Teaching Dissents
By Sherri Lee Keene. Full Text. Judges’ perspectives and attitudes—and even their biases and assumptions—naturally find their way into legal analysis and decision-making. Yet this reality is something that the language of opinions tends to deny. Court opinions are often written to sound authoritative and sure, making legal decisions seem purely logical and channeling a…
Continue ReadingLaw Students Left Behind: Law Schools’ Role in Remedying the Devastating Effects of Federal Education Policy
By Sandra L. Simpson. Full Text. Due to the unintended consequences of misdirected federal education policy, students come to law school with underdeveloped critical thinking and cognitive adaptability skills. As the products of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) and its progeny, students educated in the United States after 2002 excel at memorization and…
Continue ReadingWhat We Teach When We Teach Legal Analysis
By Susan A. McMahon. Full Text. Traditional legal education, especially in the first year, leaves students with the impression that law is neutral and objective, and their job, as lawyers, is to read cases, pull out rules, and sift facts into legal categories. This training contributes to a student’s sense that law is natural and…
Continue Reading“More than the Numbers”: Empirical Evidence of an Innovative Approach to Admissions
By Anahid Gharakhanian, Natalie Rodriguez, and Elizabeth A. Anderson. Full Text. “I am proof that your LSAT score does not define you; law schools need to understand that every student’s lived experience is unique. Thanks to Southwestern’s admissions process I was able to show that I’m more than the numbers on my application.” This third-year…
Continue ReadingLeaving Langdell Behind: Reimagining Legal Education for a New Era
Symposium Keynote by Judith A. Gundersen. Full Text. “[T]he time seems right to ask ourselves, legal educators and bar examiners, who have different but related roles in the law student to lawyer continuum: how can we best work both independently and in collaboration to ensure that tomorrow’s law- yers are ready to take on the…
Continue ReadingMinnesota Law Review, Volume 107 Symposium Foreword
By Joshua Gutzmann. Full Text. For most of us (the Editors of Volume 107 of the Minnesota Law Review), the summer before starting law school was characterized by a global pandemic and a racial reckoning. Like many Americans, we experienced a toxic mix of feelings of isolation, hopelessness, and even anger; and we yearned for…
Continue ReadingIn Defense of (Mental) Hearth and Home: Challenges to § 922(g)(4) in the Wake of New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n v. Bruen
By Zachary M. Robole. Full Text. Individually, discussions about mental illness and firearm possession are at the forefront of American discourse. Intriguingly, the intersection of the two issues produces provocative social and legal questions. 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(4) bans those who have been involuntarily committed to a mental institution from owning a firearm. This ban is…
Continue ReadingFreedom to Pray, Not to Protest
By Leah Reiss. Full Text. The Supreme Court has never definitively ruled on the constitutionality of curfews that target political activity. Historically, curfews have been very difficult to challenge. They suffer from mootness issues because they tend to be temporary in nature, so associated harms are also temporary. Likely as a result, challenges to curfews…
Continue ReadingData Breach Class Actions: How Article III Standing Analysis Should Evolve After TransUnion, LLC v. Ramirez
By Caleb A. Johnson. Full Text. Data breaches have become a common occurrence for many people in America. Companies retain consumers’ personal information (SSN, DOB, bank account, credit card, biometrics, etc.) to better serve the consumers as well as to improve their company’s bottom line. Hackers get into those databases to fraudulently use existing consumer…
Continue ReadingAntitrust Federalism and the Prison-Industrial Complex
By Gregory Day. Full Text. States are not only prolific monopolists but also virtually unaccountable. Consider the prison-industrial complex, where states force inmates to pay monopoly prices while suppressing competition for commissary items, phone services, medicine, and more. While the Sherman Act would often ban these types of practices, states are immune from antitrust scrutiny…
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