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Submissions from 2024

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Abortion and the Extremism of Bright Line Rules, Teneille R. Brown
(February 6, 2024)

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Emerging Technology's Unfamiliarity with Commercial Law, Carla L. Reyes
(February 14, 2024)

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What's in a Name? Common Carriage, Social Media, and the First Amendment, Christopher S. Yoo
(March 10, 2024)

Submissions from 2023

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Tax Forfeitures and the Excessive Fines Muddle, Jessica L. Asbridge
(October 18, 2023)

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Distributive, Disjunctive, and Discombobulated: Interpreting the Word “and” in 18 U.S.C. § 3553(f)(1), Bailey Cordonnier
(June 17, 2023)

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Preserving Privilege: Developing a Sound Litigation Strategy for Prison Wiretapping Cases, Daniel J. Cummins
(February 14, 2023)

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Cooling Infrastructure, Cooling Security, and a Warming World, David A. Dana
(August 31, 2023)

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Climate Entrenchment in Unstable Legal Regimes, Martin Lockman
(August 31, 2023)

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Climate Change and the Law of National Security Adaptation, Mark Nevitt
(August 31, 2023)

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Litigating Climate Change Infrastructure Impacts, Hari M. Osofsky
(August 31, 2023)

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Ending the Qualified Immunity Nightmare, Jared Stehle
(July 16, 2023)

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Two Birds With One Stone Through MDL Interlocutory Appeal: Lessons From Rule 23(f), Jared Stehle
(March 28, 2023)

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The SEC's Compensation Clawback Loophole, David I. Walker
(August 25, 2023)

Submissions from 2022

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The Unintended Consequences of the Court's Religious Freedom Revolution: A History of White Supremacy and Private Christian Church Schools, Vania Blaiklock
(September 26, 2022)

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An Intellectual Property Fix for Platform Salesjacking, Eric E. Johnson
(March 10, 2022)

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Two Comes Before Four and Five: The FAA in Campbell v. Keagle, Tamar Meshel
(October 10, 2022)

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Banning Books or Banning BIPOC?, Marisa Shearer
(July 5, 2022)

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Privacy's Rights Trap, Ari Ezra Waldman
(November 16, 2022)

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Arbitration in the Workplace: The Need for Legislative Intervention, Jeremy Wright
(June 27, 2022)

Submissions from 2021

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Regulating During Emergencies, Michael Barsa and David Dana
(October 1, 2021)

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Race, Property, and Citizenship, Eleanor Brown and June Carbone
(January 1, 2021)

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"Extraordinary" and "Highly Controversial": Federal Research of Solar Geoengineering Under NEPA, Charles R. Corbett
(March 13, 2021)

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The So-Called Series Qualifier Canon, Adam G. Crews
(September 10, 2021)

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(Im)mutable Race?, Deepa Das Acevedo
(July 15, 2021)

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Bringing Racial Justice to Immigration Law, Kevin R. Johnson
(May 13, 2021)

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Of Protest and Property: An Essay in Pursuit of Justice for Breonna Taylor, H. Timothy Lovelace Jr.
(May 13, 2021)

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The Judiciary Steps Up to the Workplace Challenge, M. Margaret McKeown
(November 2, 2021)

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Newspaper Expungement, Brian M. Murray
(June 30, 2021)

Introduction:

Expungement law has made great strides over the past two decades, with state-level reforms broadening the types of criminal records eligible for expungement. Further, expungement has been extended beyond arrestees to those who have been convicted, thereby promising to alleviate some of the burdens of reentry. Nevertheless, expungement remedies only touch officially held information or public data possessed by different...


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Zones of Discretion at Common Law, James E. Pfander
(August 1, 2021)

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Toward a National Resilience Fund, Paul Rose
(June 3, 2021)

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Deploying the Internal Separation of Powers Against Racial Tyranny, Bijal Shah
(October 1, 2021)

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Unlocking Accommodations for Disabled Students in Private Religious Schools, Campbell Sode
(August 16, 2021)

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The Legal Sanctuary for Human Experimentation, Wendy Wagner
(January 25, 2021)

Submissions from 2020

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Don't Die! How Biosimilar Disparagement Violates Antitrust Law, Michael A. Carrier
(October 6, 2020)

Introduction:

Competition is the key to low prices in the pharmaceutical industry. For decades, Americans have benefitted from affordable generic versions of brand-name drugs. But now, we stand poised on the wave of a revolution. Biologics, which include lifesaving, cancer-treating drugs, can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars per year and are forecast to be the “fastest growing segment of drug...


