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Teaching “Is This Case Rightly Decided?”

By Steven Arrigg Koh | April 15, 2024

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 thus advocates that law professors should present students with a…

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Headnote

A Great American Gun Myth: Race and the Naming of the “Saturday Night Special”

By Jennifer L. Behrens and Joseph Blocher | May 29, 2024

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 and guns be taken seriously and vetted appropriately. In this…

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Headnote

Erasing Racial Harms in CFPB v. Community Financial Services Association

By Callan Showers | May 29, 2024

By Callan Showers. Full Text. Professor Allan Freeman’s “perpetrator perspective” explains the normative American legal framework that casts racism as an intentional deviation from an otherwise neutral system. Freeman describes the perpetrator perspective as a negative, remedial dimension casting discrimination as an isolated action by a perpetrator onto a victim. By conflating the concept of…

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Headnote

Should Courts Make It Personal? Virtue-Dependent Doctrine and the Law of Executive Power

By Michael Coenen | May 29, 2024

By Michael Coenen. Full Text. With The Virtuous Executive, Professor Alan Rozenshtein has given us an impressive and wide-ranging analysis of the relevance of Presidential character to the law of executive power. The article’s central claim is straightforward: The Constitution reflects a “commitment to proper presidential character,” and scholars of and participants within the U.S.…

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Headnote

Private-Law Attorneys General

By Molly Shaffer Van Houweling | May 29, 2024

By Molly Shaffer Van Houweling. Full Text. The Constitution empowers Congress to “promote the progress of science and useful arts by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.” The founding-era Congress quickly exercised this power by enacting copyright and patent laws that track the constitutional…

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Headnote

Twins at Bat(son), Strikes Are Out: Minnesota’s Opportunity to Restore Batson v. Kentucky by Eliminating Peremptory Strikes

By Samuel Buisman | May 29, 2024

By Samuel Buisman. Full Text. While the Supreme Court’s decision in Batson v. Kentucky is widely hailed by scholars and jurists alike as a triumph of American egalitarianism, time and trial have unmasked its protections as a paper tiger. Despite its purported protections against racially and sexually discriminatory peremptory juror strikes, the Court’s abysmal standard…

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Headnote

American Fiction: Overturning the Doctrine of Immigration Entry Fiction as Established in Shaughnessy v. Mezei

By Dahlia Wilson | May 29, 2024

By Dahlia Wilson. Full Text. In 1886, the Supreme Court decided a case called Yick Wo v. Hopkins, which held that any person physically within the United States’ territory would enjoy the protections of the Fourteenth Amendment, regardless of their immigration or citizenship status. In a racist and nationalistic reaction, this decision gave rise to…

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Headnote

Bounded Entities and (Some of) Their Discontents

By Saurabh Vishnubhakat | May 29, 2024

By Saurabh Vishnubhakat. Full Text.  In his new article An Organizational Theory of International Technology Transfer, Professor Peter Lee offers two richly detailed accounts at once. One is a novel theoretical framework of “bounded entities” that generalizes both from the classic theory of the firm and, of more recent vintage, from the knowledge-based theory of…

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Article

Aiming for Answers: Balancing Rights, Safety, and Justice in a Post-Bruen America

By Chad Nowlan | June 7, 2024

By CHAD NOWLAN. Full Text. A foreword to the symposium issue of Minnesota Law Review volume 108.  

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Article

Firearms Carceralism

By Jacob D. Charles | June 7, 2024

By JACOB D. CHARLES. Full Text. Gun violence is a pressing national concern. And it has been for decades. Throughout nearly all that time, the primary tool lawmakers have deployed to stanch the violence has been the machinery of the criminal law. Increased policing, intrusive surveillance, vigorous prosecution, and punitive penalties are showered on gun…

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Articles, Essays, & Tributes

Firearms Carceralism

June 7, 2024

By JACOB D. CHARLES. Full Text. Gun violence is a pressing national concern. And it has been for decades. Throughout nearly all that time, the primary tool lawmakers have deployed to stanch the violence has been the machinery of the criminal law. Increased policing, intrusive surveillance, vigorous prosecution, and punitive penalties are showered on gun…

Firearms and the Homeowner: Defending the Castle, the Curtilage, and Beyond

June 7, 2024

By CYNTHIA LEE. Full Text. In the spring of 2023, a series of back-to-back shootings shook the nation. A Black teenager in Missouri trying to pick up his two younger siblings went to the wrong door and rang the doorbell. The homeowner came to the door with a gun and, without saying a word, fired…

