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The Perennial Eclipse: Race, Immigration, And How Latinx Count In American Politics, Rachel F. Moran
The Perennial Eclipse: Race, Immigration, And How Latinx Count In American Politics, Rachel F. Moran
Faculty Scholarship
In 2016, the U.S. Supreme Court decided Evenwel v. Abbott, a case challenging the use of total population in state legislative apportionment as a violation of the Equal Protection Clause. The plaintiffs sued Texas, alleging that the State impermissibly diluted their voting power because they lived in areas with a high proportion of voting-age citizens. When total population was used to draw district lines, the plaintiffs had to compete with more voters to get their desired electoral outcomes than was true for voters in districts with low proportions of voting-age citizens. The Court rejected the argument, finding that states enjoy …
The Promise And Perils Of Tech Whistleblowing, Hannah Bloch-Wehba
The Promise And Perils Of Tech Whistleblowing, Hannah Bloch-Wehba
Faculty Scholarship
Whistleblowers and leakers wield significant influence in technology law and policy. On topics ranging from cybersecurity to free speech, tech whistleblowers spur congressional hearings, motivate the introduction of legislation, and animate critical press coverage of tech firms. But while scholars and policymakers have long called for transparency and accountability in the tech sector, they have overlooked the significance of individual disclosures by industry insiders—workers, employees, and volunteers—who leak information that firms would prefer to keep private.
This Article offers an account of the rise and influence of tech whistleblowing. Radical information asymmetries pervade tech law and policy. Firms exercise near-complete …
The Ideology Of Press Freedom, Hannah Bloch-Wehba
The Ideology Of Press Freedom, Hannah Bloch-Wehba
Faculty Scholarship
This Article offers a critical account of the law of press freedom. American law and political culture laud the press as an institution that plays a vital role in democracy: guarding against corruption, facilitating self-governance, and advocating for free expression. These democratic functions provide justification for the law of press freedom, which defends the media’s autonomy and shields the press from outside interference.
But the dominant accounts of the press’s democratic role are only partly accurate. The law of press freedom is grounded in large part in journalism’s professional commitments to objectivity, public service, and autonomy. These idealized characterizations, flawed …
Charging Abortion, Milan Markovic
Charging Abortion, Milan Markovic
Faculty Scholarship
As long as Roe v. Wade remained good law, prosecutors could largely avoid the question of abortion. The Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization has now placed prosecutors at the forefront of the abortion wars. Some chief prosecutors in antiabortion states have pledged to not enforce antiabortion laws, whereas others are targeting even out-of-state providers. This post-Dobbs reality, wherein the ability to obtain an abortion depends not only on the politics of one’s state but also the policies of one’s local district attorney, has received minimal scrutiny from legal scholars.
Prosecutors have broad charging discretion, …
Four Futures Of Chevron Deference, Daniel E. Walters
Four Futures Of Chevron Deference, Daniel E. Walters
Faculty Scholarship
In two upcoming cases, the Supreme Court will consider whether to overturn the Chevron doctrine, which, since 1984, has required courts to defer to reasonable agency interpretations of otherwise ambiguous statutes. In this short essay, I defend the proposition that, even on death’s door, Chevron deference is likely to be resurrected, and I offer a simple positive political theory model that helps explain why. The core insight of this model is that the prevailing approach to judicial review of agency interpretations of law is politically contingent—that is, it is likely to represent an equilibrium that efficiently maximizes the Supreme Court’s …
The Major Questions Doctrine At The Boundaries Of Interpretive Law, Daniel E. Walters
The Major Questions Doctrine At The Boundaries Of Interpretive Law, Daniel E. Walters
Faculty Scholarship
The Supreme Court’s apparent transformation of the major questions doctrine into a clear statement rule demanding clear congressional authorization for “major” agency actions has already had, and will continue to have, wide-ranging impacts on American public law. Not the least of these is the impact it will have on the enterprise of statutory interpretation. Indeed, while it is easy to focus on the policy repercussions of a newly constrained Congress and newly hamstrung administrative state, this Article argues that equally important is the novel precedent that is set in this particular formulation of a clear statement rule, which stands almost …
