By Chris Schmitter. Full text here. Congress regularly enacts complex laws that require administrative agencies to promulgate rules by specific deadlines. Yet, as agencies do the work of creating rules and, from time to time, miss statutory deadlines, a question remains as to whether an agency can promulgate a rule that is retroactive to the statutory…

By Pari McGarraugh. Full text here. Sentencing judges and parole release authorities are increasingly using statistical risk assessments to guide their decision-making. Risk assessment instruments rely on statistical research and modeling to predict an individual’s chance of recidivating based on information about the individual like age and number of prior arrests. These instruments are subject to…

By Staci Lieffring. Full text here. With the people relying more and more on political advertising to inform them about candidates and elections, it is imperative to try to stop or limit false speech about candidates and the election procedures. False speech undermines the integrity of elections. This has led some states to enact laws banning…

By Mathew Rotenberg. Full text here. Advances in computer technology are effectively commoditizing the law and revolutionizing the ways in which individuals seek and receive legal services. Internet Legal Providers (ILPs) present tremendous potential for increased access to legal services, which is vital to an increasing number of unrepresented litigants, as well as to combat shrinking…

By Kristen Rau. Full text here. From Nuremburg to The Hague, international criminal justice has evolved dynamically and at times unpredictably. Among recent developments is a proposal to expand the subject matter jurisdiction of the African Court of Justice and Human Rights (ACJHR) to include a mandate to prosecute individuals for serious international crimes. Expansion of…

By Will Stancil. Full text here. Fourth Amendment jurisprudence confounds. Even with thousands of cases and hundreds of repeated fact patterns to rely on, courts are not able to come up with consistent rules. In order to address the problem, this Note proposes a new way of thinking about warrantless searches. It ignores the debate over…

By Nathan J. Ebnet. Full text here. A growing number of employers are factoring job candidates’ social media profiles into their hiring decisions. Employers value social media pre-employment screening because it provides access to previously unobtainable applicant information. However, job candidates are wary of social media pre-employment screening due to concerns over the trustworthiness and authenticity…

By Rachel A. Benedict. Full text here. In the past seven years, the D.C. Circuit has vacated three Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) rules for failing to conduct an adequate cost-benefit analysis. This string of cases culminated on July 11, 2011 when the D.C. Circuit overturned the SEC’s new proxy access rule. Strict judicial scrutiny of…

By Reid Golden. Full text here. Recent developments in the interpretation of the Second Amendment left unanswered questions regarding the scope of the constitutional guarantee of armed self-defense. Most importantly, neither District of Columbia v. Heller nor McDonald v. City of Chicago set a firm standard for determining the constitutionality of gun-control laws. This determination is…

By Shana Conklin. Full text here. At the birth of the juvenile court, reformers attempted to develop a system that melded child welfare concerns with crime control. Despite the founders’ original intentions, however, the juvenile court system has moved away from the therapeutic model to a punitive model.  The increasingly punitive nature of the system…