Articles, Essays, & Tributes
Racial Disparities in Crime-Based Removal Proceedings
By EMILY RYO, IAN PEACOCK, WESTON LEY, and CHRISTOPHER LEVESQUE. Full Text. Whether and to what extent racial minorities experience harsher treatment or face worse outcomes in court are questions of fundamental importance for any justice system. Questions of racial inequality are especially salient in the context of removal proceedings that are triggered by immigrants’…
Toward a Dynamic View of Corporate Purpose
By DOROTHY LUND. Full Text. Scholars debating the corporation’s role in society generally advance the view that there is only one desirable orientation for corporations and their management. Specifically, proponents of a stakeholder governance model contend that focusing management on a broad set of corporate constituents maximizes overall welfare, while advocates of a shareholder-centric directive…
Forced Arbitration in the Fortune 500
By DAVID HORTON. Full Text. As the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA) nears its centennial, its most controversial byproduct—forced arbitration—has entered uncharted territory. For years, companies exploited their power over fine print to produce ambitious dispute resolution regimes. This trend reached its apex in the 2010s, when the Supreme Court held that arbitration is incompatible with…
Suspecting with Data
By MARY D. FAN. Full Text. Our pooled consumer big data, such as the pictures we post or the location history and keyword search trails we leave, are generating new ways to solve crimes. Much of the commentary on big data search strategies such as keyword, geofence, and facial recognition searches fixate on Fourth Amendment…
Against Attorney General Self-Referral in Immigration Law
By STELLA BURCH ELIAS and PAUL GOWDER. Full Text. This Article advances a rule-of-law-based critique of the Attorney General’s immigration self-referral power. We argue that the Attorney General’s self-referral and review power over pending immigration proceedings allows an appointed Executive Branch official to engage in unchecked and unilateral lawmaking and, therefore, should be abolished. Scholars…
Notes
Definite Convictions: United States v. Alt and the Seventh Circuit’s Prohibition on Defining “Beyond a Reasonable Doubt”
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…
As Punishment for Arrests: Involuntary Servitude Under the Housekeeping Exception to the Thirteenth Amendment
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…
May Contain Peanuts, Eggs, and a “Natural” Solution: How to Challenge Food Manufacturers’ Harmful Use of Precautionary Allergen Labels
By JJ MARK. Full Text. Food allergies are one of the most pressing health issues of our time. Around thirty-three million Americans currently have food allergies, thirteen million of which are severe or life-threatening. These numbers continue to increase at alarming rates, with an estimated one in thirteen children being diagnosed with food allergies every…
Protecting Minnesota’s Whistleblowers: Ending the Application of McDonnell Douglas to the Minnesota Whistleblower Act
By EDDIE C. BRODY. Full Text. Whistleblowers are critical to society, speaking out to protect the public from corporate and government wrongdoing. Employers often retaliate against employees who speak out, attempting to deter employees from blowing the whistle. Whistleblower protection statutes seek to protect those who suffer from retaliation, providing a judicial remedy for whistleblowers.…
Forgotten Victims: Exploring the Right to Family Integrity as a Form of Redress for Children of Wrongfully Convicted Parents
By EMILY BYERS OLSON. Full Text. Almost five million children in the United States have had a parent incarcerated at some point in their lives. Children who grow up with an incarcerated parent face immense challenges, including mental health issues, problems at school, economic hardship, and the propensity to participate in criminal activity themselves. When…
“Key” Tam: Giving Teeth to Federal Data Security Enforcement
