French law students embrace common law; Le Havre confronts modern environmentalism, slave history

Le Havre, France

Our cultural and legal understanding of reputation and privacy are among the countless features of the social contract undergoing rapid evolution in the Trump political era, in Europe as well as the United States.

(All images by RJ Peltz-Steele CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 with no claim to underlying content.) 

Once a fringe area of tort law to which most new lawyers had no exposure at all in law school, defamation and privacy have taken center stage in society, in part thanks to their weaponization in polarized politics and popular culture. Hulk Hogan famously shut down Gawker with a multi-pronged privacy suit masking a billionaire's vendetta (Holiday). Melania Trump sued a blogger and the Daily Mail for falsely claiming she worked as a high-end escort (DiBenedetto). And Donald Trump, well, Donald Trump... inter alia, won a fee award and suffered a massive loss, not over sexual relationships as much as deceptions that ensued.

Faculty of International Affairs, University of Le Havre

Last week, I had the great privilege to teach a one-credit course on American litigation over defamation and privacy to undergraduate law students at the University of Le Havre in the Normandy region of France. You can check out the course and course materials at the blogspot, Litigating Reputation in America. I'll leave the downloadable documents in place for the duration of summer 2026 (Perma.cc for later review).

"Litigating Reputation in America" course site

I centered the class on the fascinating transnational defamation civil suit that French President Emmanuel Macron and his wife Brigitte Macron are prosecuting in Delaware against American podcaster Candace Owens. The case arises from a host of Owens's sensationalist assertions, especially that Brigitte Macron was born a man. A hearing on a motion to dismiss, on jurisdictional grounds only, is scheduled for June 22.

Notwithstanding the seemingly readily disprovable falsity and outrageousness of the assertions at issue, the Macrons face an uphill battle in U.S. courts. Kalshi thinks they'll win (63.7% presently). But the smart money in American defamation litigation is never on the plaintiff. Cf. Tucker Carlson's successful defense against Karen McDougal on grounds, more or less, that no one takes Carlson seriously, so his outrageous assertions could have done no harm.

Meanwhile, in January, a French criminal court convicted 10 defendants of cyberbullying Brigitte Macron with the born-a-man claim (CNS). The contrast between an uphill civil suit in the States and criminal prosecutions in Paris fairly indicates a profound divergence in how social, economic, and political cultures in the United States and Europe, especially in France, respectively value reputation and free speech, and how law and process accordingly balance the two.

In an intensive 15 classroom hours, 24 Le Havre students learned the fundamentals of defamation and privacy torts and engaged with 11 contemporary, ripped-from-the-reporter case studies I prepared for them. The students explored the development of defamation and privacy litigation from client counseling to discovery and dispositive motions, alongside key rules of civil procedure. They argued Rule 12(b)(6) motions to dismiss and negotiated settlements, then rounded out the week with a two-hour final exam.

Civil-law law books, including obligations, at La Galerne Bookstore, Le Havre

I've been teaching American law modules to English-as-a-second-language law students in Europe for 20 years, and never have I seen students perform so well. They embraced the rough-and-tumble of the American adversarial model, while remaining sensitive to issues of professionalism and public policy. True to European thinking, they evinced skepticism of corporate-protective defense doctrines and absolutist free speech claims. They readily adapted their civil-law-trained thinking to precedent-driven common law and analogical argument.

It happened that the well circulated American news story dropped while I was in France, as Futurism put it, "College Professors Say Incoming Students No Longer Understand Middle School Math and Science." I commented on some of my friend chats that the same surely is true for English and arts; it's just harder to quantify.

When I started teaching legal writing in the late 1990s, the challenge was to get students to pay attention to their choices of subjects and verbs. Now many students don't even know what I mean when I say "subject" and "verb." An aside: Shout out to my own relentless K12 grammar instructors: Sharon Reuwer, who in elementary school literally hit me on the head with a book—you could do that back then—until I got my sentence diagramming right; and to Dr. Barbara Dezmon, who in middle school initiated me in language as forensic art, more than mere mechanics.

So as my undergraduate French students dissected their case studies, synthesizing argument from facts and points of law, I could not help but observe, and wonder why, they delivered work product more adeptly than I can expect from most first-year graduate students in the United States. That's not to impugn my home students' potential, nor to generalize unfairly, nor to disrespect those who put in the work and rise to the occasion, but only to fear that too many Americans are inexcusably ill served by their K16 preparation.

