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7 May 2026
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- Journal Article7 May 2026
404 Error - Relevance Not Found: Georgia’s Shift to Stricter Scrutiny of 404(b) Evidence in Wilson v. State
For decades, Georgia courts have treated Georgia Rule of Evidence 404(b) (“Rule 404(b)”) as an “evidentiary rule of inclusion,” an approach centered on the idea that if a prior act appeared relevant, it belonged in front of the jury. This practice was grounded in the belief that relevant prior criminal acts, like other forms of evidence, “should not lightly be excluded when central to the prosecution’s case.” In Wilson v. State, the Supreme Court of Georgia narrowed the standard for the admissibility of other-acts evidence, signaling a continuing judicial shift toward stricter evidentiary control that aligns more closely with the federal standard. The court rejected the State’s argument that Wilson’s desire “to rob people and to get their things” established a valid motive and emphasized that such reasoning amounted to the exact kind of general propensity argument that Rule 404(b) was intended to prevent. Similarly, the court clarified that evidence of a common plan or scheme must clearly demonstrate a distinctive modus operandi, thus raising the bar for admissibility under Rule 404(b). Wilson marks a pivotal doctrinal change, representing the culmination of a decade-long transition away from Georgia’s broadly inclusive approach to other-acts evidence and challenging longstanding assumptions about the flexibility of Rule 404(b). By demanding clear, non-character justifications for admitting other-acts evidence, the court emphasized that Rule 404(b) must be applied narrowly to prevent its use as a vehicle for general propensity arguments. The court’s holding in Wilson serves as both a guidepost and a warning: broad claims of relevance will no longer make it past the courtroom door.
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- Journal Article7 May 2026
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Editor's Note
- Journal Article7 May 2026
Real, Not Rhetorical: Children’s Rights as the Strongest Constitutional Defense of Obergefell Against Religious-Liberty Challenges
Justice Kennedy’s decision to center adults’ rights in the Obergefell majority opinion—despite his awareness of children’s legal vulnerabilities—created space for Justice Thomas, in his Davis statement, to ignore children altogether and to reframe the constitutional question as a clash between adults’ rights: the right to marry and to be free from discrimination versus the right to exercise one’s religious beliefs and to refuse to engage in conduct that abrogate those beliefs. This distorted constitutional framing eclipses entirely the rights of children in same-sex families and the concrete harms they will face if their parents are barred from marrying—harms that provide a compelling justification for overriding Davis’s asserted religious objections and liberty interests. Had Obergefell articulated the harm to children more fully, this Article contends, the decision might be less vulnerable to being overturned, because children’s rights would be better positioned to operate as a constitutional check on Davis’s religious-liberty claims. The Court’s denial of certiorari in Davis offers Obergefell only a temporary reprieve; yet, as this piece underscores, the current political and jurisprudential landscape forecasts renewed efforts to overturn the epochal ruling. In the face of persistent and coordinated challenges, defenders of Obergefell should foreground and fully articulate the rights of children in their same-sex families as foundational to the constitutionality of marriage equality. Although children’s rights remain undertheorized and underdeveloped in Supreme Court jurisprudence, their existence has been repeatedly acknowledged by the Court, particularly in the familial context. Children’s unassailable rights provide the compelling interest that justifies limiting religious-liberty claims when those claims threaten the constellation of constitutional protections and material benefits children derive from their families and filial relationships—protections the law withholds when it prohibits their parents from marrying. - Journal Article7 May 2026
Trapped by Immunity: Women, Prisons, and the Need for Obvious Clarity
