Articles, Essays, & Tributes
Judging Demeanor
By KIEL BRENNAN-MARQUEZ and JULIA SIMON-KERR. Full Text. This Article challenges the conventional wisdom that defendant demeanor—affect, body language, and physical appearance—helps juries assess guilt. On the contrary, we show that demeanor evidence poses an inherent risk of propensity-based reasoning. It invites jurors to convict defendants based on whether they “look like criminals,” rather than…
A Democratic Participation Model for Corporate Governance
By GRANT M. HAYDEN and MATTHEW T. BODIE. Full Text. Corporate law is in the grip of a fundamental conundrum: whether corporations should seek only to serve shareholders or instead attend to the interests of all stakeholders. The doctrine of shareholder primacy, which focuses the corporation’s attention on the goal of maximizing shareholder wealth, has…
Minimal Justiciability
By RILEY T. KEENAN. Full Text. Federal courts adjudicate only justiciable disputes. But justiciable as to whom? The Supreme Court has hinted at an answer, holding that at least one plaintiff must show standing for each remedy sought in a federal case. But it has never explained this “one-plaintiff rule,” and recently some scholars have…
Equity for American Indian Families
By NEOSHIA R. ROEMER. Full Text. For the better part of two centuries, the cornerstone of federal Indian policy was destabilizing and eradicating tribal governments. In the process, federal Indian policy also dismantled American Indian families via child removal. Attempting to equalize American Indians through the practice of assimilation, decades of Indian child removal policies…
Legal Academia’s White Gaze
By RENEE NICOLE ALLEN. Full Text. For Black law faculty, Blackness, the Black experience, and Black legal and social identity are not trends. Yet, there are inflection points where legal scholarship about race, particularly Blackness, is in vogue. The most recent rise in such legal scholarship came in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder and the…
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…
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
Inaction of Mercy
INACTION OF MERCY: MINNESOTA’S PARDON PROBLEM By: Devin Driscoll, Volume 101 Staff Member The pardon power of the President[1]—called the “benign prerogative” by Hamilton[2]—has long attracted scholarly attention.[3] The granting of executive commutations and pardons at the federal level had been in steep decline: President…
Looking Back at the FCC’s Privacy Rules
LOOKING BACK AT THE FCC’S PRIVACY RULES By: Ronald Waclawski, Volume 101 Staff Member On October 27, 2016, the Federal Communication Commission (FCC) adopted a rule designed to protect consumer information by requiring telecommunication carriers to protect the confidentiality of customer information.[1] On March 23,…
Placing Religion Above All Else
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
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
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
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
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?
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
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
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…
