Nouvelles.droit.org

Yale Law Journal

Localisation
https://www.yalelawjournal.org/rss
Deference Spillover: The End of Witherspoon in Capital Appeals (www.yalelawjournal.org)
( 2025/10/31: ) Witherspoon v. Illinois bars the state from disqualifying jurors solely for opposing the death penalty. That holding remains good law. But practice, Witherspoon is a mirage in capital appeals. This Comment explains why—tracing Witherspoon 's demise to the “spillover” of a deferential habeas standard of review into direct
Reconstruction State Constitutional Conventions and the Rebirth of American Schooling (www.yalelawjournal.org)
( 2025/10/31: ) In the state constitutional conventions of the Reconstruction South, biracial coalitions of delegates constitutionalized universal public-school systems and kept their constitutions free from mandatory segregated schooling. These oft-overlooked constitutional actors illuminate the true legal relationship between our nation's history and the current educational
Post-Profit Antitrust (www.yalelawjournal.org)
( 2025/10/31: ) Antitrust analysis generally assumes that firms seek profit, but that assumption does not always hold. This Feature offers an antitrust framework for analyzing non-profit-maximizing conduct—like values-driven boycotts or faith-based mergers. It shows that antitrust can protect against harmful practices and transactions, however they are
Government Research (www.yalelawjournal.org)
( 2025/10/31: ) Previous scholarship has analyzed a host of innovation institutions––including patents, prizes, and grants––but has overlooked government-conducted R&D. This Article offers the first comprehensive analysis of government research, examining its institutional design, comparative advantages, and normative justifications, and situating it as an indispensable paradigm within the national innovation
The Forgotten Face of โ€œOur Federalismโ€ (www.yalelawjournal.org)
( 2025/10/31: ) Younger v. Harris is canonical in the field of federal courts, but its origins remain largely unknown. Examining diverse sources, this Article reconstructs that story. In doing so, this Article democratizes our constitutional memory, recovering the erased history of Black political resistance and state oppression underlying Younger v. Harris
Tributes to Justice Souter (www.yalelawjournal.org)
( 2025/10/31: ) In this series of Tributes to Justice David H. Souter, three of his law clerks—Judge Jesse M. Furman, President Heather K. Gerken, and Professor Jeannie Suk Gersen—reflect upon and honor their former boss's humility, wit, and
tessting a title dasfasdf (www.yalelawjournal.org)
( 2025/10/30: ) Piety Police abstract. Religiously affiliated universities are permitted to maintain
Under Political Pressure: How Courts and Congress Can Help Prosecutors Seek Justice (www.yalelawjournal.org)
( 2025/10/20: ) This Essay argues that when Justice Department officials order subordinate lawyers to consider inappropriate partisan goals in making charging decisions, prosecutors must prioritize their fiduciary obligation to seek justice on behalf of the public. It further elaborates how courts and Congress can support them in this
Pointless IP (www.yalelawjournal.org)
( 2025/10/18: ) This Essay examines the rise of originalism and textualism within the Supreme Court's intellectual-property jurisprudence. Due to its intense dynamism, intellectual-property law exposes the failures of these methods, which detach law from social reality and human goals, and highlights the need for an alternative jurisprudence of
Before Losing (www.yalelawjournal.org)
( 2025/10/10: ) The prospect of productively leveraging litigation loss should not insulate decisions about whether and how to litigate from scrutiny. Examining contemporary LGBTQ litigation, this Essay shows how winning through losing, which is contingent on factors advocates assess before litigating, only makes sense within a less juriscentric and more multidimensional
Every Court Everywhere All at Once (www.yalelawjournal.org)
( 2025/09/10: ) Rulemaking agencies have always faced the risk of getting sued. But they have not traditionally faced the risk of getting sued for failing to discuss their risk of getting sued. They do now, thanks to Ohio v. EPA . This Essay traces that decision's odd origins and troubling
Restricted Charitable Gifts to the Government (www.yalelawjournal.org)
( 2025/07/07: ) This Essay examines the overlooked long-term costs generated by restricted charitable gifts to the government. It reveals that gift compliance disputes are surprisingly frequent and costly to litigate. The authors propose that governments adopt gift acceptance policies that subject donor-imposed restrictions to rigorous review, public comment, and formal
Piety Police (www.yalelawjournal.org)
( 2025/06/30: ) This Note uncovers the history of how the Brigham Young University Police Department blurred the boundaries between criminal law and church doctrine. These practices included sting operations that used students as undercover agents to target morals offenses. Such tactics illustrate the risks of religiously affiliated policing as it spreads
