Articles, Essays, & Tributes
Bankruptcy as a National Security Risk
By JASON JIA-XI WU. Full Text. Defense contractors lie at the heart of the U.S. national security regime. Each year, over half of the federal defense budget is allocated to contracts outsourcing military operations, projects, and services to private companies. However, defense outsourcing carries a ticking time bomb: mounting private debt. Today, the defense industry…
The Innocence Trap
By CAITLIN GLASS & JULIAN GREEN. Full Text. What makes a conviction wrongful? Developments in DNA science have led to a wave of exonerations over the past thirty years, revealing sources of error in the criminal legal process. Innocence organizations proliferated to represent people whose convictions could be overturned by newly discovered evidence. This is…
Regulatory History and Judicial Review
By TODD PHILLIPS & ANTHONY MOFFA. Full Text. The Administrative Procedure Act (APA) requires federal agencies to simply “incorporate in the rules adopted a concise general statement of their basis and purpose” after they receive comments from the public, and the Supreme Court ruled in Overton Park that courts are to adjudicate whether rules are…
The Crisis in U.S. Cancer Care: Law, Markets, and Privatization
By DANIEL G. AARON. Full Text. Cancer is surging among youth and young adults in the United States, yet, instead of public regulation addressing its root causes, we have outsourced the management of cancer to the private sector. A suite of laws, embodying faith that corporations will cure cancer, has subsidized the cancer biomedical enterprise…
The Poly Problem in Zoning: Redefining “Family” for a Changing Society
By ARIC SHORT & TANYA PIERCE. Full Text. Single-family zoning has long dictated not only where people may live but also with whom. Although extensively critiqued for perpetuating racial and economic exclusion, these laws also privilege relationships defined by blood, marriage, or adoption and marginalize nontraditional families. This Article focuses on a particularly overlooked group:…
Notes
Waging the Battle for Society’s Soul: The Constitutionality of Juvenile Transfer Legislation in the Wake of Jones v. Mississippi
By LOGAN KNUTSON. Full Text. Trying juvenile defendants as adults is a cruel, yet enduring practice in U.S. criminal law. If convicted, these youthful offenders face brutal conditions in adult prison and a lifelong stigma. Although these devastating consequences of conviction are readily apparent, juvenile transfer is insidious even absent a prison sentence or criminal…
The Skidmore Compromise: Interpreting Skidmore as a Tiebreaker to Preserve Judicial Wisdom in the Era of Loper Bright
By MITCHELL ZAIC. Full Text. ‘Law must be stable, and yet it cannot stand still.’ Here is the great antinomy confronting us at every turn. Rest and motion, unrelieved and unchecked, are equally destructive. The law, like human kind, if life is to continue, must find some path of compromise. – Judge Cardozo In the…
Headnotes
Volume 110: Fall Issue
Exceptional Cases
By EMILY CAUBLE. Full Text.
Machine Gun Funk: The Unusual Analysis of “Dangerous and Unusual”
By GREGORY S. PARKS & VIVIAN BOLEN. Full Text.
Nipping it in the Bud: The Promise and Perils of Tort Litigation in Addressing the Health Harms of High-THC Products
By REBEKAH NINAN. Full Text.
Volume 108: Symposium Supplement
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
NO PLACE LIKE HOME . . . UNLESS YOU CAN’T GET IN: THE LACK OF NON-DELIVERY PROTECTIONS FOR MINNESOTA TENANTS
By Cheyenna González Pilsner, Volume 108 Staff Member On August 2, 2023, Identity, a new housing complex near the University of Minnesota, notified its tenants they would be unable to move in on the lease-given day of August 27, 2023, citing construction delays.[1] This notice…
MICHIGAN’S NEW POINT OF NO RETURN: EVOLVING AGE RESTRICTIONS ON MANDATORY LIFE WITHOUT PAROLE
By Chad Berryman, Volume 108 Staff Member In July 2022, the Michigan Supreme Court decided People v. Parks, in which it held that mandatory life without parole sentences for eighteen-year-olds convicted of first-degree murder violate the Michigan Constitution’s prohibition of cruel or unusual punishment.[1] This ruling…
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…