Haropa Port offices, Le Havre

I am deeply indebted to the organizing and teaching faculty of the Le Havre program. Professor Baptiste Allard is the driving force behind the program at the University of Le Havre Faculty of International Affairs, along with his Le Havre collegaue, Professor Pierre Capelle. The students are now in week two of the four-week program, in a comparative study of constitutional and administrative law with Professor Akram Faizer of the Duncan School of Law at Lincoln Memorial University.

In the coming weeks, the French students will further explore American law and legal skills with Professor Christine E. Cerniglia, director of clinical and experiential legal education at Stetson Law, and Professor Melanie Reid, associate dean of faculty at the Duncan School of Law. Professors Cerniglia and Reid aim to develop an ongoing relationship with Le Havre that will see American students participating, too, to exchange learning with their French counterparts.

Catène de containers (2017),
a prominent contemporary sculpture by Vincent Ganivet;
behind: post-war apartments in the brutalist architectural style of Auguste Perret

I had some time in Le Havre for tourism, which afforded me the opportunity to explore some scholarly interests in areas including environmental law and the legal history of human rights and the transatlantic slave trade.

Professor Allard is my partner on the environmental law team of the Global Law Classroom, a project born of Professor Reid's ingenuity. I have learned volumes from Professor Allard about the role of global shipping and sea transportation in global environmental law and climate change. Admittedly, there are times when the ins and outs of EU shipping regulations make my eyelids droop. But in Le Havre, I took a boat tour of Haropa Port, and what I saw there charged the subject with a new vitality for me.

Entrance to Port of Le Havre

I've seen many commercial ports in the world, but never so close, gliding on a small passenger boat through an intracoastal waterway alongside massive tankers and container ships. The Port of Le Havre is the largest container port in France, with three terminals, and also receives world-class cruise liners. Oil is the port's number one cargo commodity, implicating the port in contemporary geopolitics. Seeing the scale of the operation, it's impossible not to wonder at humanity's ability to transform a natural landscape to commercial ends, and also to be fretful over environmental risks and consequences.

Kriti Journey, a crude oil tranker, flagged Marshall Islands

Hafnia Nanjing, an oil and chemical tanker, flagged Singapore

 

Container loading

Almost as intriguing as the physical operations of the port are its works in communications and public relations. The boat tour I took and the port's public exhibition center are awash with boastful facts. There also are brochures and special exhibition days that feature recent and upcoming green initiatives at the port. That's good, of course. Yet for the touristic observer such as me, even unusually informed as I am, it's impossible casually to disentangle fact and propaganda, much less to interrogate the presentation for greenwashing.

Vole au Vent, a heavy-lift, self-elevating, jack-up installation vessel, flagged Luxembourg,
loading locally manufactured wind turbines for off-shore destinations

A register of slave transactions,
Maison de l'armateur

The Port of Le Havre also figures in the history of slavery. People from Africa were trafficked through Le Havre, part of the triangular route, to French colonies in the Americas. Le Havre was the imputed port of origin for more than 450 slave voyages trafficking at least 142,341 persons from 1571 to 1848, according to data at Slave Voyages

Maison de l'armateur

. A memorial plaque in "the slave streets of Le Havre" remembers 90,000 trafficked persons. Either way, incredibly, Le Havre was only the third largest slave port in France, where an estimated 1.38 million people were embarked for enslavement.

"Closet" celebrating accomplished
free persons of color,
Maison de l'armateur

The Le Havre Ship Owner's House, or Maison de l'armateur, is a preserved 18th century residence that showcases the opulent lifestyle of the successful merchant of the time. That lifestyle was built on a range of commodities, slavery included. Yet Africans who passed through Le Havre, including those who remained and were enslaved before definitive abolition in France in 1848, were omitted from patriotic historical narratives—whitewashing.

Socially and legally, modern France has dedicated itself peculiarly, present populist inclinations notwithstanding, to memory initiatives, that is, the compulsory remembrance of historical wrongs. The criminalization of Holocaust denial is probably the most often cited example of "French memory laws." But brutal colonialism and the slave trade figure in too.