Railroad Regulation Reinterpreted (www.yalelawjournal.org)
( 2025/06/30: ) Freight railroading today is profitable but fails workers, consumers, and communities in serious ways. This Note argues that both the railroad industry's financial success and its operational shortcomings are legacies of deregulation in the 1970s and 1980s and considers alternatives, some old and some
The Proper Role of Equality in Constitutional Adjudication: The Cathedralโ€™s Missing Buttress (www.yalelawjournal.org)
( 2025/06/30: ) This Feature argues that constitutionally unenumerated yet nonetheless fundamental rights require judicial protection, but only from unequal infringements. Because these infringements often result from nondiscriminatory motives, particularly the desire for benefits without cost, current law doesn't provide protection. This Feature explores a novel proposal for judicial protection for these
The Prison Discovery Crisis (www.yalelawjournal.org)
( 2025/06/30: ) For incarcerate d plaintiffs, meaningful d iscovery is essential to proving an d exposing wrong d oing in prison. Yet prison d iscovery is broken. This Article explores the extensive written an d unwritten barriers to evi d ence gathering in prison, an d , through a 200-case stu d y, reveals courts' central role in both perpetuating—an d potentially resolving—this
The Dangerous Rise of โ€œDual-Useโ€ Objects in War (www.yalelawjournal.org)
( 2025/06/30: ) Militaries are increasingly targeting “dual-use objects”—objects that serve both civilian and military purposes. Drawing on an original dataset of the U.S. military's airstrike reports and ground reporting in Iraq and Syria, this Article illustrates how targeting such "dual-use objects" has undermined critical legal protections for
To Be Given to God: Contemporary Civil Forfeiture as a Taking (www.yalelawjournal.org)
( 2025/05/31: ) Civil asset forfeiture was once a law-enforcement tool. Today, however, police and prosecutors use forfeiture to fundraise, not to fight crime. This Note challenges the constitutionality of these profit-motivated government confiscations. It argues that these “contemporary civil forfeitures” are not forfeitures at all—they are compensable
Congressional Intervention in Agency Adjudication: The Case of Veteransโ€™ Appeals (www.yalelawjournal.org)
( 2025/05/31: ) Prevailing constitutional interpretation sees Congress's role as legislative, but members of Congress frequently exert nonlegislative influence on agencies by intervening directly on individual claimants' behalf. This Feature provides an empirical portrait of congressional intervention in veterans' appeals through internal administrative data and discusses its implications for constitutional and administrative
Antiracist Expert Evidence (www.yalelawjournal.org)
( 2025/05/31: ) This Article introduces “antiracist expert evidence,” an underutilized tool to prove racism in court. Based on a nationwide survey of defense attorneys, it explores the evidence's utility, identifies barriers to use, and offers strategies to overcome them, aiming to begin to level the evidentiary playing field for criminal
Resurrecting the Trinity of Legislative Constitutionalism (www.yalelawjournal.org)
( 2025/05/31: ) From 1919 to 1969, the Offices of the Legislative Counsel in the Senate and House drafted precedential opinions to advise lawmakers on constitutional and subconstitutional questions. This Article lifts the curtain on this institution, revealing a hidden system that worked to reify congressional power and stymie a rising
Turning Square Corners: Regents and Arbitrary-and-Capricious Reviewโ€™s Distributional Stakes (www.yalelawjournal.org)
( 2025/04/30: ) After the Supreme Court's decision in Regents , courts have intensified their scrutiny of agency reversals that upset the expectations of regulatory beneficiaries. This Note defends that development and situates it within an underexplored history of courts calibrating the stringency of their review of agency action to distributional
A Textualist Response to Two Texts: Positive-Law Codification and Interpreting Section 1983 (www.yalelawjournal.org)
( 2025/04/30: ) Textualists have yet to explain how to interpret codified positive-law text, which is revised by bureaucrats then enacted by Congress, where it differs from original text. This Note's proposed solution is the “two texts canon.” When applied to Section 1983, the two texts canon demands that qualified immunity be
Does Pharma Need Patents? (www.yalelawjournal.org)
( 2025/04/30: ) This Feature revisits the widely held assumption that pharma needs patents to sustain innovation. By analyzing the information goods underlying drugs, this Feature demonstrates that innovation in this sector can proceed without patents. Replacing patents with a tailored form of regulatory exclusivity would reap large gains in social
The Lost English Roots of Notice-and-Comment Rulemaking (www.yalelawjournal.org)
