Articles, Essays, & Tributes
Client-Centered Legal Education and Licensing
By Deborah Jones Merritt. Full Text. Clients are central to law practice, yet they play a limited role in both legal education and licensing. This article challenges legal educators and bar examiners to become more client-centered. The article draws upon empirical data demonstrating the importance of client-related, hands-on skills in law practice, and then outlines
Modern Diploma Privilege: A Path Rather Than a Gate
By Catherine Martin Christopher. Full Text. This Article proposes a modern diploma privilege—a licensure framework that allows state licensure authorities to identify what competencies are expected of first-year attorneys, then partner with law schools to assess those competencies. Freed from the format and timing of a bar exam, schools can assess a broader range of
Minnesota Law Review, Volume 107 Symposium Foreword
By Joshua Gutzmann. Full Text. For most of us (the Editors of Volume 107 of the Minnesota Law Review), the summer before starting law school was characterized by a global pandemic and a racial reckoning. Like many Americans, we experienced a toxic mix of feelings of isolation, hopelessness, and even anger; and we yearned for
Leaving Langdell Behind: Reimagining Legal Education for a New Era
Symposium Keynote by Judith A. Gundersen. Full Text. "[T]he time seems right to ask ourselves, legal educators and bar examiners, who have different but related roles in the law student to lawyer continuum: how can we best work both independently and in collaboration to ensure that tomorrow’s law- yers are ready to take on the
“More than the Numbers”: Empirical Evidence of an Innovative Approach to Admissions
By Anahid Gharakhanian, Natalie Rodriguez, and Elizabeth A. Anderson. Full Text. “I am proof that your LSAT score does not define you; law schools need to understand that every student’s lived experience is unique. Thanks to Southwestern’s admissions process I was able to show that I’m more than the numbers on my application.” This third-year
What We Teach When We Teach Legal Analysis
By Susan A. McMahon. Full Text. Traditional legal education, especially in the first year, leaves students with the impression that law is neutral and objective, and their job, as lawyers, is to read cases, pull out rules, and sift facts into legal categories. This training contributes to a student’s sense that law is natural and
Law Students Left Behind: Law Schools’ Role in Remedying the Devastating Effects of Federal Education Policy
By Sandra L. Simpson. Full Text. Due to the unintended consequences of misdirected federal education policy, students come to law school with underdeveloped critical thinking and cognitive adaptability skills. As the products of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) and its progeny, students educated in the United States after 2002 excel at memorization and
Teaching Dissents
By Sherri Lee Keene. Full Text. Judges’ perspectives and attitudes—and even their biases and assumptions—naturally find their way into legal analysis and decision-making. Yet this reality is something that the language of opinions tends to deny. Court opinions are often written to sound authoritative and sure, making legal decisions seem purely logical and channeling a
Secondary Courses Taught by Secondary Faculty: A (Personal) Call to Fully Integrate Skills Faculty and Skills Courses into the Law School Curriculum Ahead of the NextGen Bar Exam
By O.J. Salinas. Full Text. This Essay focuses on the disconnect between what law schools say they value and who they value. The Essay highlights how law faculty and administrators often carry a survivorship bias that may prevent them from fully acknowledging or accepting that the law school experience may be challenging and unwelcoming for
Dethroning Langdell
By Beth Hirschfelder Wilensky. Full Text. What if we are teaching law entirely wrong? We fill our syllabi with appellate court opinions—even though very little of what most attorneys do involves reading these opinions to learn foundational legal doctrine. We cold call on students—even though most circumstances in which attorneys talk about the law bear
Notes
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
Freedom 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
Data 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
Headnotes
Tattoos, Norms, and Implied Licenses
By Aaron Perzanowski. Full Text. This Essay considers the legal questions raised by a recent flurry of tattoo copyright disputes and their intersection with industry norms. In particular, Perzanowski argues that public displays, reproductions, derivative works, and other uses of tattoo designs fall within the scope of a broad implied license when they are employed
The Ethics of Abortion Ban Exceptions: Is the “Life-Threatening” Exception Threatening Lives?
By Mary E. Fleming. Full Text. Forty-three states have laws that outlaw abortion except when necessary to save the life of the mother. The exact language used in each state’s respective law varies, but for ease, this Essay will refer to all variations as “life-threatening” exceptions to abortion prohibitions. Prior to 2022, issues with life-threatening
Interstate Cannabis Compacts: The Road to a Regional Legal Cannabis Economy
By Michael J.K.M. Kinane. Full Text. Since the passage of the Controlled Substances Act in 1970, cannabis has been a Schedule I drug. Yet twenty-one states, two territories, and the District of Columbia have legalized recreational cannabis, and even more have legalized it for medical use. Despite Supreme Court precedent holding the conduct of these
The Battle for the Soul of the GDPR: Clashing Decisions of Supervisory Authorities Highlight Potential Limits of Procedural Data Protection
By Jordan Francis. Full Text. For privacy professionals, 2023 got off to a big start as the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) announced €390 million in fines against Meta Platforms Ireland Limited (“Meta”) for General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) violations by its services Facebook and Instagram. Meta is no stranger to GDPR enforcement, having accumulated
De Novo Blog
By: Carly Heying, Volume 107 Staff Member On January 13, 2023, after urging by the U.S. Solicitor General and Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa),[1] the Supreme Court agreed to take up a pair of consolidated False Claims Act cases addressing “whether and when a defendant’s contemporaneous subjective understanding or beliefs about the lawfulness of its conduct…
By: Dahlia Wilson, Volume 107 Staff Member In the 2022–23 term, the Supreme Court is faced with two seminal cases regarding universities’ uses of “affirmative action”—a.k.a. the consideration of race—in their admissions practices. Both Students for Fair Admissions v. University of North Carolina[1] and Students for Fair Admissions v. President & Fellows of Harvard College[2]…
By: Lucy Chin, Volume 107 Staff Member A small minority of the 1.3 million lawyers in the country engage in work that explicitly concerns community-based advocacy and movement lawyering.[1] And yet, our profession—like most in the past few years—has been unable to avoid confronting fundamental questions about our role in social justice movements.[2] In the…
By: Toph Beach, Volume 107 Staff Member On June 23, 2022, the Supreme Court decided New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, striking down a New York firearm restriction and pioneering a new test for Second Amendment cases.[1] Under Bruen, gun regulations must be “consistent with this Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.”[2]…
By: Chelsea M. Trudgeon, Volume 107 Staff Member I. MINNESOTA SUPREME COURT RULINGS In October 2021, the Minnesota Supreme Court issued decisions in Musta v. Mendota Heights Dental Center[1] and Bierbach v. Digger’s Polaris[2] addressing reimbursement of medical marijuana under workers’ compensation claims.[3] Under the Minnesota Workers’ Compensation Act, an employer is liable for an…