Accordingly seeking to balance its presentation, the Ship Owner's House presently features a fascinating tandem exhibition, Reminiscences: Phantoms of Slavery (May 8 to Sept. 20, 2026). The exhibition is not set aside in a single space, the usual museum M.O.; rather, the African story is told right alongside the ordinary exhibition with the juxtaposition of radically differently themed art and information. The juxtaposition is often clever, for example, haunting the vestibule of a genteel bedroom with an amber glow behind silhouettes of African celebrants.

Émile Loubon, Le Port du Havre au XIXe siècle (1843),
with museum tags showing offloaded goods

Diorama depicting post-colonial reparations rally, Maison de l'armateur

Acerbic art characterizing a black stain on whitewashed history, Maison de l'armateur

There's plenty in Le Havre to stimulate the mind, not to mention the palate, of the law student and law professor. I hope the students who endured my lessons got something worthwhile from the week, if I dare not hope they learned as much as I did.

I offer my sincere gratitude to the students and staff at Le Havre, to Professors Allard and Capelle, as well as Professor Allard's husband for his hospitality, and to Professors Cerniglia, Faizer, and Reid, as well as Professor Cerniglia's partner, for their generous friendship and collegiality.

Jusqu’au Bout du Monde (2018) by Fabien Mérelle, Port of Le Havre; St. Joseph's Church, behind

Lichtman lecture unpacks politics of World Cup

Prof. Steven Lichtman spoke at UMass Law Thursday on "Soccer and American Exceptionalism: A Political Science Preview of World Cup 2026."

With the FIFA men's World Cup of soccer coming soon to the co-host United States, Prof. Lichtman took a peek behind the curtain at the once embattled yet seemingly unshameable enterprise of the world's biggest sporting event.

The American indictments and dramatic Zurich raid of the 2015 FIFA corruption scandal seem hardly to have slowed soccer's voracious appetite for cash. And sport is inseparable from politics. After all, FIFA President Gianni Infantino recently turned up at the inaugural meeting of U.S. President Donald Trump's Board of Peace. That struck me as an aptly symbolic testament to the corporatocratic nature of the Trumpian new world order. 

Prof. Lichtman spoke to the long history of World Cup politics, for example examining how reaction to the 1986 "Hand of God" goal manifested the angst and identities of both post-colonial Argentina and post-imperial England.

RJ Peltz-Steele CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

A self-described "recovering lawyer," Prof. Lichtman is co-editor of Judging Free Speech: First Amendment Jurisprudence of U.S. Supreme Court Justices (2015). His other work has appeared in the Maryland Law Review, the Penn State Law Review, Vingtième Siècle Revue d'Histoire, the Pennsylvania Lawyer, and the newsletter of the Law and Courts section of the American Political Science Association. He earned his bachelor's and Ph.D. at Brandeis University, where he was a founder of the Boris' Kitchen Sketch Comedy troupe, and his J.D. from New York University.

Prof. Lichtman is a professor of political science at Shippensburg University. He serves also as executive director of the New England Political Science Association, and he is the incoming president of the Northeast Association of Pre-Law Advisers. His visit to UMass Law was co-sponsored by the International Law Students Association, the Law & Political Economy student organization, and the Office of the Dean.

Knowles-Gardner tells story of NAACP v. Alabama, landmark civil rights case on freedom of association

Dr. Helen Knowles-Gardner spoke at UMass Law School Wednesday on "When Alabama Tried to Destroy the NAACP (and Freedom of Association)."

In recognition of Black History Month, Dr. Knowles-Gardner, research director at the Institute for Free Speech (IFS), talked about a crucial moment in the nation’s civil rights history. In 1956, Alabama waged war on the NAACP by demanding that the organization turn over its membership lists to the state. The NAACP was unable to operate in Alabama for eight years. Litigation produced the landmark First Amendment freedom of association decision, still relevant today, NAACP v. Alabama (U.S. 1958).

