Articles, Essays, & Tributes
Animal Plaintiffs
By Matthew Liebman. Full Text. From endangered Hawaiian songbirds to dolphins deafened by Navy sonar to a neglected horse named Justice, nonhuman animals increasingly appear as plaintiffs in lawsuits alleging their subjection to extinction, abuse, and other injustices. These cases are far more than mere novelties or publicity stunts; they raise important jurisprudential questions about…
Article III and Indian Tribes
By Grant Christensen. Full Text. Among the most basic principles of our federal courts is that they are courts of limited jurisdiction, exercising only those powers delegated to them in Article III. In 1985 the Supreme Court inexplicably created an exception to this constitutional tenet and unilaterally declared a plenary judicial power to review the…
Contract Customization, Sex, and Islamic Law
By Rabea Benhalim. Full Text. Common law has historically deemed marriage and sex outside the right to contract. Yet, couples increasingly use contracts to provide legal rights to the unmarried in a variety of contexts ranging from same-sex relationships to surrogacy. Islamic law, on the other hand, has always conceived of marriage and sexual relationships…
Fixing Disparate Prosecution
Shima Baradaran Baughman and Jensen Lillquist. Full Text. America’s system of public prosecution is broken. Prosecutors who charge harshly or disparately are shielded from any consequences or recourse, and defendants are left with few options. This asymmetry in power results in prosecutors singlehandedly maintaining mass incarceration in the United States and leads to some states…
Platform Unions
By Charlotte Garden. Full Text. How should we regulate social media platforms to prevent harmful treatment of users? Regulators, advocates, and scholars have grappled with this problem for years. Many proposed solutions, ranging from improving privacy disclosures, to promoting competition between platforms, to requiring platforms to pay users for their data, are at best incomplete.…
Notes
Two Is Not Always Better than One: Concurrent Criminal Jurisdiction in Indian Country and the Withering of Tribal Sovereignty Following McGirt and Castro-Huerta
By Marina Berardino. Full Text. There is a violence epidemic plaguing the Native American population across the country. Native women are disproportionality victimized by both sexual and non-sexual violence—over eighty-five percent of Native women are expected to be victims of intimate partner violence, stalking, or sexual violence at some point in their life. Most often,…
The Good, the Bad, and the Unconstitutional: State Attempts to Solve the Defendant Class Action Problem
By Tyler Blackmon. Full Text. While the overwhelming majority of class action lawsuits filed in this country are plaintiff class actions—with named plaintiffs representing larger classes of plaintiffs—Rule 23 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure technically permits plaintiffs to sue a named defendant representing a class of defendants as well. However, such suits are…
Modern Statutory Interpolation: Correcting Court-Made Deficiencies in Title VII Law
By Jordan Boudreaux. Full Text. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is a monumentally important piece of legislation that ensures all Americans can enjoy a fair workplace, free of discrimination. Even so, the federal circuits remain split on a significant aspect of Title VII’s interpretation. Notably, in some circuits, employees can still…
Headnotes
Teaching “Is This Case Rightly Decided?”