Social Costs Of Dobbs' Pro-Adoption Agenda, Malinda L. Seymore
Social Costs Of Dobbs' Pro-Adoption Agenda, Malinda L. Seymore
Faculty Scholarship
Abortion opponents have long claimed that women denied access to abortion can simply give their children up for adoption. Justice Alito repeated this argument in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health. Of course, this claim assumes away the burdens of the pregnancy itself, which can result in economic strife, domestic violence, health risks, and potentially death in childbirth. But even on its own terms, the argument that adoption is an adequate substitute for abortion access makes normative assumptions about adoption as a social good in and of itself, ignoring the social costs of adoption for birth parents and adoptees. Idealizing adoption …
Personhood, Property, And Public Education: The Case Of Plyler V. Doe, Rachel F. Moran
Personhood, Property, And Public Education: The Case Of Plyler V. Doe, Rachel F. Moran
Faculty Scholarship
Property law is having a moment, one that is getting education scholars’ attention. Progressive scholars are retooling the concepts of ownership and entitlement to incorporate norms of equality and inclusion. Some argue that property law can even secure access to public education despite the U.S. Supreme Court’s longstanding refusal to recog- nize a right to basic schooling. Others worry that property doctrine is inherently exclusionary. In their view, property-based concepts like resi- dency have produced opportunity hoarding in schools that serve affluent, predominantly white neighborhoods. Many advocates therefore believe that equity will be achieved only by moving beyond property-based claims, …
Pro-Choice Plans, Brendan S. Maher
Pro-Choice Plans, Brendan S. Maher
Faculty Scholarship
After Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the United States Constitution may no longer protect abortion, but a surprising federal statute does. That statute is called the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (“ERISA”), and it has long been one of the most powerful preemptive statutes in the entire United States Code. ERISA regulates “employee benefit plans,” which are the vehicle by which approximately 155 million people receive their health insurance. Plans are thus a major private payer for health benefits—and therefore abortions. While many post-Dobbs anti-abortion laws directly bar abortion by making either the receipt or provision of …
Racial Equality, Religious Liberty, And The Complications Of Pluralism, Rachel F. Moran
Racial Equality, Religious Liberty, And The Complications Of Pluralism, Rachel F. Moran
Faculty Scholarship
Constitutional law scholar Laurence Tribe once described due process and equal protection as “a legal double helix.” By this, he meant that protections for substantive liberties coupled with principles of equal treatment created “a single, unfolding tale of equal liberty and increasingly universal dignity.” In his view, equality and liberty were mutually constitutive and “center[ed] on a quest for genuine self-government of groups small and large.” Although this optimistic account of the nation’s constitutional DNA is reassuring, Professor Sahar Aziz’s new book on “The Racial Muslim: When Racism Quashes Religious Freedom” reminds us that the double helix can unravel, so …
The Disembodied First Amendment, Nathan Cortez, William M. Sage
The Disembodied First Amendment, Nathan Cortez, William M. Sage
Faculty Scholarship
First Amendment doctrine is becoming disembodied—increasingly detached from human speakers and listeners. Corporations claim that their speech rights limit government regulation of everything from product labeling to marketing to ordinary business licensing. Courts extend protections to commercial speech that ordinarily extended only to core political and religious speech. And now, we are told, automated information generated for cryptocurrencies, robocalling, and social media bots are also protected speech under the Constitution. Where does it end? It begins, no doubt, with corporate and commercial speech. We show, however, that heightened protection for corporate and commercial speech is built on several “artifices” - …
Running On Empty: Ford V. Montana And The Folly Of Minimum Contacts, James P. George
Running On Empty: Ford V. Montana And The Folly Of Minimum Contacts, James P. George
Faculty Scholarship
Jurisdictional contests are in disarray. Criticisms date back to the issuance of International Shoe Co. v. Washington but the breakdown may be best illustrated in two recent Supreme Court opinions, the first rejecting California’s “sliding scale” that mixes general and specific contacts, the second using the discredited sliding scale to hold Ford amenable in states where accidents occurred.