( 2025/04/30: ) Using new archival research, this Article argues that notice-and-comment rulemaking emerged from a series of American transplantations of English rulemaking procedures. Yet, as this Article emphasizes, during the 1930s and 1940s Americans only partially adopted the English framework. The rejection of laying procedures implicates the legitimacy of our rulemaking
Disestablishment at Work (www.yalelawjournal.org)
( 2025/04/30: ) After several decades, the Supreme Court has revised its interpretation of employment-discrimination law requiring religious accommodations, creating waves of new litigation. Latent in the doctrine, principles of nondisparagement, reciprocity, and proportionality can guide courts in resolving these claims while also anchoring nonjudicial strategies to protect employees' basic
Democracyโ€™s Distrust: The Supreme Courtโ€™s Anti-Voter Decisions as a Threat to Democracy (www.yalelawjournal.org)
( 2025/04/14: ) “Democracy's Distrust” explores how the Supreme Court has eroded voting rights and weakened democracy. It argues that the Court prioritizes candidates and legislatures over voters, fostering public distrust. The Essay examines historical and contemporary cases, highlighting the need for legislative reforms and civic action to protect
Self-Protection in World Society: Reformulating the Protective Principle in International Law (www.yalelawjournal.org)
( 2025/03/31: ) Aggressive applications of extraterritoriality under the protective principle in international law pose serious threats to states and individuals. This Note tracks the rise of protective-principle jurisdiction around the world. It then provides a reformulation of the principle to better cabin it within foundational doctrines of international
Race, the Academy, and The Constitution of the War on Drugs (www.yalelawjournal.org)
( 2025/03/31: ) David Pozen's new book chronicles the constitutional arguments that American litigants once deployed to protect a “right” to use drugs. This Review supplements and critiques Pozen's important contribution, situating his findings within a broad backdrop of race, crime, and the judiciary's eagerness to just say “yes” to the drug
Deinstitutionalizing Family Separation in Cases of Parental Drug Use (www.yalelawjournal.org)
( 2025/03/29: ) Through an institutional theory lens, this Essay examines how the family policing system's historical emphasis on punishment and surveillance resists even well-intentioned legislative changes. Despite the inclusion of family-centered services in recent legislation, implementation barriers and institutional inertia within family policing agencies perpetuate default practices of policing and
Separation of Drug Scheduling Powers (www.yalelawjournal.org)
( 2025/03/29: ) Congress split drug scheduling authority between the Department of Health and Human Services and the Drug Enforcement Administration. However, this statutory separation of powers has collapsed, producing unscientific outcomes that undermine the CSA text, purpose, and history. Congress, courts, agencies, and the President can shift drug scheduling back on
Fragile Gains, Persistent Setbacks: The Muddled Arc of American Drug-Law Reform (www.yalelawjournal.org)
( 2025/03/29: ) Ifetayo Harvey explores the foremost drug reform issues by giving a broad overview of the Essays in this Collection. Harvey uses Oregon ' s Measure 110 as an example of drug reform ' s challenges when implemented on a state level. The piece concludes with guidance on how advocates can improve future drug
Decriminalizing Cannabis (www.yalelawjournal.org)
( 2025/03/29: ) The United States has criminalized cannabis since 1970. In response to pleas for reform and widespread state cannabis legalization, the federal government recently initiated rulemaking to reschedule cannabis. This Essay argues that the federal government should abandon its legally problematic rescheduling proposal and, instead, decriminalize and deregulate
Lawyersโ€™ Monopoly and the Promises of AI (www.yalelawjournal.org)
( 2025/03/15: ) Access to justice in American civil courts won't come through free or pro bono lawyers. To drive down costs, we need to loosen bar regulation and streamline procedures. And we should embrace technology and AI responsibly to give more people the legal help they need but can't
Legal Deserts and Spatial Injustice: A Study of Criminal Legal Systems in Rural Washington (www.yalelawjournal.org)
( 2025/03/15: ) This Essay uses a mixed-methods study to sketch operation of criminal legal systems in several rural counties in central and eastern Washington. The study reveals how an attorney shortage, along with reliance on local funding of justice system functions, is leaving defendants vulnerable to delays and ineffective assistance of
The Duty to Respond to Rulemaking Comments (www.yalelawjournal.org)
( 2025/03/15: ) This Essay examines the legal basis for the requirement that agencies must respond to significant comments they receive during a rulemaking proceeding, the pros and cons of that requirement, and how the requirement fits together with other principles of administrative law, including procedural fairness and standing to
Interoperable Legal AI for Access to Justice (www.yalelawjournal.org)
