Articles, Essays, & Tributes
Remembrance of and Tribute to Walter F. Mondale
By 30th Attorney General of Minnesota Keith Ellison. Full Text. This volume of Minnesota Law Review is dedicated to the memory of the Honorable Walter F. Mondale, former Vice President of the United States of America. A 1956 graduate of the University of Minnesota Law School and an editor of Minnesota Law Review Volume 39,
The Input Fallacy
By Talia B. Gillis. Full Text. Algorithmic credit pricing threatens to discriminate against protected groups. Traditionally, fair lending law has addressed such threats by scrutinizing inputs. But input scrutiny has become a fallacy in the world of algorithms. Using a rich dataset of mortgages, I simulate algorithmic credit pricing and demonstrate that input scrutiny fails
Contractual Depth
By Cathy Hwang & Matthew Jennejohn. Full Text. Who is the intended audience of a contract? A court, who may be called upon to resolve a dispute, is one audience. Another is commercial communities, who punish breach with reputational sanctions, per the longstanding literature on informal enforcement. This Article shows how modern contracts have more
Lifting Labor’s Voice: A Principled Path Toward Greater Worker Voice and Power Within American Corporate Governance
By Leo E. Strine, Jr., Aneil Kovvali & Oluwatomi O. Williams. Full Text. In view of the decline in gainsharing by corporations with American workers over the last forty years, advocates for American workers have expressed growing interest in allowing workers to elect representatives to corporate boards. Board level representation rights have gained appeal because
Patent Law’s Deference Paradox
By Paul R. Gugliuzza. Full Text. Courts frequently defer to the decisions of administrative agencies, particularly when the decision is thoroughly deliberated and within the agency’s realm of technical and legal expertise. Conversely, when an agency gives little thought to a matter or brings no special knowledge to bear, the agency gets little or no
Understanding Chilling Effects
By Jonathon W. Penney. Full Text. With digital surveillance and censorship on the rise, the amount of data available unprecedented, and corporate and governmental actors increasingly employing emerging technologies like artificial intelligence and facial recognition technology for surveillance and data analytics, concerns about “chilling effects,” that is, the capacity for these activities to “chill” or
Notes
Too Hot to Handle?: Native Advertising and the Firestone Dilemma
By Eliezer Joseph Silberberg. Full Text. Native advertisements are advertisements that mimic the format and content of unpaid-for content that surrounds them. Instead of interrupting the content being consumed, native advertisements become part of that content, and because of this unique format, consumers often want to engage with native advertisements. This reformulation of advertising has
Designer Minor: Creating a Better Legal Regime for Pediatric Cosmetic Procedures
By Hannah Oliason. Full Text. Each year, thousands of minors in the United States undergo elective cosmetic surgeries to “enhance” their appearances. In the case of young children, these surgeries are most often arranged by parents or guardians with little to no state oversight, despite the physical and psychological risks of such procedures. This Note
Headnotes
Racial Bias in Algorithmic IP
By Dan L. Burk. Full Text. Machine learning systems, a form of artificial intelligence (AI), are increasingly being deployed both for the creation of innovative works and the administration of intellectual property (IP) rights associated with those works. At the same time, evidence of racial bias in IP systems is manifest and growing. Legal scholars
Introduction to The Bremer-Kovacs Collection: Historic Documents Related to the Administrative Procedure Act of 1946 (HeinOnline 2021)
By Emily S. Bremer & Kathryn E. Kovacs. Full Text. Few statutes have a legislative history as rich, varied, and sprawling as the Administrative Procedure Act of 1946 (APA). In recent years, courts and scholars have shown increased interest in understanding this history. This is no mean feat. The APA’s history spans nearly two decades,
Sprinting a Marathon: Next Steps for Gender Equity in Criminal Law Employment
By Maryam Ahranjani. Full Text. In an era when women’s hard-fought and hard-earned participation in the workforce is in peril, the ABA Criminal Justice Section’s Women in Criminal Justice Task Force (TF) continues its groundbreaking work of documenting challenges in hiring, retention, and promotion of women criminal lawyers. Sprinting a Marathon follows up on the
Fighting Orthodoxy: Challenging Critical Race Theory Bans and Supporting Critical Thinking in Schools
By Joshua Gutzmann. Full Text. Fox News mentioned critical race theory (CRT) more than 1,900 times from April to mid-July of 2021, marking CRT as a new focus of Republicans and conservative donors and sparking a movement to ban teaching of the theory in schools. Nine states have already passed legislation intended to ban the
Me, Myself, and My Digital Double: Extending Sara Greene’s Stealing (Identity) From the Poor to the Challenges of Identity Verification
By Michele Estrin Gilman. Full Text. Identity is an essential part of the human condition. When one's identity is stolen or when a state rejects a citizen's identity, the consequences can be devastating to one's notion of selfhood as well as undermine their economic security. In Stealing (Identity) from the Poor, Sara Greene explores the
K Is for Contract―Why Is It, Though? A K’s Study on the Origins, Persistence and Propagation of Legal Konventions
By Hanjo Hamann. Full Text. Just like Supreme Court Justices, law school students in the United States almost universally abbreviate the word “contract” using the capital letter “K.” Despite this consensus, no one ever sought to explain why a word that starts with “C” should get shortened to “K” instead. This Essay investigates this question.