Dr. Knowles-Gardner explained how the civil rights precedent in NAACP has contemporary relevance in cases such as First Choice Women’s Resource Centers, Inc. v. Platkin (SCOTUSblog), in which the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral argument in December. The case centers on a New Jersey subpoena for donor names and staff information from a chain of anti-abortion pregnancy centers. The centers argue the state investigation violates the First Amendment freedom of association. The Court seemed skeptical of the state's asserted need for the information. IFS filed an amicus brief, informed by Knowles-Gardner's research, on the side of the centers. The political shoe might be on the other foot in the case, but the freedom-of-association issue is strikingly familiar.

RJ Peltz-Steele CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Dr. Knowles-Gardner joined the Institute for Free Speech as research director in 2023 after working for almost 20 years as a political science professor. She has written extensively about American law and politics, including editing or author credits on Judging Free Speech: First Amendment Jurisprudence of U.S. Supreme Court Justices (2015), Free Speech Theory: Understanding the Controversies (2020), and The Tie Goes to Freedom: Justice Anthony M. Kennedy On Liberty (upd. ed. 2018) (C-SPAN, 2009), and research articles in political science and law.

In 2024, Dr. Knowles-Gardner published the first in a series of articles related to this talk and her current research, The First Amendment to the Constitution, Associational Freedom, and the Future of the Country: Alabama’s Direct Attack on the Existence of the NAACP, in the Seattle University Law Review. In 2025, she published Without a Little Help from Your Friends: The Supreme Court's Rejection of the American Jewish Congress Amicus Brief in NAACP v. Alabama ex rel. Patterson (1958) in the Journal of Supreme Court History, for which Dr. Knowles-Gardner serves as managing editor.

Dr. Knowles-Gardner's third co-authored book is Filming the First: Cinematic Portrayals of Freedom of the Press (2025). With this book, I am teaching a seminar at UMass Law this semester, Free Press and Film.

Dr. Knowles-Gardner earned her Ph.D. in Political Science from Boston University and a B.A. in American Studies with first class honors from Liverpool Hope University College (now Hope University) in Liverpool, England. An avid runner, Dr. Knowles-Gardner participates in races across the country, including the Marine Corps Marathon, running with the American flag for Team RWB, a national organization devoted to enhancing the lives of the nation’s veterans. She and her husband, a disabled U.S. Navy veteran, live in upstate New York.

The talk at UMass Law School was co-sponsored by the Black Law Students Association, the Law & Political Economy student organization, and the Office of the Dean.

Comparative law students explore world with guests, online cohort, and enrich field with new research

Boasting about the accomplishments of my students is a rich indulgence I selfishly embrace. The Savory Tort hosts collections of student abstracts from past courses in Comparative Law and Freedom of Information Law.

This winter, I am happy to share abstracts from students who completed papers in Comparative Law in fall 2025. These might be the most scholarly capable set of papers I've yet seen in a seminar. Their work was a pleasure to read, and I am grateful for all that these students taught me.

Besides their research projects, these students participated vitally in the Global Law Classroom (GLC). They were leaders in their groups and exchanged knowledge and experiences with students from 13 countries over eight weeks of class sessions with contributing faculty.

The students also served as a gracious and inquisitive audience for several guests in the fall semester. I thank my colleagues who gave of their time and expertise to enrich our class:

• Anna Conley, Cliff Edwards Professor of Excellence in Trial Advocacy at the Alexander Blewett III School of Law, University of Montana, and also a member of the GLC faculty, joined us via Zoom to explore customary law and the rights of indigenous peoples.
• Bernard Freamon, professor of law at Roger Williams University Law School, and co-chair of the Bristol (R.I.) Middle Passage Port Marker Project, treated us to a thorough and thought-provoking introduction to Islamic law.
• Dan Greenberg, Cato Institute, shared with us a special screening of the documentary film he produced and directed, American Libel (2025), in relation to the disparate "actual malice" and "public interest" defenses to defamation in U.S. and UK law.
• Wojciech Jarosiński, founding partner of Peak Legal in Poland, and Stefanie Chiba, a corporate attorney and data privacy expert in Austria, led us via Zoom in exploration of differences between civil law and common law practice.
• Ferhat Pekin, attorney with Pekin Bayar Mizraha, and adjunct professor at UMass Law, led us in a study of Turkish law and exercises in the cross-cultural competence required for transnational law practice.
• A friend and colleague working in the international aid sector joined us via Zoom to talk about the challenges of delivering aid from western sources to conflict areas amid political and cultural challenges on the ground. His identity is not published here to protect his security while deployed in Asia.