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Pretrial Detention in the Time of COVID-19, Jenny E. Carroll
(July 30, 2020)

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Section 230 and the Twitter Presidency, Michael A. Cheah
(October 30, 2020)

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A Scholarly Life in Vistas: Marshall Shapo's Products Liability, Mary J. Davis
(December 1, 2020)

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Delegating or Divesting?, Philip Hamburger
(September 30, 2020)

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The New Swing Votes on the U.S. Supreme Court, Daniel Harris
(March 20, 2020)

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From the Spirit of the Federalist Papers to the End of Legitimacy: Reflections on Gundy v. United States, J. Benton Heath
(February 25, 2020)

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What's the Point of Parity? Harvard, Groupness, and the Equal Protection Clause, Issa Kohler-Hausmann
(May 8, 2020)

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Considering a Domestic Terrorism Statute and Its Alternatives, Francesca Laguardia
(January 17, 2020)

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Immigrants and Interdependence: How the COVID-19 Pandemic Exposes the Folly of the New Public Charge Rule, Medha D. Makhlouf and Jasmine Sandhu
(October 14, 2020)

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Bostock v. Clayton County and the Problem of Bisexual Erasure, Nancy C. Marcus
(November 1, 2020)

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The Crypto Quandary: Is Bankruptcy Ready?, Megan McDermott
(July 4, 2020)

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The Crypto Quandary: Is Bankruptcy Ready?, Megan McDermott
(July 4, 2020)

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Constitutional Torts and the Problem of Government Policy: An Essay for Marshall Shapo, James E. Pfander
(December 1, 2020)

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Kafka's Court: Seeking Law and Justice at Guantanamo Bay, Alka Pradhan
(February 1, 2020)

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Some Thoughts on Compensation and Remedial Relief for Disasters in the American Legal System, Robert L. Rabin
(December 1, 2020)

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Marshall Shapo's Sociological Torts Jurisprudence, Michael L. Rustad
(December 1, 2020)

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Holding Amazon Liable as a Seller of Defective Goods: A Convergence of Cultural and Economic Perspectives, Catherine M. Sharkey
(December 1, 2020)

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Private Law, Public Law, and the Production of American Virtue, Cristina Carmody Tilley
(December 1, 2020)

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The Roberts Court, Compelled Speech, and a Constitutional Defense of Automatic Voter Registration, Jacob van Leer
(October 19, 2020)

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The Legal Sanctuary for Human Experimentation, Wendy Wagner
(December 1, 2020)

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Marshall Shapo's Constitutional Tort Fifty-Five Years Later, Michael L. Wells
(December 1, 2020)

Submissions from 2019

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Are Autonomous Entities Possible?, Shawn Bayern
(June 24, 2019)

Introduction:

Over the last few years, I have demonstrated how modern business-entity statutes, particularly LLC statutes, can give software the basic capabilities of legal personhood, such as the ability to enter contracts or own property. Not surprisingly, this idea has been met with some resistance. This Essay responds to one kind of descriptive objection to my arguments: That courts will find...


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Negative Liberty Meets Positive Social Change, Anita Bernstein
(December 18, 2019)

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Restoring the Statutory Safety-Valve for Immigrant Crime Victims: Premium Processing for Interim U Visa Benefits, Jason A. Cade and Mary Honeychurch
(February 17, 2019)

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Minnesota v. Muccio: The Constitutionality of Minnesota's Sexual Grooming Law, Kelsey K. Chetosky
(March 12, 2019)

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Intellectual Property Infringement and the Right to Say No, Margaret Chon
(December 18, 2019)

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The Common Law as a Terrain of Feminist Struggle, Cyra Akila Choudhury
(December 18, 2019)

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The Promise and Peril of a Common Law Right to Abortion, David S. Cohen
(December 18, 2019)

The Promise and Peril of a Common Law Right to Abortion, David S. Cohen
(December 18, 2019)

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The Common Law as Silver Slippers, Bridget J. Crawford
(December 18, 2019)

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Alienating Citizens, Amanda Frost
(August 5, 2019)

Introduction:

Denaturalization is back. In 1967, the Supreme Court declared that denaturalization for any reason other than fraud or mistake in the naturalization process is unconstitutional, forcing the government to abandon its aggressive denaturalization campaigns. For the last half century, the government denaturalized no more than a handful of people every year. Over the past year, however, the Trump Administration has...