California’s sliding scale is one variety of the contacts-relatedness tests, used in lower courts to have general contacts bolster weaker specific contacts. Some states—Montana and Minnesota for example—use the opposite extreme requiring a causal connection in defendant’s forum contacts, often using foreseeability …
Content Moderation As Surveillance, Hannah Bloch-Wehba
Content Moderation As Surveillance, Hannah Bloch-Wehba
Faculty Scholarship
Technology platforms are the new governments, and content moderation is the new law, or so goes a common refrain. As platforms increasingly turn toward new, automated mechanisms of enforcing their rules, the apparent power of the private sector seems only to grow. Yet beneath the surface lies a web of complex relationships between public and private authorities that call into question whether platforms truly possess such unilateral power. Law enforcement and police are exerting influence over platform content rules, giving governments a louder voice in supposedly “private” decisions. At the same time, law enforcement avails itself of the affordances of …
Beyond Bristol-Myers : Personal Jurisdiction Over Class Actions, Adam N. Steinman
Beyond Bristol-Myers : Personal Jurisdiction Over Class Actions, Adam N. Steinman
Faculty Scholarship
The Supreme Court's 2017 decision in Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. v. Superior Court threatens a sea change in the relationship between personal jurisdiction and aggregate litigation. The most crucial concern has been what the decision means for class actions. Must a court subject the claims of every unnamed class member to separate jurisdictional scrutiny? If so, it could be impossible for a plaintiff who sues in her home state to represent class members outside that state; instead, the Constitution would permit multi-state or nationwide class actions only in states where the defendant is subject to general jurisdiction. For claims against a …
Diversity’S Distractions Revisited: The Case Of Latinx In Higher Education, Rachel F. Moran
Diversity’S Distractions Revisited: The Case Of Latinx In Higher Education, Rachel F. Moran
Faculty Scholarship
As the United States Supreme Court considers the future of affirmative action in higher education, this Article reflects on a 2003 essay by Professor Derrick Bell, which provocatively argued that diversity is a distraction from other pressing problems of access to a bachelor’s degree. The Article evaluates his claims with a focus on Latinx students, a rapidly growing segment of the college-going population. Bell believed that diversity is a less compelling justification for the use of race in admissions than corrective justice is. As a result, he predicted persistent litigation over the constitutionality of affirmative action programs. That prediction certainly …
Immigration Detention And Illusory Alternatives To Habeas, Fatma Marouf
Immigration Detention And Illusory Alternatives To Habeas, Fatma Marouf
Faculty Scholarship
The Supreme Court has never directly addressed whether, or under what circumstances, a writ of habeas corpus may be used to challenge the conditions of detention, as opposed to the fact or duration of detention. Consequently, a circuit split exists on habeas jurisdiction over conditions claims. The COVID-19 pandemic brought this issue into the spotlight as detained individuals fearing infection, serious illness, and death requested release through habeas petitions around the country. One of the factors that courts considered in deciding whether to exercise habeas jurisdiction was whether alternative remedies exist, through a civil rights or tort-based action. This Article …
The Unbearable Emptiness Of Formalism: Autonomy, Equality, And The Future Of Affirmative Action, Rachel F. Moran
The Unbearable Emptiness Of Formalism: Autonomy, Equality, And The Future Of Affirmative Action, Rachel F. Moran
Faculty Scholarship
Debates over affirmative action in higher education generally focus on equality interests under the Fourteenth Amendment but ignore liberty interests under the First Amendment. That tendency persists, even though the academic freedom to enroll a diverse student body has allowed colleges and universities to defend race-conscious admissions programs against legal challenges for decades. Today, the rise of formalism in judicial interpretation poses new perils for these programs. Justice Powell’s seminal decision in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke was a pragmatic compromise that used diversity to temper the polarized debate over equality that sharply divided the Court. In …
The Living Rules Of Evidence, G. Alexander Nunn
The Living Rules Of Evidence, G. Alexander Nunn
Faculty Scholarship
The jurisprudential evolution of evidence law is dead. At least, that’s what we’re expected to believe. Ushered in on the wings of a growing positivist movement, the enactment of the Federal Rules of Evidence purported to quell judicial authority over evidence law. Instead, committees, conferences, and members of Congress would regulate any change to our evidentiary regime, thereby capturing the evolution of evidence law in a single, transparent code.