Here are the fall's compelling student projects:

Jake Fruchter, Civil Rights in Extra-Ordinary Prosecutions: a Comparative Analysis of Ireland and the United States Trial Rights in Terrorism Prosecutions. The United States is witnessing a growth in domestic terrorism charges. As these cases make their way through state and federal courts, questions arise over what rights and procedures apply. One country with a well established history of prosecuting domestic terrorism is the Republic of Ireland. This history led the Republic to establish a Special Criminal Court with unique rules and procedures for terrorism and organized crime cases. This paper, using a comparative method, compares the Republic’s Special Criminal Court with procedures in the United States at the state and federal level. In particular, the rights this paper analyzes pertain to the right to silence as, protected by the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, and the right to a trial by jury and to face your accuser, as protected by the Sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Kyle LaMont, Belonging by Blood or Soil?: A Functionalist-Historical Comparison of Italian and American Citizenship Traditions. This paper examines how Italy and the United States have developed their jus sanguinis and jus soli citizenship traditions, respectively, over time. Using a functionalist and historical approach, it compares and analyzes the legal frameworks and the different legal consequences of citizenship for each country. Culturally, Italy has had a long-standing tradition of focusing on citizenship through lineage, which was a core part of Italy’s unification since 1861 and further reinforced with Law No. 91/1992. In stark contrast, the United States primarily uses jus soli and the territory approach of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution. These different approaches to citizenship show how historical, cultural, and economic factors have molded the traditions that each country has embraced. By comparing these different systems, this paper reveals differing understandings of belonging and how both traditions survive in each country today. 

Kennis Levano, Language, Law, and Identity: A Functionalist Comparison of Indigenous Language Rights Protection in Bolivia and Peru. Focusing on the divergent political trajectories since the 1980s, this paper conducts a functionalist microcomparison of the frameworks for indigenous language rights in Bolivia and Peru. The research first establishes the historical and political contexts of both countries. It then provides a detailed examination of the Bolivia legal framework, highlighting recent legislative advancements, key provisions, and their successful implementation and impact in the country. In contrast, I discuss Peru's evolving legal framework, identifying differences and significant challenges in implementation. The analysis uses a functionalist approach to compare legal frameworks, identifying successful elements in the Bolivian model that are absent or underdeveloped in the Peruvian. The study culminates in the proposal of a solution designed to catalyze a significant leap forward in Peru's constitutional recognition of indigenous language rights, mirroring the progress achieved in Bolivia.

John McCauley, The Merchant: The Object of Economic Legislation & Regulation. This paper is focused on the differences and similarities between the U.S. Uniform Commercial Code Article 2 definition of “merchant” and the Egyptian Commercial Code definition of “Trader,” and how those definitions work into other statutes when a dispute arises. The UCC is analyzed according to different jurisdictions within the United States, with jurisdictional splits being noted, particularly around farmers. The topic is introduced with a brief history of each codification effort, how disputes of trade are handled procedurally, and how the courts of each respective jurisdiction interpret their definitions of those who conduct trade. This paper seeks to adhere to critical comparative methodologies and be mindful of the different cultural contexts that lead to the expression and subsequent regulation of one who conducts trade and said merchant’s explicit duties. In essence, this paper seeks to unravel choices of law with policies in mind which lead to the defined terms of “merchant” and “trader,” and who or what is interpreted as falling within and without that category, and what are some of the obligations attached to the merchant status. This paper looks at global market dynamics, and interpretive and legislative fiats, as well as statutory language to conclude who or what is defined as a merchant in the United States and Egypt and why. A commercial code is an expression of what a government believes is the proper way of doing business and thus regulates it, and the merchant or trader is the one who is to adhere to that regulation. With those premises in mind, it is key to look at the similarities and differences in these systems and cultural contexts to examine potential policy goals in enacting such legislation.