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Women Are (Allegedly) People, Too, Joanna L. Grossman
(December 18, 2019)

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In Search of the Common Law Inside the Black Female Body, Teri A. McMurtry-Chubb
(December 18, 2019)

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The Female Body in the Workplace: Judges and the Common Law, Maritza I. Reyes
(December 18, 2019)

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Foreign Corruption of the Political Process Through Social Welfare Organizations, Norman I. Silber
(October 4, 2019)

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Autonomous Vehicles and Police De-escalation, Jordan Blair Woods
(September 9, 2019)

Submissions from 2018

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Lone Wolf Terrorism, Khaled Beydoun
(February 22, 2018)

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MDL v. Trump: The Puzzle of Public Law in Multidistrict Litigation, Andrew D. Bradt and Zachary D. Clopton
(January 1, 2018)

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Reconsidering Incitement, Tinker and The Heckler’s Veto on College Campuses: Richard Spencer and the Charlottesville Factor, Clay Calvert
(January 24, 2018)

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Leveraging Social Science Expertise in Immigration Policymaking, Ming H. Chen
(May 17, 2018)

Editor's Note:

Thank you to Osagie Obasogie and the eCRT Working Group for inspiring this Essay. Thoughtful discussion from a 2018 Law & Society Association Roundtable and comments from Ingrid Eagly, Jill Family, Shannon Gleeson, Megan Hall, Sharon Jacobs, Huyen Pham, Emily Ryo, Reuel Schiller, Jonathan Weinberg, Travis Weiner, and the Northwestern University Law Review student editors, especially Maggie Houseknecht, helped improve this Essay.

Introduction:

The longstanding uncertainty about how policymakers should grapple with social science demonstrating racism persists in the modern administrative state. This Essay examines the uses and misuses of social science and expertise in immigration policymaking. More specifically, it highlights three immigration policies that dismiss social scientific findings and expertise as part of presidential and agency decision-making: border control, crime control, and...


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#SoWhiteMale: Federal Civil Rulemaking, Brooke D. Coleman
(October 1, 2018)

Editor's Note:

I am grateful to Zachary Clopton, Andrew Hammond, Elizabeth Porter, and Adam Steinman for their comments. Thank you also to Evanie Parr for her fabulous research assistance. This paper benefitted greatly from comments at the AALS 2018 Annual Meeting.

Introduction:

116 out of 136. That is the number of white men who have served on the eighty-two-year-old committee responsible for creating and maintaining the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. The tiny number of non-white, non-male committee members is disproportionate, even in the context of the white-male-dominated legal profession. If the rules were simply a technical set of instructions made by...


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Cheers to Central Hudson: How Traditional Intermediate Scrutiny Helps Keep Independent Craft Beer Viable, Daniel J. Croxall
(May 31, 2018)

Editor's Note:

Thank you to Paige Davidson and Jessica Gandara for powerful research assistance and insights.

Introduction:

Independent craft breweries contributed approximately $68 billion to the national economy last year. However, an arcane regulatory scheme governs the alcohol industry in general and the craft beer industry specifically, posing both obstacles and benefits to independent craft brewers. This Essay examines regulations that arguably infringe on free speech: namely, commercial speech regulations that prohibit alcohol manufacturers from purchasing advertising...


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Housing, Healthism, and the HUD Smoke-Free Policy, Dave Fagundes and Jessica L. Roberts
(December 31, 2018)

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Eyes Wide Open: What Social Science Can Tell Us About the Supreme Court's Use of Social Science, Jonathan P. Feingold and Evelyn R. Carter
(April 4, 2018)

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Arguing with the Building Inspector about Gender-Neutral Bathrooms, Jennifer S. Hendricks
(December 20, 2018)

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McDonnell v. United States: Legalized Corruption and the Need For Statutory Reform, Khadija Lalani
(September 24, 2018)

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McDonnell v. United States: Legalized Corruption and the Need For Statutory Reform, Khadija Lalani
(September 24, 2018)

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Bridges II: The Law-STEM Alliance & Next Generation Innovation, David L. Schwartz, Leslie Oster, Devin R. Desai, Jay P. Kesan, Pierre Larouche, Daryl Lim, Ivory Mills, Pilar Ossorio, Laura Pedraza-Fariña, Jacob S. Sherkow, Jessica Silbey, D. Daniel Sokol, Harry Surden, Ryan Whalen, and Christopher S. Yoo
(February 7, 2018)

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The Second Amendment in the Street, Nirej Sekhon
(April 20, 2018)

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A Meeting of Innovation Minds, Andrew W. Torrance and Eric von Hippel
(February 7, 2018)

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Judicial Mistakes in Discovery, Diego A. Zambrano
(February 27, 2018)

Editor's Note:

Diego A. Zambrano, Harry A. Bigelow Teaching Fellow and Lecturer in Law, University of Chicago Law School. Special thanks to Adam Agata. For comments and conversations, I also thank Will Baude, Omri Ben-Shahar, Joseph Brothers, Adam Chilton, Dhammika Dharmapala, Ben Grunwald, William Hubbard, Aziz Huq, Saul Levmore, Maria Maciá, Jonathan Masur, the Bigelow Fellows, and the staff of NULR. Alex Bolden, Janice Han, and Jun Lee provided excellent research assistance.