( 2025/03/15: ) This Essay argues that technological and procedural legal interoperability—that is, widespread consistency in legal technology design and related processes—can help stakeholders effectively leverage artificial intelligence to maximize access to legal services and fairness of outcomes through self-help options, with traditional legal services, and in the
The Churchโ€™s Treaties: How the Holy See Makes and Shapes International Law (www.yalelawjournal.org)
( 2025/02/28: ) The Catholic Church has concluded close to two hundred treaties in the last sixty years with nations across the globe. Many of these agreements integrate Church doctrine into state legal systems at the expense of LGBTQ rights. This Note unearths this vast treaty regime—and suggests ways to challenge
Disenrollment as Citizenship Revocation: Promoting Tribal Sovereignty by Embracing International Norms (www.yalelawjournal.org)
( 2025/02/28: ) This Note argues that Indian tribes can best address disenrollment by viewing the problem through the lens of international norms regarding citizenship revocation. In choosing to embrace these norms, tribes can restrict disenrollment in a manner that does not simply invoke tribal sovereignty but instead promotes
The Plaintiff Police (www.yalelawjournal.org)
( 2025/02/28: ) In civil litigation, police most commonly appear as defendants. But police also act as plaintiffs, suing the individuals they police. This Article argues that these plaintiff police claims cause significant democratic harms and should be limited. Compensation and deterrence can be achieved through other, less politically corrosive
Comstockery: How Government Censorship Gave Birth to the Law of Sexual and Reproductive Freedom, and May Again Threaten It (www.yalelawjournal.org)
( 2025/02/28: ) This Article offers the first legal history of the Comstock Act from its enactment to its post- Dobbs reinvention. From conflicts over Comstock's enforcement emerged popular claims on democracy, liberty, and equality in which we can recognize roots of modern free-speech law and the law of sexual and reproductive
Should Tort Law Care About Police Officers? (www.yalelawjournal.org)
( 2025/02/28: ) Professors Ellen Bublick and Jane Bambauer argue that the common law has expanded, and should continue to expand, the civil legal rights of wrongfully injured people, including police. There is value in using civil enforcement to hold both civilians and officers accountable for the unjustified harms that they
From Gods to Google (www.yalelawjournal.org)
( 2025/02/28: ) The First Amendment is a well-known barrier to sensible technology regulation. While scholars blame the Court's libertarian turn, we offer another explanation: the Court's solicitude for religious speakers. Religious-speech cases have given firms a powerful suite of deregulatory tools. This Feature draws the through line from gods to
Scalia and the King: The Ancient Writ of Habeas Corpus and the Missing Legitimacy Core of Modern Habeas Law (www.yalelawjournal.org)
( 2025/02/28: ) This Essay argues for reconceiving habeas corpus as a meaningful avenue for judicial power to push back against arbitrary executive power, and proposes a surprising source for this revival: Justice Scalia's attack on the Sentencing Guidelines. Texas's capital murder statute is proposed as ripe for such reinvigorated habeas
Equal Standards for Equal Protection: Revisiting Race Discrimination in Jury Selection After SFFA (www.yalelawjournal.org)
( 2025/02/28: ) In its decision in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard , the Supreme Court appeared to take a new approach to what constitutes a Fourteenth Amendment violation. This Essay argues that the new standard should be applied to reduce race discrimination in jury
Guaranteeing Honesty: Rewiring Honest Services Fraud Under the Guarantee Clause (www.yalelawjournal.org)
( 2025/02/28: ) Honest services fraud is a vital anticorruption statute used by federal prosecutors to police state and local corruption. However, the statute's undefined terms and perceived intrusions on federalism have invited scrutiny from the Supreme Court. To redress these concerns, courts should interpret the statute to require a predicate state-law
On the Perpetuation of Our Constitution and Civic Charity (www.yalelawjournal.org)
( 2025/02/26: ) We live in perilous times, where acrimony and contempt poison our republic. But as others have long recognized—from Washington to Lincoln to current observers—there is an antidote: civic charity. It has helped heal our nation in some of our most difficult times; it can do so
New Technologies, Old Rights: Litigating Public-Benefits Modernization (www.yalelawjournal.org)
( 2025/02/22: ) This Essay explores public-benefits agencies' increasing reliance on technology and remote services and its impact on welfare-rights litigation. The Essay argues that the lack of direct regulation of these practices threatens benefits access. However, creative impact litigation is still a powerful tool for enforcing benefits recipients'