Hannah Patalsky, Comparing Mechanisms for Artist Compensation in the United States and the European Union (Taylor’s Version). This paper compares two distinct legal frameworks: the Living Wage for Musicians Act (2024) (LWMA), a bill recently reintroduced in the U.S. House Judiciary Committee, and Articles 18 through 22 of the EU Digital Single Market Directive (DSM Directive). Both of these mechanisms are designed to address the persistent issue of inadequate artist compensatory rights in the era of online streaming. The LWMA aims to establish an “Artist Compensation Royalty Fund” as an economic intervention, which would guarantee artists near-immediate payment through a statutory framework and additional stream of revenue flowing from listener to musician. In contrast, the DSM Directive focuses on member-state involvement in a contractual approach, seeking to balance the relationship between artists, on one side, and labels and agents, on the other. The primary DSM Directive articles of focus in this paper are Articles 18 through 22, which are designed to counteract the power dynamics and inequalities between these groups. This paper examines the benefits of each approach, as well as the limitations and drawbacks. The paper demonstratively applies each framework to the well-known ownership dispute between Taylor Swift and Scooter Braun, demonstrating how outcomes may differ under each mechanism to showcase the practical, real-world applications of these compensatory mechanisms. Fundamentally, this paper compares a statutory and contractual framework to find the best approach to artist compensation. Ultimately, this paper argues that each framework seeks to remedy a different issue in the modern digital and stream-based economy, and that understanding the differences among these remedies is essential to evaluating how legal systems can meaningfully address inherent inequalities and imbalances across the music industry. The LWMA aims to address the problem of insufficient streams of revenue for artists. At the same time, the DSM Directive directly targets any inequalities that may have arisen during the contracting phase that may lead to long-term exploitation of artists. In comparing these legal mechanisms that are addressing the same issue, this comparison reveals not only the strengths and weaknesses of each approach, but also the potential benefits of creating a hybrid model, including fair revenue and fair contracting conditions.

Tamar Shimon, Hate Speech: Overprotected or Undervalued? A Comparative Analysis Between U.S. and German Student Speech on College and University Campuses Post October 7. This paper analyzes the impact of protecting hate speech, particularly antisemitic speech, on post-secondary institutions within the United States and Germany. The world is no stranger to antisemitism. This type of hate has existed for millennia. However, with the events of October 7, 2023, a new wave of antisemitism found a home amongst a new generation of people: young university and college students. For months, U.S. college and university officials allowed for antisemitism to take hold on their campuses, subjugating Jewish students to abuse from their fellow students. But this was not the same response in Germany. Rather than allow the “protests” to become rampant and violent, German university and college officials quickly placed bans and restrictions for fears of antisemitism reemerging at such a drastic rate that was last seen in the 1920s. Free speech is a fundamental right within the United States and Germany; however, both countries take different approaches when it comes to protecting hate speech. This paper explores the differentiations in each country’s free speech rule, specifically focusing on the way in which each country sees the importance of hate speech to its society. To understand this differentiation, the events on and post October 7, 2023, on college and university campuses across the United States and Germany will be analyzed to determine whether the United States can somehow implement Germany’s model but still uphold the values of free speech.

Tryon P. Woods, Indigenous Fishing Rights, Comparative Settler Colonialism, and the Problem of Modern Law. This paper is a comparative legal analysis of United States v. Washington (W.D. Wash. 1974), known as the “Boldt decision” after the presiding judge’s opinion, and the 2024 ruling in Sapporo District Court on the Raporo Ainu Nation fishing rights lawsuit in Japan. Regarded as a legal landmark in indigenous rights and land use management in North America, the Boldt decision recognized the treaty rights of Native tribes to off-reservation inland fishing.  It held that such Native fishing was not subject to State regulation.  The recent Ainu lawsuit in Japan similarly sought to assert indigenous rights to fish Japanese inland waters but was rejected by the court. Comparative analysis of the two cases reveals distinct national histories regarding indigenous rights in law, which in turn, are indicative of differing forms of racialization in the national development of the United States and Japan that align with distinct histories of settler colonialism. This discrete legal comparison raises further questions regarding law’s mutability in the face of dynamic culture; how dominance is reworked as rule of law; and the problems stemming from shared ecology.

