Note: A Merry-Go-Round of Metal and Manipulation: Toward a New Framework for Commodity Exchange Self-Regulation
By Samuel D. Posnick. Full text here. The 2013 revelation of Goldman Sachs’ unsavory aluminum warehousing practices led to public uproar and political backlash. In November 2014, Congress released a damning report detailing Wall Street’s involvement in numerous commodities markets and finding rampant manipulation. As a result, the Federal Reserve is reexamining its regulation of financial…
Continue ReadingNote: Remodeling “Model Aircraft”: Why Restrictive Language That Grounded the Unmanned Industry Should Cease To Govern It
By Maxwell Mensinger. Full text here. The notion of a “next frontier” is in perpetual flux. Our understanding thereof shifts towards those concepts with the potential for change and growth. A century ago, with the development of commercial flight, airspace seemed to qualify as the next frontier. Today, drone technology has revitalized this same interest in…
Continue ReadingNote: Social Group Semantics: The Evidentiary Requirements of “Particularity” and “Social Distinction” in Pro Se Asylum Adjudications
By Nicholas R. Bednar. Full text here. The Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) has turned the particular social group standard into a game of semantics. This Note argues that this game’s evidentiary requirements disfavor pro se asylum applicants by requiring sociological evidence—primarily in the form of expert testimony. An applicant applying for asylum on the basis…
Continue ReadingOutrageous and Irrational
By Jane R. Bambauer & Toni M. Massaro. Full text here. A wealth of scholarship comments on enumerated and unenumerated fundamental rights, such as freedom of speech, the right to marital privacy, and suspect classifications that trigger elevated judicial scrutiny. This Article discusses the other constitutional cases—the ones that implicate no fundamental right or suspect classification,…
Continue ReadingWhy Rape Should Not (Always) Be a Crime
By Katharine K. Baker. Full text here. This Article argues that the criminal law is simply not up to the task of policing a huge amount of sexual assault. The on-going initiative to curb the prevalence of sexual misconduct on college campuses abandons the criminal law and uses discrimination doctrine to dislodge the norms that criminal…
Continue ReadingRevitalizing Dormant Commerce Clause Review for Interstate Coordination
By Alexandra B. Klass & Jim Rossi. Full text here. Interstate coordination presents one of the most difficult challenges for American federalism as well as for energy markets and policy. Existing laws vest the approval of large-scale energy infrastructure projects such as interstate oil pipelines and high-voltage, interstate electric transmission lines with state and local levels…
Continue ReadingAgainst Jawboning
By Derek E. Bambauer. Full text here. Despite the trend towards strong protection of speech in U.S. Internet regulation, federal and state governments still seek to regulate online content. They do so increasingly through informal enforcement measures, such as threats, at the edge of or outside their authority—a practice this Article calls “jawboning.” The Article argues…
Continue ReadingBack to the Future? Legal Scholarship in the Progressive Era and Today
By Daniel A. Farber. Full text here. This Article introduces Volume 100 of the Minnesota Law Review. Like much of legal scholarship today, Issue 1 was deeply and unapologetically embedded in the concerns of its day, which was on the cusp between the Progressive Era and the outbreak of World War I. It is not uncommon…
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