By Ted Sampsell-Jones. Full text here. Criminal defendants have the constitutional right to choose between testifying and remaining silent at trial. Within that broad constitutional framework, many legal rules affect the defendant’s decision. Some rules burden testimony and encourage silence, while others burden silence and encourage testimony. There is no way for the state to be…

By Glen Staszewski. Full text here. This Article explains that elected officials are not politically accountable for their specific policy decisions in the manner that is typically envisioned by modern public law. It claims, however, that public officials in a democracy can be held deliberatively accountable by a requirement or expectation that they give reasoned explanations…

By Fred C. Zacharias. Full text here. The American legal profession is highly regulated. Lawyers are governed by state-enforced professional codes, supervised by courts, and constrained by civil liability rules, civil and criminal statutes, and administrative standards. Nevertheless, commentators and various actors in the legal system continue to conceptualize law as a “self-regulated profession.” The…

By Eugene Kontorovich. Full text here. The United States routinely apprehends foreign drug traffickers in international waters. It prosecutes many of them under the Maritime Drug Law Enforcement Act, which allows for jurisdiction even over foreign-flagged vessels with no demonstrable intent of bringing their cargo to the United States. This assertion of universal jurisdiction—a doctrine generally…