K Is for Contract―Why Is It, Though? A K’s Study on the Origins, Persistence and Propagation of Legal Konventions
By Hanjo Hamann. Full Text. Just like Supreme Court Justices, law school students in the United States almost universally abbreviate the word “contract” using the capital letter “K.” Despite this consensus, no one ever sought to explain why a word that starts with “C” should get shortened to “K” instead. This Essay investigates this question.…
Continue ReadingFighting Orthodoxy: Challenging Critical Race Theory Bans and Supporting Critical Thinking in Schools
By Joshua Gutzmann. Full Text. Fox News mentioned critical race theory (CRT) more than 1,900 times from April to mid-July of 2021, marking CRT as a new focus of Republicans and conservative donors and sparking a movement to ban teaching of the theory in schools. Nine states have already passed legislation intended to ban the…
Continue ReadingMe, Myself, and My Digital Double: Extending Sara Greene’s Stealing (Identity) From the Poor to the Challenges of Identity Verification
By Michele Estrin Gilman. Full Text. Identity is an essential part of the human condition. When one’s identity is stolen or when a state rejects a citizen’s identity, the consequences can be devastating to one’s notion of selfhood as well as undermine their economic security. In Stealing (Identity) from the Poor, Sara Greene explores the…
Continue ReadingRacial Bias in Algorithmic IP
By Dan L. Burk. Full Text. Machine learning systems, a form of artificial intelligence (AI), are increasingly being deployed both for the creation of innovative works and the administration of intellectual property (IP) rights associated with those works. At the same time, evidence of racial bias in IP systems is manifest and growing. Legal scholars…
Continue ReadingIntroduction to The Bremer-Kovacs Collection: Historic Documents Related to the Administrative Procedure Act of 1946 (HeinOnline 2021)
By Emily S. Bremer & Kathryn E. Kovacs. Full Text. Few statutes have a legislative history as rich, varied, and sprawling as the Administrative Procedure Act of 1946 (APA). In recent years, courts and scholars have shown increased interest in understanding this history. This is no mean feat. The APA’s history spans nearly two decades,…
Continue ReadingIntroduction to The Bremer-Kovacs Collection: Historic Documents Related to the Administrative Procedure Act of 1946 (HeinOnline 2021)
By Emily S. Bremer & Kathryn E. Kovacs. Full Text. Few statutes have a legislative history as rich, varied, and sprawling as the Administrative Procedure Act of 1946 (APA). In recent years, courts and scholars have shown increased interest in understanding this history. This is no mean feat. The APA’s history spans nearly two decades,…
Continue ReadingVoigt Deference: Deferring to a State Agency’s Interpretation of a Federal Regulation
By Justin W. Aimonetti. Full Text. A federal court will sometimes defer to a federal agency’s interpretation of a federal regulation. But conventional wisdom suggests that federal courts review with fresh eyes state agencies’ interpretations of the same. This Essay suggests a different approach—one called Voigt deference named after a recent Eighth Circuit decision—and one…
Continue ReadingExtending Pandemic Flexibilities for Opioid Use Disorder Treatment: Authorities and Methods
By Bridget C.E. Dooling & Laura Stanley. Full Text. This Essay evaluates two specific flexibilities granted during the COVID-19 pandemic that made it easier for patients to access buprenorphine and methadone. First, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) allowed practitioners to prescribe buprenorphine using telemedicine without first conducting an in-person medical exam. Second, the Substance Abuse…
Continue ReadingSearching for Law in All the Wrong Places
By Evan C. Zoldan. Full Text. In The Corpus and the Critics, Lee & Mouritsen reaffirm their commitment to interpreting legal language using corpus linguistics techniques. Importantly, they also acknowledge that it is not always appropriate to search for the meaning of statutory language in a general corpus—that is, a corpus that includes a variety…
Continue ReadingThe Banality of Law Journal Rejections
By Noah C. Chauvin. Full Text. In the spring of 2021, I received two rejection messages from journals I had submitted an article to; the messages came seven minutes apart. Nothing about that experience was remarkable, except that the two messages (with the exception of the names of the journals) were identical. That prompted this…
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