A New โ€œPlan for Transformationโ€: Improving Living Conditions in Chicagoโ€™s Public Housing (www.yalelawjournal.org)
( 2025/02/22: ) Public housing suffers from disinvestment, and, today, many residents live in substandard conditions. By combining the literature on public-housing history and tenant-rights law with the lived experiences of public-housing residents, this Essay uses Chicago as a case study to explore litigation and other advocacy strategies for systematically improving public-housing
The Origins of U.S. Territorial Taxation and the Insular Cases (www.yalelawjournal.org)
( 2025/02/10: ) This Essay examines Congress's design of territorial revenue systems during 1898-1900. Eager to protect the federal fisc, lawmakers instituted tariffs between Puerto Rico and the mainland. Their choices segregated the territories from the federal fiscal apparatus, prompted the Insular Cases , and created the territories' distinct tax status as foreign
Intersectional Imperial Legacies in the U.S. Territories (www.yalelawjournal.org)
( 2025/02/10: ) Women in the U.S. territories experience particularized harms often rooted in U.S. colonization and the territories' political relationship with the United States. This Essay describes how traditional legal frameworks can sharply constrict available remedies and sketches the contours of a rational-basis-with-bite framework for assessing intersectional harms and
A Legacy of Discrimination: A Brief History of U.S. Territories in the American Bar Association (www.yalelawjournal.org)
( 2025/02/10: ) The American Bar Association (ABA) has done much to remedy its history of racial discrimination. However, to this day, the ABA systematically discriminates against lawyers in four overwhelmingly nonwhite U.S. territories. This Essay examines the history of this discrimination and proposes a potential way forward to remedy
The Law of the Territories: Should It Exist? (www.yalelawjournal.org)
( 2025/02/10: ) “The Law of the Territories” is an emerging academic heading for legal scholarship on the status of U.S. territories. This Essay argues that the current momentum of this narrow “emerging field” presents an obstacle rather than a pathway to meaningful scholarly engagement, sidelining broader perspectives and more consequential
Data Laws at Work (www.yalelawjournal.org)
( 2025/02/01: ) Recognizing harms arising from the growing use of automated systems for labor control, the European Union (EU) has passed an array of digital-rights protections for workers. This Essay argues that the EU framework fails to account for the formal subordination of workers and proscribe the harms of algorithmic labor
AI and Captured Capital (www.yalelawjournal.org)
( 2025/02/01: ) An AI arms race and a laissez-faire approach to globalization enable a borderless labor market without labor protections and the capture of workers' capital. Proposed redress includes: (1) workers' data as stake capital, (2) a data-licensing regime, and (3) a guaranteed income fund organized by the International Labor
Gig-Economy Myths and Missteps (www.yalelawjournal.org)
( 2025/02/01: ) This Essay disputes the myth that employment, unlike independent contracting, is inherently inflexible. It traces the roots of this widely shared belief to corporate propaganda and rejects “third-category” legislation based on this fiction. Finally, the Essay cautions labor enforcers to avoid the third-category sham in negotiated misclassification
The New Standing Doctrine, Judicial Federalism, and the Problem of Forumless Claims (www.yalelawjournal.org)
( 2025/01/31: ) The Supreme Court's new standing cases have further narrowed the class of claims justiciable in federal court. Some state courts have followed suit, leaving valid federal claims without any viable forum. We argue that the Supremacy Clause requires state courts to vindicate federal rights by hearing some of these
Against the Work-Study Boundary: Synthesizing Title VII and Title IX Protections for Student-Employees (www.yalelawjournal.org)
( 2025/01/31: ) Courts routinely deny student-employees facing sex discrimination the expansive Title VII protections they deserve, and student-employees often fail to bring Title IX claims that more fulsomely capture this discrimination. Looking forward, courts should synthesize Title VII's protections with Title IX's coverage by considering education-based evidence when evaluating Title VII
The Credit Markets Go Dark (www.yalelawjournal.org)
( 2025/01/31: ) Mirroring the recent paradigm shift in corporate equity, corporate debt is now increasingly private and concentrated in the hands of investment funds. This Article chronicles the rise of private credit—loans originated by investment funds, rather than banks—and discusses its implications, including the potential loss of information and
Refining Constitutional Torts (www.yalelawjournal.org)
( 2025/01/31: ) Constitutional torts allow victims of governmental misconduct to seek redress. But the doctrinal regime is in disarray because it vacillates between two conceptions of constitutional rights: rights that “nullify” changes to subconstitutional law and rights that impose “duties” on officers. The Feature defends a regime that embraces constitutional