Ellie Zhang, Fair Use vs. Second Creation: A Comparative Study of Short-Video Law Between the United States and China. This paper examines how U.S. and Chinese copyright law treat short-video “second creations,” focusing on two common formats: (1) reaction and review videos that intersperse short excerpts and (2) parody. After setting out the U.S. open-ended, fair-use framework under 17 U.S.C. § 107 and China’s rights-first, enumerated “reasonable use” approach under Article 24, the paper asks when these videos amount to protected commentary and when they become unlicensed, market-substituting derivatives. For interspersed-clip reactions, U.S. doctrine tends to credit transformation and lack of substitution, whereas Chinese courts emphasize “reasonable use” and substitution risks; both systems disfavor compilation-style recaps. For parody, U.S. law treats targeted critique as paradigmatic transformative use so long as the borrowing is reasonably necessary and does not usurp cognizable licensing markets. By contrast, Chinese law lacks an explicit parody exception, channeling analysis through “appropriate quotation,” the two-step constraints, and moral-rights concerns, producing a narrower space for unlicensed parody. The paper closes with practical guidance for creators and a policy recommendation: clearer, semi-open exceptions in China and more attention in U.S. cases to audiovisual modes of critique when judging transformation and necessity.

The students' research was well supported by ace Law Librarian Katelyn Golesby, who updated and reconstructed a superb library guide in foreign, comparative, and international legal research.

Lead image by Google Gemini. Guest images from respective biographical pages, as linked; no claim to rights. Flags by Flagpedia.

Author of 'Surviving Your Friend's Cancer,' law alumna Kayleigh Ellison made world better, brighter

Kayleigh's relentless smile,
from the UMass Dartmouth
soccer roster

I'm sad to hear and to share news of the death of Kayleigh Dawn Marie Ellison on November 27.

Originally from Troy, Mo., and a graduate in diplomacy and international relations from Seton Hall University, Kayleigh was an alumna of my first-year torts class at UMass Law.

Kayleigh was an extraordinary and inspiring person. Because full-time law school could not keep her busy enough, she played soccer for the campus Corsairs at UMass Dartmouth.

Her remarkable obituary offers ample illustration of life well lived. She met every challenge with unflinching determination, and every setback with joyful resilience, from cancer to law school to defenders on the pitch, and she exuded infectious vibrancy all the while.

Surviving Your Friend's Cancer
by Kayleigh Ellison,
available at Lulu 

Among the countless ways in which Kayleigh made the world a better and brighter place, she authored a book, Surviving Your Friend's Cancer (2015). She told me that as hard as it was to fight cancer, it was just as hard to help friends overcome their anxiety over what to say and how to be present for her. She figured she could help other sufferers and their friends and families by giving some simple guidance. Her characteristic gentle humor outshined painful context.

I appreciated the book when I read it in the abstract. I have treasured it since, when I have needed its advice. I highly recommend it.

And I highly recommend taking inspiration, a recommitment to live every day to its fullest, from Kayleigh's life story. I know she would much prefer that to anyone's overindulgence of grief.

The UMass Dartmouth Torch wrote about Kayleigh and her book in 2016. The same year, Kayleigh appeared in a short UMass Law promo video. A related public relations piece features two fantastic photos from the soccer pitch by award-winning (New Bedford, Mass.) Standard-Times photographer Mike Valeri. Notice Kayleigh's smile in the latter. (If anyone can reach The Standard-Times or Valeri, please ask whether they might contribute the photos to Kayleigh's obituary page. I tried, but The Standard-Times staff directory is 403.)

Surviving Your Friend's Cancer remains available from Lulu at the time of this writing.

Updated 'TORTZ' features latest on Amazon liability, Texas 2-step, DaBaby defamation foes, much more

New 2025 editions of TORTZ: A Study of American Tort Law, volumes 1 and 2 are posted and ready for academic year 2025-26.

Two-volume TORTZ is free to download at SSRN: volume 1 and volume 2.

The books can be purchased in well bound, paperback hardcopy, both volumes for about US$61 plus shipping, from Lulu.com. The price is cost in the United States and just a couple dollars more elsewhere in the world.

Revisions in the 2025 edition include:

Premises Liability

• Discussion of Varley v. Walther (Mass. App. Ct. 2025) on "open and obvious" dangers in premises liability.

Product Liability

• Discussion of Amazon's product liability exposure, including the 2025 order of the Consumer Product Safety Commission.
• Discussion of the Texas two-step, including its rejection In re LTL Mgmt., LLC (3d Cir. 2023), and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse's (D-R.I.) bill, the Ending Corporate Bankruptcy Abuse Act.