For many Americans, the mere thought of the prison system evokes great fear and uncertainty. The fear is justified and reflected through rampant reports of sexual abuse, exploitation, and abuse of power by prison officials. Lack of privacy in prisons is largely supported and expected. The general population of prisons have unique safety concerns which require closer surveillance and diligent observation by correctional officers. Prison officers are tasked with ensuring that all contraband stays out of inmate possession—notwithstanding the constant changes of the general population. The security interests of a prison also extend to prison visitors. The known security concerns that exist and require greater regulation in prisons create a distinctly unfortunate opportunity for abuse of incarcerated persons by prison officers and staff. Inmates are uniquely vulnerable without access to the outside world or autonomy of daily decisions, and officers possess both great authority and discretion to use it. Women are particularly vulnerable to sexual violence in prisons; this risk is even greater for women with a prior history of sexual abuse. It is estimated that 70% of guards in women’s federal prisons are male, which creates a strong opportunity for abuse of authority. Human rights activist groups have expended great effort to expose the sexual misconduct that happens in prisons. Ironically, our correctional facilities are not exactly correcting behavior for those incarcerated. Instead, our facilities are overcrowded and underfunded, doing nothing but housing the criminally convicted. The prevalence of sexual abuse and other officer misconduct in prisons creates more issues for inmates upon release, undermining the efficiency and operation of the prison system’s purpose. The psychological harm which stems from prison rape has adverse impact on our communities. The trauma of being sexually assaulted in prison increases the risk of suicide and the risk of becoming violent later. Some prisons have shifted to designating certain security officer positions to be female-only to reduce the likelihood of sexual abuse. It is unclear whether the reduction of male officers in female prisons is effective, especially because there is widespread misconduct and abuse by prison officers irrespective of gender. - Journal Article7 May 2026
All Rights Reserved . . . for Disney: Corporate Mouse Traps, a Frozen Public Domain, and How A.I. May Usher in a Whole New World for Copyright
Copyright, as a body of law, is a recent development in the human consciousness, originating in 1710 with England’s Statute of Anne. Nevertheless, in the three hundred years that followed, more copyright laws were enacted than murder statutes throughout recorded history. With these successive statutes, corporations have effectuated the largest land grab ever seen. Modern copyright law is the elephant in the room in discussions of wealth inequality, perpetuating evil inside and between countries. Moreover, it has deprived humanity of cultural roots, locking ideas behind a paywall that funnels wealth to the few and stymies ingenuity through the sterilization of the public domain. This theft of art and culture is the result of successive reforms, funded by skillful corporate lobbying disguised as the protection of artists. Nevertheless, intellectual property (“IP”) need not have ended up this way, and recent technological developments in artificial intelligence (“A.I.”) have pushed these laws to the breaking point. This system, built on “a kind of schizophrenia” and legal doublespeak presented through forked tongues, has reached its haziest frontier with A.I. This paper does not attempt to resolve issues of A.I. copyright under the present framework because, fundamentally, the present structure “can only be seen as a temporary workaround to a problem that has no solution under current laws.” Instead, by analyzing the historical development of copyright, intentions behind its creation, evils of its present form, and economics of the modern world, this paper proposes two solutions for the necessary reform of the system: first, copyright abolition or, second, a return to the limitations imposed by the first American copyright law. - Journal Article7 May 2026
No More Guessing Games: Rebuilding Clarity in Georgia’s Ante Litem Notice Statute
Imagine a child’s shape sorter toy—the kind with square, circle, and triangle-shaped holes and equivalent pegs in the same shapes. The toy forms a foundation in a child’s development because, among other things, it teaches the child to problem-solve by (1) recognizing the problem (different-shaped pegs that must go in the sorter a certain way) and (2) solving it (placing each peg in the correct hole to sort the pegs). For simplicity’s sake, let us imagine the toy only has a square and circle-shaped hole with square and circle-shaped pegs. As the child intuitively learns the “rules” of the toy, the child learns what works: the square peg must go into the square hole, and the circle peg must go in the circular hole. The child also learns what does not work: the square peg cannot go in the circular hole, and the circular peg cannot go in the square hole. Now imagine the same toy—only having the square and circle-shaped holes—but it has additional shaped-pegs (triangle, trapezoid, and rectangle) to go with it. Evidently, the toy manufacturer must be trying to confuse the child. “How does a triangle fit into a circle?” the child asks himself. Now the child’s mind is in a tailspin. What he once learned is now discombobulated. Put simply, the toy is now a guessing game. The Supreme Court of Georgia’s recent holding in Fleureme v. City of Atlanta ("Fleureme II") creates similar headaches for litigants, giving them more “pegs” (potential avenues to serve notice) than “holes” (successful avenues for serving notice). Imagine a claimant in Atlanta, Georgia, is injured and wishes