Age Restrictions and the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, 1791–1868

June 7, 2024

By MEGAN WALSH AND SAUL CORNELL. Full Text. The disproportional misuse of firearms by eighteen-to-twenty-year-olds has long been a problem in America. The concerns are not novel. Nor are legislative responses to this problem a recent development in American law. These limitations are deeply rooted in American legal history. While minimum age gun laws routinely…

Scientific Context, Suicide Prevention, and the Second Amendment After Bruen

June 7, 2024

By ERIC RUBEN. Full Text.  The Supreme Court declared in New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n v. Bruen that modern gun laws must be “consistent with this Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation” to survive Second Amendment challenges. Scholarship has shown how this test of historical analogy presents difficulties because of how technological, legal,…

Trouble’s Bruen: The Lower Courts Respond

June 7, 2024

By BRANNON P. DENNING AND GLENN H. REYNOLDS. Full Text. New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n v. Bruen revolutionized the understanding of how Second Amendment cases are to be adjudicated. Rejecting the tiered-scrutiny analysis around which the lower courts had coalesced since the 2008 Heller decision, the Court instructed courts to look to history…

The Second Amendment’s Racial Justice Complexities

June 7, 2024

By DANIEL S. HARAWA. Full Text. The relationship between the Second Amendment and racial justice is complicated. That’s because the relationship between pe- nal administration and racial justice is complicated. The briefing in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen perfectly proves this point. A group of public defenders favored striking down New…

Notes

Answering the Call: How Reconfiguration of the Nation’s Mental Health Crisis Call Line Can Facilitate Reimagination of Community Well-Being and Public Safety

May 22, 2024

By LUCY CHIN. Full Text. When the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline went live in Summer 2022, communities across the country began to confront the question of how this new, expanded behavioral health resource would integrate into the country’s preexisting, emergency response systems. The program seemed to promise the solution to an increasingly visible problem—as…

States’ Obligation to Provide for Trans Youth: How Medicaid Requires (Most) States to Provide Access to Puberty Blockers

May 22, 2024

By GRACE WORCESTER. Full Text. Over the last few years, many states have endeavored to strip minor access to gender-affirming healthcare, and these efforts have seen considerable success. By the end of 2023, twenty-two states had enacted legislation that limits youth access to gender- affirming healthcare. In line with these efforts, many states have created…

Headnotes

Thirty-Five Years of Inaction: The Unfulfilled Promise of the Medicaid Equal Access Provision

March 2, 2024

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…

Teaching “Is This Case Rightly Decided?”

April 15, 2024

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…

Erasing Racial Harms in CFPB v. Community Financial Services Association

May 29, 2024

By Callan Showers. Full Text. Professor Allan Freeman’s “perpetrator perspective” explains the normative American legal framework that casts racism as an intentional deviation from an otherwise neutral system. Freeman describes the perpetrator perspective as a negative, remedial dimension casting discrimination as an isolated action by…

Should Courts Make It Personal? Virtue-Dependent Doctrine and the Law of Executive Power

May 29, 2024

By Michael Coenen. Full Text. With The Virtuous Executive, Professor Alan Rozenshtein has given us an impressive and wide-ranging analysis of the relevance of Presidential character to the law of executive power. The article’s central claim is straightforward: The Constitution reflects a “commitment to proper…

Private-Law Attorneys General

May 29, 2024

By Molly Shaffer Van Houweling. Full Text. The Constitution empowers Congress to “promote the progress of science and useful arts by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.” The founding-era Congress quickly exercised this power…

Twins at Bat(son), Strikes Are Out: Minnesota’s Opportunity to Restore Batson v. Kentucky by Eliminating Peremptory Strikes

May 29, 2024

By Samuel Buisman. Full Text. While the Supreme Court’s decision in Batson v. Kentucky is widely hailed by scholars and jurists alike as a triumph of American egalitarianism, time and trial have unmasked its protections as a paper tiger. Despite its purported protections against racially…

American Fiction: Overturning the Doctrine of Immigration Entry Fiction as Established in Shaughnessy v. Mezei

May 29, 2024

By Dahlia Wilson. Full Text. In 1886, the Supreme Court decided a case called Yick Wo v. Hopkins, which held that any person physically within the United States’ territory would enjoy the protections of the Fourteenth Amendment, regardless of their immigration or citizenship status. In…

