Makes a Sound Supreme Court Justice?, Gonny Nir
When asked, legal scholars, commentators, and avid Court watchers will gleefully name the best Supreme Court justices to have served on the bench. Even justices have their favorite predecessors, and numerous academic lists have set out to rank justices’ tenures on the bench. Yet when asked what exactly makes a good justice, there seems to be a pause among academics– individuals can seldom list the qualities that make for a legendary tenure. There is a hole within the literature that identifies which factors made the greatest Supreme Court justices the legal giants they were. This article aims to fill that hole by identifying the qualities that land justices on scholars’ “all-time” lists.
Positronic Individuals: An Intellectual Property Framework for Artificial General Intelligence, Emanuel “Manny” Glinsky
Current United States Intellectual Property (IP) policy only allows patents to be awarded to human beings, largely due to the necessity that an inventor be an individual capable of conception. This prevents Artificial Intelligence (AI) from being recognized as an inventor and awarded IP rights. This article explicates the need for an entirely new IP framework to evaluate Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), a type of AI recently acknowledged by the USPTO as problematic for the U.S. IP system, and its impact on IP laws of the future.
Brandeis University Law Journal 