Defining Common and Individual Issues in Class Actions: What a Reasonable Jury Could Do By Aaron D. Van Oort and John L. Rockenbach Full essay here. The distinction between common and individual issues is the single most important concept in the modern class action, and it is the one that most bedevils courts in practice.…

The Supreme Court’s Opinion in SEC v. Jarkesy Has the Potential To Be Extremely Destructive By Richard J. Pierce, Jr. Full essay here. In this essay, Professor Pierce describes the legal framework within which the Supreme Court decided whether an agency could adjudicate a class of disputes prior to its 2024 opinion in SEC. v…

BY CHENG-CHI (KIRIN) CHANG. Full essay here. Benefit corporation laws have gained traction as mechanisms to integrate societal and environmental objectives into business operations, yet they are arguably superfluous within the existing legal framework. The prevailing belief that corporations must prioritize shareholder wealth above all is not a legal imperative, as evidenced by the flexibility…

BY TERRELL CARTER and RACHEL LÓPEZ. Full text. Terrell Carter grew up only a stone’s throw from Drexel University, the institution of higher learning where the other coauthor of this Article, Rachel López, would find her academic home years later. Even as a child, Terrell remembers feeling like other institutions that were miles away, like…

By GILAT J. BACHAR. Full text. Should bystanders with credible knowledge about prospective harm owe a duty of care to future victims? This urgent question comes up in various contexts, from former employers who withhold information about a serial harasser to data brokers who are silent about stalkers that track personal information. Under established common…

By JONATHAN H. CHOI, AMY B. MONAHAN, AND DANIEL SCHWARCZ. Full text. We conducted the first randomized controlled trial to study the effect of AI assistance on human legal analysis. We randomly assigned law school students to complete realistic legal tasks either with or without the assistance of GPT-4, tracking how long the students took…

By ALEXANDRA B. KLASS & HANNAH WISEMAN. Full Text. Wildfires, weather extremes, and other conditions induced partially by climate change add urgency to the project of accelerating the clean energy transition from fossil fuels to zero-carbon energy infrastructure. Yet the hurdles to accomplishing such a massive industrial-scale transition are daunting. Indeed, large renewable energy generation…

By BENNETT CAPERS and GREGORY DAY. Full Text. Wealth inequality remains as wide, and as troubling, as it was a half-century ago. While scholars have offered various explanations, there is a contributor that has escaped serious scrutiny: state monopoly power. It is not just that there is a long history of states and municipalities using…

By SAMUEL BUISMAN. Full Text. The Seventh Circuit prohibits judges and attorneys from defining “beyond a reasonable doubt” to jurors. While United States v. Alt crystalized this prohibition in early 2023, the circuit has effectively banned definition of the phrase for much longer. Yet, a growing consensus of psychological research into the standard reveals that…

By ELISSA BOWLING. Full Text. The Thirteenth Amendment reads: “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” Yet, in contemporary American jails and prisons, pretrial detainees have been forced to perform…