The Three Lives of Mamengwaa: Toward an Indigenous Canon of Construction (www.yalelawjournal.org)
( 2025/01/31: ) Many of the intractable political disputes that plague tribal nations can be traced to the reliance on legal principles that are poor fits in Indigenous contexts. I suggest the acknowledgment of an Indigenous canon of construction of tribal laws by tribal judiciaries that will benefit legal development in tribal
Copyright, Meet Antitrust: The Supreme Courtโ€™s Warhol Decision and the Rise of Competition Analysis in Fair Use (www.yalelawjournal.org)
( 2025/01/18: ) In its recent decision in Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. v. Goldsmith , the Supreme Court noted that whether defendant's work competes with plaintiff's is a key element of the fair-use analysis. This Essay argues that antitrust law offers valuable guidance for assessing competition in copyright
A Legislative Response to 303 Creative (www.yalelawjournal.org)
( 2025/01/14: ) States should respond to the U.S. Supreme Court's 303 Creative decision by enacting implied warranties of nondiscrimination. Making nondiscrimination a publicly disclaimable default would facilitate informed consumer choice and mitigate the dignitary harms of point-of-sale
The Politics and Perverse Effects of the Fight Against Online Medical Misinformation (www.yalelawjournal.org)
( 2025/01/14: ) Platforms' content moderation of medical misinformation has become one of this era's biggest political controversies. This Essay traces how platforms' choices during the COVID-19 pandemic became so politicized, and how the category “medical misinformation” cannot be used to skirt important questions about the legitimacy of platform power over public
Supply-Chain Wage Theft as Unfair Method of Competition (www.yalelawjournal.org)
( 2024/11/30: ) This Note argues that wage theft in the fissured economy is a competition problem, not just a labor problem. It first recovers a historical understanding of substandard wages as an unfair method of competition. It then proposes FTC action against supply-chain wage theft using Section 5 of the FTC
Time and Punishment (www.yalelawjournal.org)
( 2024/11/30: ) The legal system's ability to control people's time is a form of dominion that exacerbates the structural disadvantages that marginalized families already face. Constriction, stretching, and indeterminacy are important aspects of temporal marginalization in the family regulation system. Considering the experience of time is one step towards understanding its
Externalist Statutory Interpretation (www.yalelawjournal.org)
( 2024/11/30: ) This Article introduces a new, historically grounded “externalist” perspective for understanding the possibilities and limits of statutory interpretation as a tool for democratic participation and collective power
The Invention of Immigration Exceptionalism (www.yalelawjournal.org)
( 2024/11/30: ) Everyone believes that immigration law has been exceptional since its late nineteenth-century birth—insulated from judicial review by the Court's creation of the “plenary power doctrine.” But early immigration law was actually ordinary public law. Recovering this reality has profound implications for scholars of immigration and public law
AI and the Sound of Music (www.yalelawjournal.org)
( 2024/11/23: ) Today, AI enables people to create music simply by using words—fulfilling the belief that music is a universal language. This Essay analyzes how courts and Congress should respond to AI's seismic disruptions to the music industry based on the principles of technology neutrality, expansive authorship, and rebalancing of
Bind Us Together: Coalitional Public Policy Advocacy in Medical-Legal Partnerships (www.yalelawjournal.org)
( 2024/11/15: ) The Medical-Legal Partnership (MLP) model promotes direct services and public policy advocacy by lawyers incorporated into medical teams. Drawing on personal experiences, this Essay proposes that to accomplish policy change, MLP practitioners organize and be organized into community coalitions built and maintained around a robust vision of health
The Second Amendmentโ€™s Second Sex (www.yalelawjournal.org)
( 2024/11/12: ) This Essay explores how the Supreme Court's Second Amendment doctrine perpetuates gender hierarchies and a male monopoly on lethal self-defense. It critiques the narrow “true man” framing that ignores women's experiences and advocates for a justice-centered framework that incorporates power and privilege into the gun-rights
Between a Rock and a Gun (www.yalelawjournal.org)
( 2024/11/12: ) The Roberts Court has methodically expanded the scope of Second Amendment rights. But in its first Second Amendment case involving a criminal defendant, United States v. Rahimi , the Court blinked. This Essay explores the implications of that
The Political Economy of Arbitration Law (www.yalelawjournal.org)
