Note: Dissent Without Disloyalty: Expanding the Free Speech Rights of Military Members Under the “General Articles” of the UCMJ
By Jason Steck. Full text here. Under Articles 133 and 134 of the UCMJ, military members enjoy far narrower free speech protections than civilian government employees. Even as courts have placed limits on the ability of the government to limit civilian employee speech under Pickering v. Board of Education, they have refused to limit the military’s…
Continue ReadingNote: Daubert Rises: The (Re)applicability of the Daubert Factors to the Scope of Forensics Testimony
By Geoffrey M. Pipoly. Full text here. “Forensics” is a broad term used to describe many techniques utilized by law enforcement for the purpose of gathering evidence and solving crimes. Fingerprinting, firearm and toolmark analysis, and shoeprint analysis are all examples forensic techniques. Although many forensics practitioners describe their fields as “science” or as “rooted in…
Continue ReadingNote: What Have I Opted Myself Into? Resolving the Uncertain Status of Opt-In Plaintiffs Prior to Conditional Certification in Fair Labor Standards Act Litigation
By Carl Engstrom. Full text here. Nearly all wage and hour cases are brought by multiple plaintiffs. This only makes sense—generally if one worker is not getting paid overtime, the same can be said of his or her co-workers. The effective functioning of the collective action device is therefore crucial to enforcing workers’ rights to a…
Continue ReadingLawyers, Not Widgets: Why Private-Sector Attorneys Must Unionize to Save the Legal Profession
By Melissa Mortazavi. Full text here. The Article argues that practical labor issues and ethical issues are inherently intertwined in the legal profession. Despite the widespread acknowledgment that there is an underlying tension between how private practice is conducted and the values lawyers hold, the issue of how to remedy modern legal practice ethically is misunderstood…
Continue ReadingWhen Copyright Law and Science Collide: Empowering Digitally Integrated Research Methods on a Global Scale
By Jerome H. Reichman & Ruth L. Okediji. Full text here. Automated knowledge discovery tools have become central to the scientific enterprise in a growing number of fields and are widely employed in the humanities as well. New scientific methods, and the evolution of entirely new fields of scientific inquiry, have emerged from the integration of…
Continue ReadingThat's Not Discrimination: American Beliefs and the Limits of Anti-Discrimination Law
By Katie R. Eyer. Full text here. Empirical studies have shown that discrimination litigants face difficult odds. Indeed, less than five percent of all discrimination plaintiffs achieve any form of litigated relief. These odds are far worse than those faced by virtually any other category of federal litigants and extend to every conceivable procedural juncture, from…
Continue ReadingBeyond Best Interests
By I. Glenn Cohen. Full text here. As Justice Douglas wrote in Skinner v. Oklahoma, procreation is one of the “basic civil rights of man.” Along with marriage it is “fundamental to the very existence and survival of the race” and the state’s interference with it “threatens to have subtle, far-reaching and devastating effects.” And yet…
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