By BRANDON STOTTLER. Full Text. Data breaches wreak havoc on data-handling entities, weigh heavily on the minds and hearts of breach victims, and elude the efforts of regulators and scholars alike. Since 2005, declared the “Year of the Data Breach,” every year has seen an increase in the number and impact of breaches. Data breaches…
150 Years of Detox: How Inadequate Dietary Supplement Regulation Undermines Consumer Safety in the Weight Loss Industry
By CHLOE CHAMBERS. Full Text. Prior to the passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906, the American food and drug market was a proverbial “wild west,” fraught with charlatans, snake oil salesmen, and manufacturers cutting costs at the expense of consumers. The Pure Food and Drug Act, along with the Food, Drug,…
Asking the Right Questions: An Emergency Action Exception to the Major Questions Doctrine
By MARK HAGER. Full Text. Congress delegates broad discretionary power to administrative agencies to respond to emergency situations, taking advantage of their extraordinary expertise and response speed. Yet these delegations are defined by a judicial rule known as the “Major Questions Doctrine.” The Major Questions Doctrine seeks to protect the separation of powers by preventing…
Who Watches the Watchers?: FINRA, Self-Regulatory Organizations, and the Next Evolution of Appointment and Removal Jurisprudence
By HANS M. FRANK-HOLZNER. Full Text. There are private, non-profit corporations exercising significant executive power. Known as self-regulatory organizations (SROs) these non-governmental organizations make binding rules and sometimes enforce statutory law governing massive industries. One such SRO is the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA). In 2022 alone, FINRA permanently barred 227 individuals and suspended 328…
Building Bridges: Queer Rights in and out of the Courts
By KAZ LANE. Full Text. It is unclear whether the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment prohibits states from differentiating between people based solely on their sexual orientation and/or gender identity. This Note analyzes the Supreme Court’s tiers of scrutiny—rational basis review, intermediate scrutiny, and strict scrutiny—to argue that a new suspect class is…
Headnotes
Commodification, Precarity, and Identity: A Review of Professor Bridget Crawford’s Taxing Sugar Babies
By TESSA DAVIS. Full text.
The Liminality of Transactional Relationships
By VICTORIA J. HANEMAN. Full Text.
Tax Talk and Taxing Sugar Babies
By BLAINE G. SAITO. Full Text.
John Roberts’ Supreme Court: The Triumph of Partisanship and Ideology Over Precedent
By DAVID SCHULTZ & JACOB BOURGAULT. Full Text.
Critical Curriculum Design: Teaching Law in an Age of Rising Authoritarianism
By RACHEL LÓPEZ. Full Text.
A Great American Gun Myth: Race and the Naming of the “Saturday Night Special”
By Jennifer L. Behrens and Joseph Blocher. Full Text. At a time when Second Amendment doctrine has taken a strongly historical turn and gun rights advocates have increasingly argued that gun regulation itself is historically racist, it is especially important that historical claims about race…
Refining the Dangerousness Standard in Felon Disarmament
By Jamie G. McWilliam. Full Text. To some, 18 U.S.C. 922(g) is a necessary safeguard that keeps guns out of the hands of dangerous persons. To others, it strips classes of non-violent people of their natural and constitutional rights. This statute makes it a crime…
“Proven” Safety Regulations: Massachusetts 1805 Proving Law As Historical Analogue for Modern Gun Safety Laws
By Billy Clark. Full Text. Concerned by the public health threats posed by certain firearms, the Massachusetts legislature enacts a law to set safety standards for firearms in the Commonwealth. Firearm dealers across the State, including some of the leading manufacturers of the day, not…
Curbing Gun Violence Under PLCAA and Bruen: State Attorney General–Driven Solutions to the Surging Epidemic
By David Lamb. Full Text. At the same time that the deadly toll of gun violence continues to grow in the U.S., now taking nearly 50,000 lives per year, federal lawmakers and courts have increasingly constrained government authorities’ tools for fighting the epidemic. Pursuant to…
De Novo Blog
WHY DOES THE UNITED STATES FAIL TO ADDRESS THE GREEN SUKUK AS AN IDEAL VEHICLE FOR ENVIRONMENT-FORWARD PROJECTS?
