The Poly Problem in Zoning: Redefining “Family” for a Changing Society
By ARIC SHORT & TANYA PIERCE. Full Text. Single-family zoning has long dictated not only where people may live but also with whom. Although extensively critiqued for perpetuating racial and economic exclusion, these laws also privilege relationships defined by blood, marriage, or adoption and marginalize nontraditional families. This Article focuses on a particularly overlooked group:…
Continue ReadingThe Crisis in U.S. Cancer Care: Law, Markets, and Privatization
By DANIEL G. AARON. Full Text. Cancer is surging among youth and young adults in the United States, yet, instead of public regulation addressing its root causes, we have outsourced the management of cancer to the private sector. A suite of laws, embodying faith that corporations will cure cancer, has subsidized the cancer biomedical enterprise…
Continue ReadingRegulatory History and Judicial Review
By TODD PHILLIPS & ANTHONY MOFFA. Full Text. The Administrative Procedure Act (APA) requires federal agencies to simply “incorporate in the rules adopted a concise general statement of their basis and purpose” after they receive comments from the public, and the Supreme Court ruled in Overton Park that courts are to adjudicate whether rules are…
Continue ReadingThe Innocence Trap
By CAITLIN GLASS & JULIAN GREEN. Full Text. What makes a conviction wrongful? Developments in DNA science have led to a wave of exonerations over the past thirty years, revealing sources of error in the criminal legal process. Innocence organizations proliferated to represent people whose convictions could be overturned by newly discovered evidence. This is…
Continue ReadingBankruptcy as a National Security Risk
By JASON JIA-XI WU. Full Text. Defense contractors lie at the heart of the U.S. national security regime. Each year, over half of the federal defense budget is allocated to contracts outsourcing military operations, projects, and services to private companies. However, defense outsourcing carries a ticking time bomb: mounting private debt. Today, the defense industry…
Continue ReadingInsurers as Contract Influencers
By DAVID A. HOFFMAN & RICK SWEDLOFF. Full Text. Contract boilerplate degrading consumers’ litigation options is omnipresent, but a little mysterious. And that’s not just because no one reads it. We know that terms mandating arbitration, exculpating liability, requiring individualized litigation, and shifting risk have proliferated in the last generation. But consumer contracts’ production and…
Continue ReadingThe Economic Structure of Trade Secret Law
By TUN-JEN CHIANG. Full Text. The standard economic account of trade secret law focuses on providing incentives for creating new inventions. The incentive-to-invent theory, however, provides little explanation for why the key doctrinal features of trade secret law are structured the way that they are. For example, providing ex ante incentives to invent does not…
Continue ReadingMajor-Questions Lenity
By JOEL S. JOHNSON. Full Text. Both the historic rule of lenity and the new major questions doctrine rest on a fundamental commitment to the separation of powers for important policy questions. In light of that shared justification, the logic of the major questions doctrine in the administrative-law context has much to offer lenity in…
Continue ReadingSecuritizing the University
By MARYAM JAMSHIDI. Full Text. Since October 7, 2023, public and private actors have doubled down on efforts to securitize the American university. In large part, these initiatives aim to quash a vocal pro-Palestine movement that has become highly visible across U.S. campuses since October 7th. In targeting this group, these efforts have variously treated…
Continue ReadingThe Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: A Comparative Constitutional Analysis of Whistleblowing Speech, the Government’s Managerial Domain, and the Imperatives of Democratic Self-Government
By RONALD J. KROTOSZYNSKI, JR. Full Text. Since issuing its 1968 landmark decision in Pickering, which first recognized that the First Amendment protects government employees’ speech about matters of public concern, the U.S. Supreme Court has proceeded to whittle away First Amendment protections for government employees. The Justices have done so by adopting a series…
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