Chilling Effects and Unequal Subjects: A Response to Jonathon Penney’s Understanding Chilling Effects
By Karen Levy. Full Text. The mark of a strong theoretical argument is that it opens our minds to new empirical questions. In his generative article Understanding Chilling Effects, Jonathon Penney provides a persuasive and nuanced argument for interpreting chilling effects through the lens of social conformity, rather than self-censorship of lawful conduct. Penney’s own
Introduction to The Bremer-Kovacs Collection: Historic Documents Related to the Administrative Procedure Act of 1946 (HeinOnline 2021)
By Emily S. Bremer & Kathryn E. Kovacs. Full Text. Few statutes have a legislative history as rich, varied, and sprawling as the Administrative Procedure Act of 1946 (APA). In recent years, courts and scholars have shown increased interest in understanding this history. This is no mean feat. The APA’s history spans nearly two decades,
K Is for Contract―Why Is It, Though? A K’s Study on the Origins, Persistence and Propagation of Legal Konventions
By Hanjo Hamann. Full Text. Just like Supreme Court Justices, law school students in the United States almost universally abbreviate the word “contract” using the capital letter “K.” Despite this consensus, no one ever sought to explain why a word that starts with “C” should get shortened to “K” instead. This Essay investigates this question.
De Novo Blog
IT TAKES TURNER: HOW STORIES SHAPE US By: Maisie Baldwin, Volume 101 Staff Member Anyone who’s been on any form of social media since early 2015 has likely read Brock Turner’s name. His name has come up in a variety of contexts: evidence of the continued existence of white privilege,[1] outrage regarding rape culture,[2] discussion…
WHOLE WOMAN’S HEALTH V. HELLERSTEDT: A REAFFIRMATION OF REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS By: Payton George, Volume 101 Staff Member On June 27, 2016, the Supreme Court issued its ruling in the case of Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt.[1] In an opinion heralded by pro-choice supporters,[2] Justice Breyer, joined by Justices Kagan, Sotomayor, Kennedy, and Ginsburg (who issued…
DOES MOTHER NATURE GET A VOTE? OUR NEXT PRESIDENT COULD IMPACT AMERICA’S INVOLVEMENT IN THE PARIS AGREEMENT ON CLIMATE CHANGE By: Taylor Mayhall, Volume 101 Staff Member Last December, representatives from 195 countries assembled in Paris to converse about a subject which they all felt was worthy of attention on a global scale: climate change.[1]…
DAN’S [F]LAW: STATUTORY FAILURE TO ENFORCE ETHICAL BEHAVIOR IN CLINICAL DRUG TRIALS By: Noah Lewellen,* Volume 99 Articles Submission Editor I. INTRODUCTION Paul, a sophomore at the University of Minnesota, bursts into a lecture hall, loudly claims to see monsters sitting in the seats, and offers his services in slaying them. The police are called,…
EVERY DOG CAN HAVE HIS DAY IN COURT: THE USE OF ANIMALS AS DEMONSTRATIVE EXHIBITS By: Kyle R. Kroll, Volume 100 Online Managing Editor In Bhogaita v. Altamonte, the Eleventh Circuit recently decided whether to allow a dog in the courtroom as a demonstrative exhibit.[1] Although the case presented many serious issues regarding the Fair…
