Optional Legislation
By Jacob Bronsther and Guha Krishnamurthi. Full Text. Not since the nineteenth century has partisanship been this intense. The only thing that Democrats and Republicans can agree upon, it seems, is that “Washington is broken.” Beyond the chimeras of bipartisanship or enduring one-party rule, this Article proposes a new solution to legislative dysfunction in Washington:…
Continue ReadingKilling the Motivation of the Minority Law Professor
By Goldburn P. Maynard Jr. Full Text. This Essay hypothesizes that a significant number of minority junior scholars with radical or non-normative ideas forego those projects or mute them to fit their work within the dominant paradigm of legal scholarship. Even those who move forward and publish their radical or non-normative proposals spend significant time…
Continue ReadingUnsexing Breastfeeding
By Naomi Schoenbaum. Full Text. For half a century, constitutional sex equality doctrine has been combating harmful sex stereotypes by invalidating laws that treat women as caregivers and men as breadwinners. Yet decades after the constitutional sex equality revolution unsexed parenting roles, one area of parenting has escaped this doctrine’s exacting gaze: breastfeeding. In the…
Continue ReadingRethinking the Crime of Rioting
By Nick Robinson. Full Text. The fear of riots has long loomed large in the public imagination. This fear is at least partly justified. Riots can present unique challenges, both in the harm they can cause and in the government’s ability to control them. However, from the American colonies to the Civil Rights era, there…
Continue ReadingCitizenship Disparities
By Emily Ryo and Reed Humphrey. Full text. Citizenship is “nothing less than the right to have rights,” wrote Chief Justice Warren in his Perez v. Brownell dissent. Yet no study to date has been able to systematically investigate agency decisions to grant or deny citizenship in an administrative process called naturalization adjudication. This Article…
Continue Reading“Black First, Children Second”: Why Juvenile Life Without Parole Violates the Equal Protection Clause
By Avery Katz. Full Text. The United States is the only country in the world that allows imposition of juvenile life without parole (LWOP) sentences. This sentencing scheme was born out of the 1990’s “tough on crime” era, when society held the belief that juvenile offenders were “super-predators” and should face adult time for adult…
Continue ReadingOne Nation Subsidizing God: How the Implementation of the Paycheck Protection Program Revealed the Deteriorating Wall Between Church and State
By Elliot Ergeson. Full Text. The wall separating Church and State is at risk of collapse. The Religion Clauses of the United States Constitution act in tandem to en- sure that the freedom of religion is protected. Over the past three decades, however, the Supreme Court has steadily chipped away at the Establishment Clause while…
Continue ReadingReflections of a Supreme Court Commissioner
By William Baude. Full Text. The Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States was given a fundamentally frustrating task: bipartisan expert analysis of an institution whose greatest challengers are political. I served on that commission and offer my own views on Supreme Court reform: Court packing is lawful but unjustified. Term limits,…
Continue ReadingNonpartisan Supreme Court Reform and the Biden Commission
By Daniel Epps. Full Text. Prior to his election to the Presidency, Joe Biden promised to create a bipartisan commission that would consider and evaluate reforms to the Supreme Court of the United States. Shortly after his inauguration, he did just that, announcing a thirty-six-member Commission on the Supreme Court. Made up of distinguished scholars…
Continue ReadingA Hill to Die On: Federal Court Reform in the 2020s
Symposium Foreword by Daniel P. Suitor. Full Text. Is the Federal Judiciary broken and, if so, what can we do to fix it? To that end, Minnesota Law Review hosted its annual Symposium on March 25, 2022. Titled “A Hill to Die On: Federal Court Reform in the 2020s,” the event gathered some of the…
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