By Steven Arrigg Koh. Full Text. “Is this case rightly decided?” From the first week of law school, every law student must grapple with this classroom question. This Essay argues that this vital question is problematically under-specified, creating imprecision in thinking about law. This Essay…
De Novo Blog
GRISHAM FLEXES HER GUNS: HOW TO FIRE BACK AT STATE EXECUTIVE ACTION
By: Sam Black, Volume 108 Staff Member On Friday, September 8th, New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham issued an emergency order suspending the right to carry firearms in public across Albuquerque and the surrounding county for at least thirty days in response to a spate…
WHEN TOTAL DOESN’T MEAN COMPLETE: WHY COURTS SHOULD ADOPT THE STATE CREATED NEED THEORY
By: Dylan Schepers, Volume 107 Staff Member Introduction It was the black of midnight in mid-March 2020. Four police officers approached the front door of an apartment in Louisville Kentucky prepared to execute a drug-related search warrant.[1] Breonna Taylor and her boyfriend Kenneth Walker were…
STATE CONSTITUTIONAL A(MN)DMENTS: NOW IS THE TIME FOR THE MINNESOTA LEGISLATURE TO AMEND THE MINNESOTA CONSTITUTION WITH THE EQUAL RIGHTS AMENDMENT
By: Evan Dale, Volume 107 Staff Member As the U.S. Supreme Court has retreated on its protection of individual rights,[1] state constitutions have taken on a renewed interest. This became as evident as ever in 2022. With the Supreme Court stripping the rights of women…
MIFPA WITHOUT ICWA: ASSESSING THE FATE OF THE MINNESOTA INDIAN FAMILY PRESERVATION ACT IF THE INDIAN CHILD WELFARE ACT IS OVERTURNED IN BRACKEEN v. HAALAND
By: Ryan Liston, Volume 107 Staff Member The United States and the colonies that predated it have a sordid past when it comes to the treatment of Indigenous people.[1] Among the countless examples of mistreatment, one particularly shameful practice was separating Indigenous children from their…
A TEST OF PRECEDENT, POLICY & HUMANITY: AN ANALYSIS OF FLORIDA’S PROPOSED EXPANSIONS TO STATE CAPITAL PUNISHMENT LAW
By: Adam Kolb, Volume 107 Staff Member The death penalty is primitive.[1] The death penalty is ineffective and garners increasing disapproval.[2] The death penalty—though constitutionally challenged and curtailed[3]—is legal in the United States.[4] Now, the extent of its legality is set to be tested yet…
THE CONFEDERATE STAKES OF AMERICAN LAW: THE PARTISAN RISK TO THE FULL FAITH AND CREDIT CLAUSE AND A CONSTITUTIONAL CRISIS IN THE MAKING
By: Jordan Boudreaux, Volume 107 Staff Member Article IV, Section 1 of the Constitution requires that “Full Faith and Credit shall be given in each State to the public Acts, Records, and judicial Proceedings of every other state.”[1] Conceptually, the Full Faith and Credit Clause…
FREE SPEECH ON CAMPUS SIDEWALKS: SUPREME COURT MAY TAKE AIM AT FIRST AMENDMENT FORUM BALANCING TEST IN KEISTER
By: John M. Stack, Volume 107 Staff Member Keister v. Bell is the latest major case petitioned to the Supreme Court to confront classifying the status of a public forum for First Amendment purposes.[1] While the Court is unlikely to grant certiorari, if they do…
I (DON’T) KNOW IT WHEN I SEE IT: THE DANGERS OF DEEPFAKES
By: Ryken Kreps, Vol. 107 Staff Member[1] Deepfakes are images, videos, or audio clips created by artificial intelligence that show people doing whatever the deepfake creator wants to show them doing with eerie accuracy.[2] Part I of this Post discusses the background of deepfakes and…
HABITABILITY DEFENSE ON THE FRITZ: RENT POSTING REQUIREMENTS AND CHALLENGES IN MINNESOTA
Lucy Dougherty, Volume 107 Staff Member When tenants face an eviction for non-payment of rent in Hennepin County, they may have an affirmative defense to the eviction action if the landlord has broken the covenant of habitability.[1] The covenant of habitability is a statutory right…
CLARITY AT A COST: HOW NEW REGULATIONS MAY PUT WELL-INTENTIONED GUN OWNERS AT RISK OF CIVIL AND CRIMINAL CHARGES
By: Nick Grossardt, Volume 107 Staff Member At the end of January 2023, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (BATFE) promulgated a final rule outlining a series of factoring criteria for regulating firearms with affixed “stabilizing braces.”[1] Various models of these braces had…
Thirty-Five Years of Inaction: The Unfulfilled Promise of the Medicaid Equal Access Provision
By Delaram Takyar. Full Text. In 1989, Congress amended the Social Security Act to ensure that Medicaid recipients would have the same access to medical providers as people covered by private insurance and Medicare. This was meant to remedy the wide disparities in access to…