Articles, Essays, & Tributes
Aiming for Answers: Balancing Rights, Safety, and Justice in a Post-Bruen America
By CHAD NOWLAN. Full Text. A foreword to the symposium issue of Minnesota Law Review volume 108.
Firearms Carceralism
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
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
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
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
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
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
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…
The Mississippi River Basin Compact: A New Governance Structure to Save the Mississippi River
By JOHN STACK. Full Text. The Mississippi River is one of the most significant and yet one of the most imperiled water bodies in the United States. It faces a myriad of problems, from rampant pollution, widespread flooding, wildlife habitat loss, and considerable droughts. Indeed, this is a critical time for the Mississippi River. Fall…
States’ Obligation to Provide for Trans Youth: How Medicaid Requires (Most) States to Provide Access to Puberty Blockers
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
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
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.…
COVID-19 IN CORRECTIONAL FACILITIES: EIGHTH AMENDMENT VIOLATIONS AND WHY VACCINE PRIORITY IS A NECESSARY IMMEDIATE REMEDY
By Avery Katz, Vol. 105 Staff Member With the COVID-19 vaccine becoming more readily accessible, it is critical that society’s most vulnerable populations are accounted for as the world moves towards normalcy. The prison population must not be ignored. Despite holding some of the most…
