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
Minnesota Supreme Court Elections
MINNESOTA SUPREME COURT ELECTIONS: CONSIDERING CONCERNS AND CRITICISMS By: Sara Lewenstein, Volume 101 Staff Member On, Tuesday, August 9, 2016, 173,884 voters turned out for primary elections in Minnesota.[1] In some districts, the only item on the ballot was a statewide election for a seat…
It Takes Turner
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…
Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt
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,…
Does Mother Nature Get a Vote?
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…
Dan’s Flaw
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…
Case Comment: Bhogaita v. Altamonte
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]…
Revisiting Water Bankruptcy
REVISITING WATER BANKRUPTCY IN CALIFORNIA’S FOURTH YEAR OF DROUGHT By Olivia Moe, Volume 100Managing Editor This spring, as “extreme” to “exceptional” drought stretched across most of California—indicating that a four-year streak of drought was not about to resolve itself[1]—Governor Jerry Brown issued an unprecedented order…
Defying Auer Deference
DEFYING AUER DEFERENCE: SKIDMORE AS A SOLUTION TO CONSERVATIVE CONCERNS IN PEREZ v. MORTGAGE BANKERS ASSOCIATION By: Nicholas R. Bednar, Volume 100 Lead Articles Editor* On March 9, 2015, the Supreme Court of the United States handed down its decision in Perez v. Mortgage Bankers…
Patent Reform Primer
WHAT’S UNDER THE BRIDGE? A PATENT REFORM PRIMER By Ann E. Motl, Volume 99 Online Managing Editor Just a few years after passing the most sweeping changes in patent law since 1952, Congress is considering patent reform again.[1] Whereas the America Invents Act of 2011…
Rumble v. Fairview Health
RUMBLE V. FAIRVIEW HEALTH SERVICES: FEDERAL JUDGE HOLDS THAT THE AFFORDABLE CARE ACT’S FRANKENSTEIN CIVIL RIGHTS PROVISION PROTECTS TRANSGENDER INDIVIDUALS By: Leah Tabbert, Volume 99 Staff Member The federal judiciary has spent years teasing apart and examining the many provisions of the Patient Protection and…
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…