In 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…
Continue ReadingAutomated Agencies
By Joshua D. Blank and Leigh Osofsky. Full Text. When individuals have questions about federal benefits, services, and legal rules, they increasingly seek help from government chatbots, virtual assistants, and other automated tools. Most scholars who have studied artificial intelligence and federal government agencies have not focused on the government’s use of technology to offer…
Continue ReadingThe Public Stakes of Consumer Law: The Environment, the Economy, Health, Disinformation, and Beyond
By Rory Van Loo. Full Text. Consumer law has a conflicted and narrow identity. It is most immediately a form of business law, governing market transactions between people and companies. Accordingly, the microeconomic analysis of markets is the dominant influence on consumer law. But consumer law is often described as, and assumed to be about,…
Continue ReadingThe Law Enforcement Lobby
By Zoë Robinson and Stephen Rushin. Full Text. The law enforcement lobby represents one of the most important and undertheorized barriers to criminal justice reform. We define the law enforcement lobby as the constellation of entrenched actors within the justice system—particularly police unions, correctional officer unions, and prosecutor associations—that exert an outsized role in policy…
Continue ReadingTea and Donuts
By Derek E. Bambauer and Robert W. Woods. Full Text. U.S. trademark law often permits simultaneous use of the same brand by multiple entities. Its approach to deciding when and how this concurrent use is permissible has become antiquated, rooted in outdated assumptions about trade and telecommunications. By using the physical location of mark-users as…
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