to sue the city for those injuries. The claimant retains counsel who advises the claimant that he must send the requisite ante litem notice to the municipality. The attorney performs research to determine all the statute’s requirements that must be satisfied. He finds Fleureme II, which holds that a claimant’s ante litem notice satisfies the statute’s service requirements if the claimant substantially complies with the statute, meaning absolute precision is not required. The court in Fleureme II determined that an ante litem notice addressed to “Office of the Mayor” substantially complied with the statute. Counsel writes up the ante litem notice to send to the municipality and addresses the notice to “City Hall” because he believes that doing so substantially complies with the statute. The city never received the notice because the mail handler did not know where to send the notice. The city could not research the incident giving rise to the claimant’s potential claim against the city. And since the claim has not properly been served to the requisite official, the claimant risks losing what may have otherwise been a valid claim, simply because service could not be properly effectuated. This is the primary risk in Fleureme II’s aftermath. The court in Fleureme II eliminated “hyper-technical” compliance with the statute’s addressing requirements to focus on the merits of claims.4 But in doing so, it gives rise to legitimate procedural concerns in the future that the statute originally curtailed. - Journal Article7 May 2026
Finally, a Fair Shot: Supreme Court Shoots Down the Moment-of-Threat Doctrine in Barnes v. Felix
The Framers designed America’s legal system with the belief that no one, not even the government, is above the law. The right to hold government officials accountable before a court reflects the Framers’ vision that justice resides in the people themselves. Unfortunately, countless citizens who suffer excessive force are barred from presenting their stories to the jury. Nowhere is the clash between liberty and authority more visible than in encounters between police and citizens. Every day, those who wear the badge are forced to make difficult judgment calls in volatile situations. In 2024, 147 officers lost their lives in the line of duty. Each death is a stark reminder that maintaining public safety comes at a cost. These officers were not faceless enforcers of the law; they were fathers, mothers, sons, and daughters who gave their lives in service to their communities. Police officers are not the only ones who face harm. In that same year, 1,365 people lost their lives during an encounter with law enforcement. Each of those individuals was someone the officer had sworn to protect. Their deaths underscore the deadly stakes of modern policing. To reduce these tragedies, the Supreme Court of the United States defined the boundaries the Constitution places on police conduct. Excessive-force jurisprudence evaluates police uses of force under the Fourth Amendment’s objective-reasonableness standard. Despite dozens of opinions from the Court, one question has divided the lower courts: how much context is enough? Some courts believed the answer was just the very moment the officer deployed force, while others looked more broadly into the encounter. In an effort to clarify, the Supreme Court held that courts must analyze the totality of the circumstances of the encounters. By doing this, the Court changed the way that claims of excessive force will be examined for many years to come. - Journal Article7 May 2026
What Attorneys “Ott” To Do: The Supreme Court Clarifies Judgmental Immunity in Georgia
The Supreme Court of Georgia dealt a swift blow to the Court of Appeals of Georgia’s interpretation of judgmental immunity in a recent decision. For over three decades, the court of appeals recognized a subjective defense that shielded attorneys from liability for mistakes made while representing a client. Under this interpretation of judgmental immunity, attorneys prevailed on motions for summary judgment by demonstrating that they had exercised their honest professional judgment in making the challenged decision. Now, in Cox-Ott v. Barnes & Thornburg, LLP, a unanimous opinion by the supreme court held that attorneys are no longer entitled to the protections of the judgmental immunity doctrine, as interpreted by the court of appeals. Gone are the days when attorneys prevailed in malpractice suits solely on a showing of honest professional judgment and decision-making. The supreme court has held that the standard for attorneys in malpractice actions is whether their conduct falls below the standard of reasonable care in the legal profession. By redefining this defense, the supreme court has increased attorneys’ exposure to malpractice litigation for their conduct while representing clients. Attorneys will be less likely to succeed on motions for summary judgment and will face various professional and financial repercussions arising from malpractice suits. Georgia lawyers’ best practice should be to carefully document the research and investigation underlying their judgments to protect against potential malpractice suits. The redefinition of judgmental immunity will also likely increase the cost of settling malpractice claims, raise malpractice insurance costs, and lead to more arbitration clauses in engagement agreements. The supreme court’s redefinition of judgmental immunity will ultimately reshape the risks attorneys across Georgia face in client representation and have far-reaching effects on attorney conduct. - Journal Article7 May 2026
