Articles, Essays, & Tributes
Diversity Messaging After Affirmative Action
By NANCY LEONG. Full Text. Appendix here. Many colleges and universities communicate publicly that they value racial diversity—a practice this Article will call diversity messaging. Yet growing hostility to race-consciousness by courts, legislators, and other public figures has made diversity messaging increasingly fraught. This Article examines empirically whether law schools changed their diversity messaging following…
Investor Justice
By NICOLE IANNARONE. Full Text. There is a systemic flaw in the investor protection landscape. Unrepresented investors face off against well-resourced repeat- player firms that almost always have lawyers. While consumers face similar challenges in civil courts, in forced securities arbitration, the decisionmaker may not have a law degree, is prohibited from conducting any outside…
Unpunishment Purposes
By MEREDITH ESSER. Full Text. Sentencing scholarship often begins by exploring the traditional purposes of punishment: deterrence, retribution, incapacitation, and rehabilitation. However, little scholarship exists addressing how these four punishment purposes apply in the post- sentencing or second-look contexts. Further, abstract theories of sentencing can often seem sterile and disconnected from the realities of how…
Debt, Work, and the State
By KATE ELENGOLD. Full Text. In every state and the District of Columbia, an individual who owes a debt to the state can lose their license to work. Without the ability to make a living, it is much harder to pay off debt. Although using occupational license restrictions as a debt collection tool appears nonsensical,…
Law for the Rich
By ALEX RASKOLNIKOV. Full Text. With top incomes and wealth reaching historic highs, scholars and politicians have proposed new taxes and novel legal rules aimed at reversing the emergence of the new Gilded Age. Yet while new taxes target the rich directly by imposing greater burdens only on those with incomes or wealth above multi-million-dollar…
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…
Headnotes
Defining Common and Individual Issues in Class Actions: What a Reasonable Jury Could Do
Defining Common and Individual Issues in Class Actions: What a Reasonable Jury Could Do By Aaron D. Van Oort and John L. Rockenbach Full essay here. The distinction between common and individual issues is the single most important concept in the modern class action, and…
The Supreme Court’s Opinion in SEC v. Jarkesy Has the Potential To Be Extremely Destructive
The Supreme Court’s Opinion in SEC v. Jarkesy Has the Potential To Be Extremely Destructive By Richard J. Pierce, Jr. Full essay here. In this essay, Professor Pierce describes the legal framework within which the Supreme Court decided whether an agency could adjudicate a class…
Substance over Symbolism: Do We Need Benefit Corporation Laws?
BY CHENG-CHI (KIRIN) CHANG. Full essay here. Benefit corporation laws have gained traction as mechanisms to integrate societal and environmental objectives into business operations, yet they are arguably superfluous within the existing legal framework. The prevailing belief that corporations must prioritize shareholder wealth above all…
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
GAME OF PHONES: THE IRS’S OUTDATED INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY IS CAUSING SERVICE AND LEGAL ISSUES FOR THE U.S. TAXPAYER
By: Alec Lybik, Volume 106 Staff Member As a law student, I thought I was done with math. Unfortunately, my struggles in eighth-grade algebra came back to haunt me when I attempted to calculate the probability of reaching the IRS after they disconnected my call…
CURTAILING INTERNET EXCEPTIONALISM: FRANCES HAUGEN’S CALL TO AMEND SECTION 230 AND HOLD FACEBOOK ACCOUNTABLE FOR ITS ALGORITHMIC HARM
By: Ellison Snider, Volume 106 Staff Member Last month, Frances Haugen, former product manager at Facebook, testified to the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation about the company’s one-way mirror on its users.[1] After leaking private internal Facebook documents to the Wall Street Journal,…
CAN A NON-SECRET BE A STATE SECRET? EXAMINING STATE SECRETS PRIVILEGE IN UNITED STATES V. ZUBAYDAH
By: Kimberly Ortleb, Volume 106 Staff Member On October 6, 2021, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments for United States v. Zubaydah,[1] which presents the question of how far state secrets privilege extends. Zayn al-Abidin Muhammad Husayn (“Zubaydah”) was disappeared and tortured as a part…
RISING TO THREE OCCASIONS: THE SUPREME COURT GRAPPLES WITH HOW TO COUNT PRIOR CONVICTIONS IN THE ACCA CONTEXT
By: Haley Wallace, Volume 106 Staff Member The Armed Career Criminal Act (ACCA)[1] was enacted to severely punish society’s worst criminal offenders.[2] Congress passed the ACCA in 1984 specifically to target the “most dangerous, frequent, and hardened offenders,”[3] and to “incapacitate the armed career criminal…
FILMING POLICE IN THE WAKE OF GEORGE FLOYD’S MURDER: A FIRST AMENDMENT RIGHT?
By: Dylan Saul, Volume 106 Staff Member The murder of George Floyd, at the hands of Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, sparked a nation-wide reckoning with racism and police brutality that might not have happened had seventeen-year-old Darnella Frazier not recorded the murder on her…
PAY NO ATTENTION TO THE MEANING BEHIND THAT TEXT—HOW A TEXTUALIST INTERPRETATION OF THE FEDERAL OFFICER REMOVAL STATUTE CREATES ABSURD RESULTS IN BP V. BALTIMORE
By Hannah Wiles, Volume 105 Staffer On January 19, 2021, the Supreme Court heard arguments in BP PLC v. Mayor and City of Baltimore,[1] one of several “climate change” lawsuits currently being brought by cities, counties, and states against the fossil fuel industry.[2] While the…
WHAT’S SO DEPRAVED? ANALYZING THIRD-DEGREE DEPRAVED-MIND MURDER IN MINNESOTA AFTER THE CHAUVIN AND NOOR TRIALS
By: Keenan Roarty, Volume 105 Staff Member Third-degree depraved-mind murder has never had so much attention in Minnesota as it does now. In two recent, high-profile police brutality cases, Derek Chauvin and Mohamed Noor were both convicted of third-degree depraved-mind murder.[1] But under the…
HATE IS A VIRUS: RECENT SURGE IN ANTI-ASIAN HATE CRIMES AND THE SUFFICIENCY OF THE CURRENT HATE CRIME LAWS
By: Youngjin Jang, Volume 105 Staff Member The hateful killings of six women of Asian descent in Georgia on March 17th have left the Asian American and Pacific Islander (“AAPI”) community in fear.[1] Although discrimination against Asians has always existed throughout American history,[2] the U.S.…
WALQUIST HARMS THE POOR: REVISITING SUPERVISORY APPROVAL FOR ACCURACY PENALTIES
By: Patrick Riley Murray, Volume 105 Staff Member The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) processes more than 250 million business and individual tax returns each year.[1] The vast majority of these returns are correctly filed and end in either additional tax paid or a refund.[2] When…
CONSIDERATIONS FOR MINNESOTA AGRICULTURE COOPERATIVES
By: Emily Buchholz, Billy Bigham & Maci Burke Cooperatives have long been popular in Minnesota, due in part to the state’s sizeable agriculture industry and Scandinavian population.[1] In fact, Minnesota is home to the top two revenue-producing agriculture cooperatives in the United States: CHS Inc.…
