“Wreaking Extraordinary Destruction”: Defendant’s Irreplaceability as Presumptively Reasonable Grounds for Downward Departure in Sentencing
By Jackie Fielding. Full Text Despite the media attention afforded to the recent family separation crisis at the southern border of the United States, there is a much more prevalent and common form of family separation: parental incarceration. The United States is the largest incarcerator worldwide, and the surge in the incarceration of women has…
Continue ReadingA Blueprint for States To Solve the Mandatory Arbitration Problem While Avoiding FAA Preemption
By Sam Cleveland. Full Text. Employers are increasingly using mandatory pre-dispute arbitration clauses in employment contracts. Doing so gives employers benefits, such as privacy, the ability to select the arbitrators, and repeat players benefits, but they often leave employees without meaningful recourse when they are wronged, especially when class action waivers are used. This effect…
Continue ReadingThe Public Use of Reparations: How Land-Based Reparations Can Satisfy the Public Use Requirement of the Takings Clause
By Jack Davis. Full Text. After the horror of slavery, African Americans faced another obstacle to equality. Their lack of property created an intergenerational wealth problem that persists today. A Congressional act of reparations designed with housing in mind could strengthen our nation’s moral fabric while supporting economic activity for beneficiaries both in the present…
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Space: The Final Next Frontier
By Bonny Birkeland. Full Text. This Note explores the implications of the use of force in outer space under the current space and jus in bello regimes. By looking at the use of kinetic and direct energy ASATs under a proportionality calculus, this Note proposes a new consideration framework which outlines what a State actor…
Continue ReadingThe Supreme Court as a Tool of Foreign Policy?: Why a Proposed Flexible Framework of Established Judicial Doctrine Better Satisfies Foreign Policy Concerns in Alien Tort Statute Litigation
By Lucas Curtis. Full Text. Rarely invoked in almost two hundred years, the Alien Tort Statute (ATS) emerged as the main vehicle for bringing internationally-recognized human rights claims into United States courts in the 1980s and the 1990s. However, the turn of the twenty-first century has brought a series of Supreme Court decisions that have…
Continue ReadingCompeting Competitions: Anticompetitive Conduct by Publisher-Controlled Esports Leagues
By Michael Arin. Full Text. This Note examines the growing concern over publisher-controlled leagues in the esports industry. Upon recognizing the value of organized, competitive playing of video games—esports—beyond mere marketing for the underlying game, publishers began to create leagues of teams to play each other. These league operators used traditional sports as a model.…
Continue ReadingAn Erie Silence: Erie Guesses and Their Effects on State Courts, Common Law, and Jurisdictional Federalism
By Connor Shaull. Full Text. In the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case of Erie R.R. v. Tompkins, the Court broadly interpreted the Judiciary Act’s limitations and noted that: “There is no federal general common law.” This first-year law school lesson appears simple enough: federal courts, when applying any substantive state law, must defer to the…
Continue ReadingNote: Addressing the HIPAA-potamus Sized Gap in Wearable Technology Regulation
By Paige Papandrea. Full Text. Wearable technology is wildly popular. It is also wildly unregulated. Millions of consumers buy and use these devices, which can constantly track and transmit a variety of users’ health information. Although this health information is similar to, and in many cases more abundant than, information collected by doctors and health…
Continue ReadingNote: A Broken Theory: The Malfunction Theory of Strict Products Liability and the Need for a New Doctrine in the Field of Surgical Robotics
By Christopher Beglinger. Full Text. The malfunction theory of strict products liability affords a plaintiff an inference of a product defect through the presentation of circumstantial evidence. Under the malfunction theory, a plaintiff may establish a prima facie case by providing evidence of the nature of a product malfunction, evidence eliminating abnormal use of the…
Continue ReadingNote: The Controversial Demise of Zauderer: Revitalizing Zauderer Post-NIFLA
By Aaron Stenz. Full Text. The First Amendment broadly stands for the idea that government attempts to curtail the right of the American people to both speak and not speak should be viewed with the utmost skepticism. In the context of compelled commercial speech, however, that scrutiny is lessened. Zaudererv. Office of Disciplinary Counsel of…
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