By: Sarah Snebold, Volume 105 Staff Member Within a globalized economy, it would be foolish to turn a blind eye to Islamic finance and its respective market. Islamic finance presents the ability to tap into emerging markets within the Middle East, Africa and Asia.[1] Citigroup…
A GALAXY NOT SO FAR AWAY: THE STATES STRIKE BACK AT BIG TECH OVER GOOGLE AND FACEBOOK’S ALLEGED “JEDI BLUE” PRICE-FIXING SCHEME
By: Avery Bennett, Volume 105 Staff Member INTRODUCTION Recently, mounting scrutiny and criticism of technology companies’ business practices have led to well publicized calls for investigations and probes into potentially anticompetitive behavior.[1] Amid these calls to curb the industry’s power, state officials have revealed a…
PRESERVING THE E-MARKET OF IDEAS: HOW A NARROW “RIGHT TO BE FORGOTTEN” EXCEPTION TO SECTION 230 CAN COMBAT DIGITAL HARASSMENT WITHOUT DECIMATING DIGITAL DISCOURSE
By: Jordan Francis, Volume 105 Staff Member Depending on who you ask, we have either handed the levers of public discourse over to the maleficent interests of “Big Tech,” thereby making the Mark Zuckerbergs of the world the arbiters of truth and justice, or we…
PATENT PLEDGING PROBLEMS: THE OPEN COVID PLEDGE AND LONG-TERM SOLUTIONS TO LICENSING INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY IN GLOBAL EMERGENCIES
By: Marra Clay, Volume 105 Staff Member The American intellectual property system has a single primary goal: to encourage creators to make new things that benefit society in exchange for an exclusive right to use and license the creation for a limited time.[1] The United…
A POLL TAX BY ANY OTHER NAME: HOW THE ELEVENTH CIRCUIT ERRED IN UPHOLDING FLORIDA’S PAY-TO-VOTE REQUIREMENT AND WHAT COMES NEXT
By: Dina Kostrow, Volume 105 Staff Member Until recently, Florida was one of only a few states in which citizens convicted of a felony permanently lost the right to vote.[1] In 2018, it looked like the tide was turning. A 64.55% super-majority of Florida voters…
CRUEL AND UNUSUAL: THE SUPREME COURT’S FAILURE TO PROTECT DEATH ROW PRISONERS DURING THE GOVERNMENT’S RECENT RUSH OF EXECUTIONS
By: Julia Potach, Volume 105 Staff Member On July 14, 2020, the federal government executed death row prisoner, Daniel Lewis Lee, and carried out its first federal execution in 17 years.[1] One year earlier, former Attorney General William Barr cleared the way for the government…
RITTMANN V. AMAZON.COM: A WRONG TURN FOR GIG WORKERS LOOKING FOR CLARITY IN THE FEDERAL ARBITRATION ACT
By Zach Krenz, Volume 105 Staffer The Federal Arbitration Act (FAA) makes arbitration clauses enforceable. Section 2, which outlines the breadth of the Act, states that arbitration provisions in contracts “involving commerce . . . shall be valid, irrevocable, and enforceable. . . .”[1] Section…
GETTING WHAT’S DUE: INCARCERATED INDIVIDUALS AND COVID STIMULUS PAYMENTS
By: Mollie Wagoner, Vol. 105 Staff Member In the wake of the pandemic, Congress issued two rounds of payments, commonly referred to as stimulus checks, to a large swath of the American public in an attempt to offset the economic struggles caused by COVID. While…
THE UBIQUITY OF SOCIAL MEDIA DICTATES THE RESULT: WHY THE SUPREME COURT SHOULD AFFIRM THE THIRD CIRCUIT IN MAHANOY AREA SCHOOL DISTRICT V. B.L. AS A MATTER OF NON-DISCRIMINATION
By: Miriam Solomon, Volume 105 Staff Member In B.L. v. Mahanoy Area School District, the plaintiff, a sophomore in high school, was removed from the school cheerleading team after the team coaches learned of a post B.L. made on Snapchat. After participating on the school’s…
THE CASE FOR A CONSTITUTIONAL CHANGE TO TRANSFORM BLACK EDUCATION IN MINNESOTA
Brandie Burris, Volume 105 Staff Member and Incoming EIC for Volume 106 INTRODUCTION Although elected officials and community leaders regularly celebrate Minnesota’s recognition as a leader in public education,[1] these awards and statements hide the true picture.[2] In reality, Minnesota’s public schools, even in…