Introduction:

A recent wave of scholarship argues that judges often fail to comply with binding rules or precedent and sometimes apply overturned laws. Scholars have hypothesized that the cause of this “judicial noncompliance” may be flawed litigant briefing that introduces mistakes into judicial decisions—an idea this Essay calls the “Litigant Hypothesis.” The Essay presents a preliminary study aimed at exploring ways...


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Submissions from 2017

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Clarence Thomas the Questioner, RonNell Andersen Jones and Aaron L. Nielson
(January 1, 2017)

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Amoral Machines, Or: How Roboticists Can Learn to Stop Worrying and Love the Law, Bryan Casey
(July 31, 2017)

Introduction:

The media and academic dialogue surrounding high-stakes decisionmaking by robotics applications has been dominated by a focus on morality. But the tendency to do so while overlooking the role that legal incentives play in shaping the behavior of profit-maximizing firms risks marginalizing the field of robotics and rendering many of the deepest challenges facing today’s engineers utterly intractable. This Essay...


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After Flint: Environmental Justice As Equal Protection, David A. Dana and Deborah Tuerkheimer
(January 17, 2017)

Introduction:

In this essay, Professors Dana and Tuerkheimer conceptualize Flint as an archetypical case of underenforcement—that is, a denial of the equal protection of laws guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution. Viewed as such, the inadequacy of environmental regulation can be understood as a failure that extends beyond the confines of Flint; a failure that demands a far more expansive duty to protect vulnerable populations.


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Local Democracy on the Ballot, Joshua A. Douglas
(May 29, 2017)

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Reforming Intermediary Liability in the Platform Economy: A European Digital Single Market Strategy, Giancarlo F. Frosio
(September 29, 2017)

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Excessive Lethal Force, Melissa Hamilton
(April 17, 2017)

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The Wages of Genetic Entitlement: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly in the Rape Survivor Child Custody Act, Jennifer S. Hendricks
(January 1, 2017)

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The Fragility of the Free American Press, RonNell Andersen Jones and Sonja R. West
(November 18, 2017)

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The Public Defender’s Pin: Untangling Free Speech Regulation in the Courtroom, Michael Kagan
(March 6, 2017)

Introduction:

In this essay, Professor Kagan asserts that recent disputes in Ohio and Nevada about whether lawyers should be allowed to wear “Black Lives Matter” pins in open court expose a fault line in First Amendment law. Lower courts have generally been unsympathetic to lawyers who display political symbols in court. But, Kagan argues, it would go too far suggest that free speech has no relevance in courtrooms. This essay argues for a way to strike a balance.


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Human Trafficking and Pornography: Using the Trafficking Victims Protection Act to Prosecute Trafficking for the Production of Internet Pornography, Allison J. Luzwick
(April 6, 2017)

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Dismantling the Unitary Electoral System? Uncooperative Federalism in State and Local Elections, Michael T. Morley
(February 18, 2017)

Introduction:

In this essay, Professor Morley explains that states generally conduct their elections in a “unitary” manner, applying many of the same rules, requirements, and procedures to races for offices at all levels of government. Morley argues that the unitary status of American elections has evolved into a convention: a principle that people expect to limit government officials’ discretion, despite not...


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Discovering Forensic Fraud, Jennifer D. Oliva and Valena E. Beety
(September 12, 2017)

Submissions from 2016

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Police Stories, Helen A. Anderson
(August 6, 2016)

Introduction:

In this essay, Anderson explores how the police narrative is told in appellate opinions, in light of changing police stories seen in the media. In recent years, video recordings of police violence have upended the traditional narrative of police heroism. The videos have led to discussions of police accountability, yet the controversies surrounding these incidents have also served to highlight...


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Protection for Families: New Standards Developing in Asylum Law, Jillian Blake
(October 22, 2016)

Introduction:

Fear of persecution based on one’s family ties has long been considered a basis for asylum in the United States. Recently, however, the scope of that protection has come under dispute and, as a result, may be expanding. In this Essay, Blake argues for a more expansive interpretation of these asylum claims, recognizing family-based persecution even when persecutors have multiple motives for targeting their victim.


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The Death Penalty and the Fifth Amendment, Joseph Blocher
(July 15, 2016)

Introduction:

In this essay, Blocher considers recent developments that have given new hope to those seeking constitutional abolition of the death penalty. Some supporters of the death penalty continue to argue, as they have since Furman v. Georgia, that the death penalty is constitutional because the Fifth Amendment explicitly contemplates it. The appeal of this argument is obvious, but Blocher argues...


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