404 Error - Relevance Not Found: Georgia’s Shift to Stricter Scrutiny of 404(b) Evidence in Wilson v. State
For decades, Georgia courts have treated Georgia Rule of Evidence 404(b) (“Rule 404(b)”) as an “evidentiary rule of inclusion,” an approach centered on the idea that if a prior act appeared relevant, it belonged in front of the jury. This practice was grounded in the belief that relevant prior criminal acts, like other forms of evidence, “should not lightly be excluded when central to the prosecution’s case.” In Wilson v. State, the Supreme Court of Georgia narrowed the standard for the admissibility of other-acts evidence, signaling a continuing judicial shift toward stricter evidentiary control that aligns more closely with the federal standard. The court rejected the State’s argument that Wilson’s desire “to rob people and to get their things” established a valid motive and emphasized that such reasoning amounted to the exact kind of general propensity argument that Rule 404(b) was intended to prevent. Similarly, the court clarified that evidence of a common plan or scheme must clearly demonstrate a distinctive modus operandi, thus raising the bar for admissibility under Rule 404(b). Wilson marks a pivotal doctrinal change, representing the culmination of a decade-long transition away from Georgia’s broadly inclusive approach to other-acts evidence and challenging longstanding assumptions about the flexibility of Rule 404(b). By demanding clear, non-character justifications for admitting other-acts evidence, the court emphasized that Rule 404(b) must be applied narrowly to prevent its use as a vehicle for general propensity arguments. The court’s holding in Wilson serves as both a guidepost and a warning: broad claims of relevance will no longer make it past the courtroom door. - Journal Article7 May 2026
From “Filed Under Seal” To “Frivolous on Appeal”: Potts v. Richardson and Georgia’s Movement Toward Enforceable Professionalism
Potts v. Richardson marks a turning point in Georgia’s professionalism movement. On its face, the case involved an application of Georgia’s anti-SLAPP statute and the privilege afforded to communications made in connection with judicial proceedings. But the Court of Appeals of Georgia did more than resolve a defamation dispute. By imposing a $2,500 sanction under Rule 7(e) for what the court deemed a frivolous appeal, it in effect sanctioned a lawyer for conduct that violated the Georgia Lawyer’s Creed and Aspirational Statement on Professionalism. Georgia has been a leader in the modern professionalism movement for decades. Central to that commitment is the Chief Justice’s Commission on Professionalism, established in 1989 by the Supreme Court of Georgia, “with the primary charge to enhance professionalism among Georgia’s lawyers.” Over the years, the Commission developed CLE courses, supported orientation programs for law students, and produced the Lawyer’s Creed and Aspirational Statement on Professionalism as the foundational documents of professionalism in Georgia. These texts urge lawyers to treat clients, adversaries, and courts with courtesy and respect, but they are explicitly framed as aspirational. Justice Benham, in his concurrences in Evanoff v. Evanoff and Butts v. State, captured this distinction, reminding the bar that “ethics is that which is required and professionalism is that which is expected,” and warned that, when professionalism is left to aspiration alone, “blind and unbridled advocacy” corrodes public confidence in the courts. Potts illustrates that Georgia courts are beginning to close the gap between these aspirational ideals and enforceable standards. By deploying Rule 7(e) sanctions sua sponte, the court of appeals treated Potts’s lack of civility not merely as regrettable but as sanctionable misconduct. Judge Hodges’s concurrence sharpened this point, casting Potts’s conduct as a cautionary tale about how easily incivility can escalate into abusive litigation that ultimately drains judicial resources and undermines the dignity of the profession. This Casenote examines more than an anti-SLAPP dispute. The court of appeals’s decision in Potts v. Richardson, reinforced by Judge Hodges’s concurrence, reflects Georgia’s longstanding commitment to professionalism while marking a decisive shift in how that commitment is enforced. Though the professionalism movement once relied on aspirational statements and cultural expectations, Potts represents something new by showing that courts are more willing to impose consequences when lawyers disregard civility. Potts stands as a turning point in Georgia’s professionalism movement, signaling that civility is no longer merely encouraged but enforceable.