( 2024/10/31: ) The prevalent academic critique of arbitration, the access-to-justice critique, fails to account for arbitration's influence on how firms organize themselves. This Note offers a new critique of arbitration from a political economy perspective, arguing that today's highly restrictive arbitration law greatly benefits firms organized as gig
The Eyes-On Doctrine (www.yalelawjournal.org)
( 2024/10/31: ) Across the germinal period of American constitutional and penological history, a ubiquitous, cohesive body of law gave force to the following view: the judicial power includes supervisory authority over prison government and conditions of confinement. This Note argues for a witting revival of that commonsense
Auto Clubs and the Lost Origins of the Access-to-Justice Crisis (www.yalelawjournal.org)
( 2024/10/31: ) A century ago, auto clubs offered an astonishing array of legal services, representing members in civil and criminal cases, on both sides of the proverbial “v.” But in the 1930s, bar associations decimated these clubs, alongside other group-legal-service providers—and, we argue, sowed the seeds of the current access-to-justice
Reconstructing Critical Legal Studies (www.yalelawjournal.org)
( 2024/10/31: ) Had the critical legal studies movement never existed, it would have to be invented today. That movement framed law as a forceful instrument of domination but one compatible with both functional and interpretative underdeterminacy. Its discoveries are indispensable to any successor venture, including the current law and political economy
The Water District and the State (www.yalelawjournal.org)
( 2024/10/31: ) In much of the American West, local special districts with undemocratic governance structures and archaic boundaries dominate water governance. In some places, they are expanding their reach into new policy realms. This Article explains how these governance systems evolved, why they are problematic, and how state governments can
Against Ventriloquizing Children: How Studentsโ€™ Rights Disguise Adult Culture Wars (www.yalelawjournal.org)
( 2024/10/29: ) This Essay argues against the pursuit of students' rights, which function mainly as a smokescreen behind which adults have advanced their own partisan agendas in our culture wars. Independent rights for students are both theoretically untenable and politically damaging to our liberal
โ€œSafety, in a Republican Senseโ€:Trump v. United States, Democracy, and an Antisubordination Theory of the Criminal Law (www.yalelawjournal.org)
( 2024/10/26: ) Democratic governance requires holding the powerful to account. This Essay therefore proposes a broad antisubordination theory of the criminal law which grapples directly with disparities in power, rather than obscuring them under the guise of formal equality. Neither formal equality nor its alternative, prison abolitionism, can adequately protect
The Effects of 401(k) Vesting Schedulesโ€”in Numbers (www.yalelawjournal.org)
( 2024/09/28: ) In 2022, over 1.87 million Americans ceased employment before satisfying their employer's 401(k) plan vesting schedule, causing them to forfeit nonvested employer contributions. This Essay uses data to demonstrate the effects of using vesting schedules and highlights companies who had the most affected workers or amassed significant forfeitures in
Public Utilityโ€™s Potential (www.yalelawjournal.org)
( 2024/07/02: ) State-level public utility commissions regulate our energy systems. But they are often viewed as ill-equipped to address climate change. This Feature counters that conventional wisdom by uncovering a forgotten history of New York's energy transition, revealing that public utility's potential to facilitate a clean-energy transition is broader than we
The Education Justice (www.yalelawjournal.org)
( 2024/07/02: ) author. Robert R. Slaughter Professor of Law, Yale Law School; Law Clerk for Justice Sandra
Suing Cities (www.yalelawjournal.org)
( 2024/07/02: ) Current law makes it easy to sue cities. Too easy. While suing federal and state governments is notoriously difficult, various doctrines open courthouse doors to taxpayers, homeowners, and politically favored groups suing local governments. These doctrines further strengthen powerful actors, weaken cities' ability to initiate reforms, and undermine local
Public Utility's Potential (www.yalelawjournal.org)
( 2024/07/02: ) State-level public utility commissions regulate our energy systems. But they are often viewed as ill-equipped to address climate change. This Feature counters that conventional wisdom by uncovering a forgotten history of New York's energy transition, revealing that public utility's potential to facilitate a clean-energy transition is broader than we
The Subdivided City (www.yalelawjournal.org)
( 2024/07/02: ) City subunits may facilitate municipal objectives of service provision and democratic governance. Different types of subunits risk various conflicts with their constituents and the city that hosts them. This Feature analyzes sources of those conflicts and reforms to address them, and argues for city deference to subunits in limited
The Local Lawmaking Loophole (www.yalelawjournal.org)