Life and Death

• Revised explanation and distinction of "wrongful birth," "wrongful life," and "wrongful conception" actions.
• Discussion of the waning "suicide rule" in the context of the wrongful death suit by the family of Boeing whistleblower John M. Barnett in Stokes v. Boeing (D.S.C. 2025).
  

Government Immunity

• Discussion of Justice Clarence Thomas's displeasure with the Feres doctrine, dissenting from denial of certiorari in Carter v. United States (U.S. 2025).
• Discussion of 17 plaintiff families' victory in the bellwether Pearl Harbor-Hickam AFB water contamination trial, in Feindt v. United States (D. Haw. 2025).
  

Public Nuisance

• Note of Trumbull County v. Purdue Pharma (Ohio 2024), according with Okla. v. Johnson & Johnson (Okla. 2021), on opioids and product liability, excerpted in the book.
• Note of the Virgin Islands public nuisance lawsuit against Coca-Cola and Pepsico over single-use plastics, Commissioner v. Pepsico (V.I. Super. Ct. filed 2025).
• Note of Oklahoma's dismissal of a public nuisance claim over the Tulsa Race Massacre in Randle v. Tulsa (Okla. 2024).

Media Torts

• Discussion of the latest developments and Rule 11 sanctions in the battery and defamation litigation between promoters and rapper DaBaby, pending appeal from Carey v. Kirk (S.D. Fla. 2025).
• Update on impeached South African Judge John Hlophe's vendetta against former High Court colleague Judge Patricia Goliath, who innovated on anti-SLAPP in Mineral Sands Resources Ltd v. Reddell (High Ct. Wn. Cape Feb. 9, 2021) (upheld).
• Update on the enactment of revenge porn legislation in Massachusetts, the 49th state adopter, and the latest data protection bill in Massachusetts.

'DaBaby' Jonathan Kirk
HOTSPOTATL via Wikimedia CC BY 3.0

Business Torts

• Discussion of the expansion of civil RICO by the Supreme Court in Medical Marijuana v. Horn (U.S. 2025).

Civil Rights

• Discussion of the landmark decision in climate change litigation in Europe, VKSS v. Switzerland (Eur. Ct. Hum. Rts. 2024), in contrast with the dismissal of Juliana v. United States (9th Cir. 2024).
• Note of the plaintiff victory in the Abu Grahib torture case, Al Shamari v. CACI (E.D. Va. 2024).
• Update on the real-life "Hotel Rwanda" protagonist's lawsuits against Rwanda and GainJet, the former defendant dismissed, Rusesabagina v. Rwanda (D.D.C. 2023), and the latter case, Rusesabagina v. GainJet (W.D. Tex. 2024), now pending appeal.

New Resources

• References to new audiovisual productions related to tort law and cases, such as "What Happened to Karen Silkwood?" on Impact x Nightline (2024); the latest on table saws from NPR: Planet Money (2024); Nicole Piasecki's "Dear Alice" from This American Life (2024); the documentaries Downfall: The Case Against Boeing (2022), and Youth v Gov (2020) (re Juliana v. United States), both now available on Netflix.
• References to recently published work on tort law and theory by Ken Abraham & Catherine Sharkey; Andrew Ackley; Christopher Ewell, Oona A. Hathaway, & Ellen Nohle; Dov Fox & Jill Wieber Lens; Kate Falconer, Kit Barker, & Andrew Fell; Jayden Houghton; Michael Law-Smith; Anatoliy Lytvynenko; Michael Pressman; Joseph Ranney; and Sarah Swan.

As in past editions, the coverage includes all of the fundamentals of common law tort, as well as full introductory treatments of  

• defamation, 
• privacy,  
• interference, and  
• private and public nuisance, 

and introductions to  

• business torts, 
• the Federal Tort Claims Act, 
• 'constitutional tort,' and  
• worker compensation and alternative compensation systems. 

Printed in color, Tortz is replete with

•   'RED BOX'   treatments of fundamental rules to help students prepare for the bar exam, 
•   'BLUE BOX'   bibliographies of suggested further readings,
•   'YELLOW BOX'   assignments to online readings and audiovisual materials, and
•   'GRAY BOX'   state differences for Massachusetts bar candidates, or as demonstrative.