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Real, Not Rhetorical: Children’s Rights as the Strongest Constitutional Defense of Obergefell Against Religious-Liberty Challenges
Justice Kennedy’s decision to center adults’ rights in the Obergefell majority opinion—despite his awareness of children’s legal vulnerabilities—created space for Justice Thomas, in his Davis statement, to ignore children altogether and to reframe the constitutional question as a clash between adults’ rights: the right to marry and to be free from discrimination versus the right to exercise one’s religious beliefs and to refuse to engage in conduct that abrogate those beliefs. This distorted constitutional framing eclipses entirely the rights of children in same-sex families and the concrete harms they will face if their parents are barred from marrying—harms that provide a compelling justification for overriding Davis’s asserted religious objections and liberty interests. Had Obergefell articulated the harm to children more fully, this Article contends, the decision might be less vulnerable to being overturned, because children’s rights would be better positioned to operate as a constitutional check on Davis’s religious-liberty claims. The Court’s denial of certiorari in Davis offers Obergefell only a temporary reprieve; yet, as this piece underscores, the current political and jurisprudential landscape forecasts renewed efforts to overturn the epochal ruling. In the face of persistent and coordinated challenges, defenders of Obergefell should foreground and fully articulate the rights of children in their same-sex families as foundational to the constitutionality of marriage equality. Although children’s rights remain undertheorized and underdeveloped in Supreme Court jurisprudence, their existence has been repeatedly acknowledged by the Court, particularly in the familial context. Children’s unassailable rights provide the compelling interest that justifies limiting religious-liberty claims when those claims threaten the constellation of constitutional protections and material benefits children derive from their families and filial relationships—protections the law withholds when it prohibits their parents from marrying. - Journal Article7 May 2026
Trapped by Immunity: Women, Prisons, and the Need for Obvious Clarity
For many Americans, the mere thought of the prison system evokes great fear and uncertainty. The fear is justified and reflected through rampant reports of sexual abuse, exploitation, and abuse of power by prison officials. Lack of privacy in prisons is largely supported and expected. The general population of prisons have unique safety concerns which require closer surveillance and diligent observation by correctional officers. Prison officers are tasked with ensuring that all contraband stays out of inmate possession—notwithstanding the constant changes of the general population. The security interests of a prison also extend to prison visitors. The known security concerns that exist and require greater regulation in prisons create a distinctly unfortunate opportunity for abuse of incarcerated persons by prison officers and staff. Inmates are uniquely vulnerable without access to the outside world or autonomy of daily decisions, and officers possess both great authority and discretion to use it. Women are particularly vulnerable to sexual violence in prisons; this risk is even greater for women with a prior history of sexual abuse. It is estimated that 70% of guards in women’s federal prisons are male, which creates a strong opportunity for abuse of authority. Human rights activist groups have expended great effort to expose the sexual misconduct that happens in prisons. Ironically, our correctional facilities are not exactly correcting behavior for those incarcerated. Instead, our facilities are overcrowded and underfunded, doing nothing but housing the criminally convicted. The prevalence of sexual abuse and other officer misconduct in prisons creates more issues for inmates upon release, undermining the efficiency and operation of the prison system’s purpose. The psychological harm which stems from prison rape has adverse impact on our communities. The trauma of being sexually assaulted in prison increases the risk of suicide and the risk of becoming violent later. Some prisons have shifted to designating certain security officer positions to be female-only to reduce the likelihood of sexual abuse. It is unclear whether the reduction of male officers in female prisons is effective, especially because there is widespread misconduct and abuse by prison officers irrespective of gender. - Journal Article7 May 2026
All Rights Reserved . . . for Disney: Corporate Mouse Traps, a Frozen Public Domain, and How A.I. May Usher in a Whole New World for Copyright
Copyright, as a body of law, is a recent development in the human consciousness, originating in 1710 with England’s Statute of Anne. Nevertheless, in the three hundred years that followed, more copyright laws were enacted than murder statutes throughout recorded history. With these successive statutes, corporations have effectuated the largest land grab ever seen. Modern copyright law is the elephant in the room in discussions of wealth inequality, perpetuating evil inside and between countries. Moreover, it has deprived humanity of cultural roots, locking ideas behind a paywall that funnels wealth to the few and stymies ingenuity through the sterilization of the public domain. This theft of art and culture is the result of successive reforms, funded by skillful corporate lobbying disguised as the protection of artists. Nevertheless, intellectual property (“IP”) need not have ended up this way, and recent technological developments in artificial intelligence (“A.I.”) have pushed these laws to the breaking point. This system, built on “a kind of schizophrenia” and legal doublespeak presented through forked tongues, has reached its haziest frontier with A.I. This paper does not attempt to resolve issues of A.I. copyright under the present framework because, fundamentally, the present structure “can only be seen as a temporary workaround to a problem that has no solution under current laws.” Instead, by analyzing the historical development of copyright, intentions behind its creation, evils of its present form, and economics of the modern world, this paper proposes two solutions for the necessary reform of the system: first, copyright abolition or, second, a return to the limitations imposed by the first American copyright law.