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
HABITABILITY DEFENSE ON THE FRITZ: RENT POSTING REQUIREMENTS AND CHALLENGES IN MINNESOTA
Lucy Dougherty, Volume 107 Staff Member When tenants face an eviction for non-payment of rent in Hennepin County, they may have an affirmative defense to the eviction action if the landlord has broken the covenant of habitability.[1] The covenant of habitability is a statutory right…
CLARITY AT A COST: HOW NEW REGULATIONS MAY PUT WELL-INTENTIONED GUN OWNERS AT RISK OF CIVIL AND CRIMINAL CHARGES
By: Nick Grossardt, Volume 107 Staff Member At the end of January 2023, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (BATFE) promulgated a final rule outlining a series of factoring criteria for regulating firearms with affixed “stabilizing braces.”[1] Various models of these braces had…
KEEP ROLLING: AFTER PROVIDING AUTOMATIC EXPUNGEMENT FOR CERTAIN MARIJUANA OFFENSES MINNESOTA SHOULD ENACT AUTOMATIC EXPUNGEMENT FOR OTHER CRIMINAL RECORDS
By: Abby Ward, Volume 107 Staff Member The racially discriminatory impact from the War on Drugs is clear,[1] and while marijuana legalization is one step in addressing the inequities of America’s criminal justice system, the work does not end there. States should also enact broader…
CALIBRATING THE SCOPE OF DISCLOSURE: PREVIEWING THE SUPREME COURT’S OPPORTUNITY TO CLARIFY PATENT LAW’S ENABLEMENT STANDARD
By: Maxwell H. Terry, Volume 107 Staff Member While the technical subject matter of a patent can grow inordinately complex, the predominant theory underlying patent law is relatively straightforward. In exchange for the right to exclude others from making, using, or selling the invention claimed…
THE MOST IMPORTANT DECISION NO ONE IS TALKING ABOUT: WHAT CUMMINGS MEANS FOR THE FUTURE OF CIVIL RIGHTS
By: Amy Cohen, Volume 107 Staff Member In what seems like a never-ending string of catastrophic rulings implicating our nation’s future and individual rights,[1] about ten months ago the Supreme Court laid down a major decision altering the availability of remedies for civil rights claimants…
LIFE-OR-DEATH LEGALESE: THE EXECUTION OF MATTHEW REEVES AND THE DIRE CONSEQUENCES OF POORLY TARGETED LEGAL DRAFTING
By: Earl Lin, Volume 107 Staff Member It is a well-known phenomenon that lawyers often communicate in their own “peculiar language . . . characterized by antique jargon, pomposity, affected displays of precision, ponderous abstractions, and hocus-pocus incantations.”[1] Indeed, lawyers are so notorious for their…
CONTRACTUAL CONUNDRUM: HOW HEALTH AND HOSPITAL CORPORATION V. TALEVSKI HAS THE POTENTIAL TO GUT FEDERAL SAFETY NET LEGISLATION
By: Grace Worcester, Volume 107 Staff Member The Supreme Court recently heard oral arguments in Health and Hospital Corporation of Marion County v. Talevski,[1] a case with the potential to strip over eighty million Americans[2] of the ability to seek recourse in the federal courts…
NOT FLYING SOLO: HOW SOUTHWEST’S MASSIVE FLIGHT CANCELLATIONS LED TO SEVERAL CLASS ACTION LAWSUITS
By: Kyra Honkanen, Volume 107 Staff Member I. BACKGROUND Making headlines across the country, Southwest Airlines, the largest domestic airline in the U.S.,[1] canceled over 15,000 of its flights leaving more than one million people[2] stranded or left to find alternative transportation during the peak…
THE SUPREME COURT ‘DIGS’ IN RE GRAND JURY: ITS DECISION TO DISMISS THE CASE AND LEAVE ATTORNEY-CLIENT PRIVILEGE IN THE THREE-CIRCUIT BALANCE
By: E. Isabel Park, Volume 107 Staff Member After the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in In re Grand Jury[1] on January 9, 2023, all that remained was for the Court to decide the case.[2] Instead, two weeks later, the Court dismissed the case as…
A RACE-SYMPATHETIC PATH FORWARD: FOURTH AMENDMENT SEIZURE LAW AND THE CIRCUIT SPLIT ON THE RELEVANCE OF RACE
By: Marina Berardino, Volume 107 Staff Member Despite it being well known that an individual’s race impacts his or her perceptions of and experiences with the police,[1] U.S. Supreme Court jurisprudence remains unclear on the role of race in Fourth Amendment seizure inquiries. Fourth Amendment…