Bounded Entities and (Some of) Their Discontents

May 29, 2024

By Saurabh Vishnubhakat. Full Text.  In his new article An Organizational Theory of International Technology Transfer, Professor Peter Lee offers two richly detailed accounts at once. One is a novel theoretical framework of “bounded entities” that generalizes both from the classic theory of the firm…

A Great American Gun Myth: Race and the Naming of the “Saturday Night Special”

May 29, 2024

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

June 10, 2024

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

June 10, 2024

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

June 10, 2024

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

Placing Religion Above All Else

April 15, 2017

PLACING RELIGION ABOVE ALL ELSE: RFRA AND THE LEAKED DRAFT OF PRESIDENT TRUMP’S PROPOSED EXECUTIVE ORDER ON RELIGIOUS FREEDOM By: Kristen Mishler, Volume 101 Staff Member In January of this year, The Nation and Reveal obtained copies of a draft proposed executive order under consideration…

Obama Cared

April 6, 2017

OBAMA CARED: THE IMPORTANCE OF ESSENTIAL HEALTH BENEFITS IN THE AFFORDABLE CARE ACT By: Jesse Goldfarb, Volume 101 Staff Member A key provision in the Affordable Care Act (ACA) mandates that certain types of benefits be included in any healthcare insurance plan on the state…

Cats and Dogs and the Takings Clause

April 3, 2017

CATS AND DOGS AND THE TAKINGS CLAUSE: BALANCING THE REGULATORY TAKINGS DOCTRINE AND INNOVATION IN THE SEVENTH CIRCUIT By: Austin J. Spillane, Volume 101 Staff Member We are currently living through an intriguing period of time that is marked by the digitization of many facets of the…

The Future of Class Actions

March 30, 2017

THE FUTURE OF CLASS ACTIONS By: Caroline Bressman, Volume 101 Staff Member Far from being the exception to individual adversarial suits in modern U.S. litigation,[1] an early prototype of class action litigation was common in medieval England.[2] During a period shaped by strong group cultures,…

Running from the Law Doesn’t Mean You Broke It

March 29, 2017

RUNNING FROM THE LAW DOESN’T MEAN YOU BROKE IT: COMMONWEALTH V. WARREN CONSIDERS RACE WHEN DETERMINING REASONABLE SUSPICION By: Vanessa R. Colletti, Volume 101 Staff Member Jimmy Warren is probably just grateful to be free; however, his case presents a greater opportunity for freedom for…

Do Two Wrongs Make a Right?

March 28, 2017

DO TWO WRONGS MAKE A RIGHT? By: Mitchell Ness, Volume 101 Staff Member On April 19th, the Supreme Court will hear arguments in Weaver v. Massachusetts.[1] The case concerns an intersection of two constitutional guarantees, the guarantee to the effective assistance of counsel and the…

The (Mad) Fight to Legalize Sports Betting in New Jersey

March 24, 2017

THE (MAD) FIGHT TO LEGALIZE SPORTS BETTING IN NEW JERSEY By: Bradley Machov, Volume 101 Staff Member New Jersey wants to legalize sports betting within its borders.[1] In 1992, Congress, with the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act of 1992 (“PASPA”), made it clear that…

Recent State Legislation Seeks to Limit Disruptive Protests

March 23, 2017

RECENT STATE LEGISLATION SEEKS TO LIMIT DISRUPTIVE PROTESTS By: Jorgen Lervick, Volume 101 Staff Member On January 21, 2017, just one day after President Donald Trump was sworn in as the forty-fifth President of the United States of America, more than two million people in…

Can President Trump Be Sued for Defamation Because of His Personal Tweets?

March 21, 2017

CAN PRESIDENT TRUMP BE SUED FOR DEFAMATION BECAUSE OF HIS PERSONAL TWEETS? By: Alex Walsdorf, Volume 101 Staff Member If you happen to visit President Trump’s private Twitter page,[1] you will notice his affinity for tweeting. Some of his tweets, at least on their face,…

Hiring Shouldn’t Give License for Firing

March 9, 2017

HIRING SHOULDN’T GIVE LICENSE FOR FIRING: AFFORDING THE SAME ACTOR INFERENCE APPROPRIATE WEIGHT By: Bailey Drexler, Volume 101 Staff Member In 1991 the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals articulated what would come to be known as the “same actor inference” in the context of employment…