( 2024/07/02: ) This Article illustrates how contracts between local governments—interlocal agreements (ILAs)—play a powerful lawmaking function yet lack democratic accountability. It traces the problem to state statutory schemes, where checks designed to promote transparency are ignored by state officials and courts, enabling undemocratic local power by virtue of state
Lessons from My Mentor, Justice Sandra Day Oโ€™Connor (www.yalelawjournal.org)
( 2024/07/02: ) author. Circuit Judge, United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit; Law Clerk for
Introduction to the Special Issue on State and Local Governance (www.yalelawjournal.org)
( 2024/07/02: ) Many are well-acquainted with Justice Brandeis’s metaphor that states serve as laboratories
Remembering In re Turner: Popular Constitutionalism in the Reconstruction Era (www.yalelawjournal.org)
( 2024/06/24: ) Relying on insights from Critical Race Theory and feminist legal theory, this Note presents a historical account of the underexamined movement to end racialized apprenticeship laws in the post-slavery era. The Note argues that our shared constitutional memory has been artificially narrowed by underconsideration of freedpeople's constitutional theories and
Rationalizing Absurdity (www.yalelawjournal.org)
( 2024/06/24: ) Critiqued as a blank check for judicial intervention, the absurdity canon has been all but abandoned by modern textualists. But its total dismissal is unwarranted. By dissecting absurdity's multiple meanings, this Note reframes and justifies the absurdity canon in terms of constitutional values inherent in the Equal Protection
The Past and Future of Universal Vacatur (www.yalelawjournal.org)
( 2024/06/24: ) Universal vacatur is a legitimate part of administrative law's remedial scheme, not a judicial invention. This Feature traces universal vacatur from the pre-APA period through Abbott Labs . It also juxtaposes the case against universal vacatur with the new major questions doctrine, showing that both centralize power in the Supreme
The Glaring Gap in Tort Theory (www.yalelawjournal.org)
( 2024/06/24: ) The glaring gap in tort theory is its failure to take adequate account of liability insurance. We explain how to begin filling the gap in tort theory that results from omitting consideration of liability insurance, showing how liability insurance can appropriately figure in both deontic and consequentialist theories of
Prisons as Laboratories of Antidemocracy (www.yalelawjournal.org)
( 2024/06/24: ) Jeffrey Bellin's Mass Incarceration Nation robustly analyzes how state and federal policies have combined to drive up prison populations. Mass incarceration represents a failure of democracy, but the repressive policies of American prisons represent an even graver threat as laboratories of antidemocracy that export these policies to the body
Rationalizing the Administrative Record for Equitable Constitutional Claims (www.yalelawjournal.org)
( 2024/06/24: ) The APA's conventional rules stem from traditional rules of relevancy for discovery, rather than a statutory mandate. The scope of evidentiary review for constitutional claims against agencies should be determined by decision rules for a particular claim, consonant with the underlying principles of the scope of review in administrative
When the Sovereign Contracts: Troubling the Public/Private Distinction in International Law (www.yalelawjournal.org)
( 2024/06/24: ) The distinction between a state's public and private acts is flimsy and unclear. Choosing to see an act as essentially private or public often obscures the other features that complicate that characterization. And selectively recognizing the private aspects of transactions has disproportionately subordinated Global South
Resisting Mass Immigrant Prosecutions (www.yalelawjournal.org)
( 2024/06/24: ) Over the last two decades, U.S. courts have convicted hundreds of thousands of Latin American defendants for misdemeanor immigration crimes. This Article documents, analyzes, and draws lessons from immigrants' defiance. In particular, the battles in California and Texas reveal several effective legal strategies for immigrant defendants to resist mass
Ghostwriting Federalism (www.yalelawjournal.org)
( 2024/06/24: ) Drawing on interviews and historical accounts, this Article explains how federal agencies help states write legislation. Even as the Supreme Court has curtailed administrative power in the name of federalism, this Article shows how agency collaborations with statehouses may further values associated with federalism by encouraging accountability, deliberation, and
Constructing AI Speech (www.yalelawjournal.org)
( 2024/06/24: ) This Essay advocates for a “legal construction of technology” approach to AI speech, challenging the notion that technology disrupts law and emphasizing how law shapes technology based on societal value. Applying the method to four different legal constructions of AI, the authors examine AI within First Amendment jurisprudence, content moderation, risk regulation, and consumer protection, highlighting the proactive role of legal actors in aligning AI development with democratic values and