The codification of evidence law, though, has proven problematic. The arrival of the Federal Rules of Evidence has given rise to a historically anomalous era of relative stagnation in the doctrinal …
The Public Accommodations Dilemma - Whose Right Prevails, Meg Penrose
The Public Accommodations Dilemma - Whose Right Prevails, Meg Penrose
Faculty Scholarship
This essay gives a brief history of religious liberty-based objections to public accommodations law promoting societal integration and provides a potential solution. It argues there are parallels between LGBTQ discrimination and race discrimination, including the continued resistance to full integration and equality. The essay suggests a potential solution to the public accommodations dilemma between anti-discrimination and religious liberty in redefining the scope of religious liberty. Courts should protect religious services and activities—not secular services and activities. The status (religious or secular) of the person providing services should be irrelevant. The focus of public accommodations laws, and legal challenges to these …
Decoding Nondelegation After Gundy: What The Experience In State Courts Tells Us About What To Expect When We're Expecting, Daniel E. Walters
Decoding Nondelegation After Gundy: What The Experience In State Courts Tells Us About What To Expect When We're Expecting, Daniel E. Walters
Faculty Scholarship
The nondelegation doctrine theoretically limits Congress’s ability to delegate legislative powers to the executive agencies that make up the modern administrative state. Yet, in practice, the U.S. Supreme Court has, since the New Deal, shied away from enforcing any limits on congressional delegation. That may change in the near future. In Gundy v. United States, the Court narrowly upheld a delegation, and a dissent signaled deep doubts about the Court’s longstanding “intelligible principle” standard and offered a new framework to replace it. Subsequent events strongly suggest that the Court is poised to move in the direction contemplated by the dissent …
Equal Justice Under Law: Navigating The Delicate Balance Between Religious Liberty And Marriage Equality, Meg Penrose
Equal Justice Under Law: Navigating The Delicate Balance Between Religious Liberty And Marriage Equality, Meg Penrose
Faculty Scholarship
This Article discusses the current state of the law and offers thoughts on its future. Part Il provides a brief overview of the legal landscape involved in the clash between religious liberty and same-sex marriage From Justice Scalia's seminal religious liberty test to the evolution of same- sex marriage, Part Il describes the current law. Part III introduces the reader to public accommodations laws. After providing this brief history, Part Ill discusses three Supreme Court cases that could have resolved the religious liberty versus marriage equality question. Part IV looks ahead and draws analogies to the 1960s religious liberty objections …
Appellate Courts And Civil Juries, Adam N. Steinman
Appellate Courts And Civil Juries, Adam N. Steinman
Faculty Scholarship
In federal civil litigation, decision-making power is shared by juries, trial courts, and appellate courts. This Article examines an unresolved tension in the different doctrines that allocate authority among these institutions, one that has led to confusion surrounding the relationship between appellate courts and civil juries. At base, the current uncertainty stems from a longstanding lack of clarity regarding the distinction between matters of law and matters of fact. The high-stakes Oracle-Google litigation—which is now before the Supreme Court—exemplifies this. In that case, the Federal Circuit reasoned that an appellate court may assert de novo review over a jury’s verdict …
Dreamers Interrupted: The Case Of The Rescission Of The Program Of Deferred Action For Childhood Arrivals, Rachel F. Moran
Dreamers Interrupted: The Case Of The Rescission Of The Program Of Deferred Action For Childhood Arrivals, Rachel F. Moran
Faculty Scholarship
In 1994, California voters went to the polls to pass Proposition 187, a measure designed to deter unauthorized immigration by denying a range of public benefits to the undocumented. Twenty-five years later, undocumented immigration remains a deeply polarizing issue in our country. But if the political discourse seems similar, the civil rights toolkit is not. In an earlier era, equal protection arguments had pride of place, but today, advocates rely heavily on structural and institutional arguments to constrain official discretion.
In 1982, the United States Supreme Court’s decision in Plyler v. Doe declared unconstitutional a Texas statute that denied undocumented …
Extraterritorial Rights In Border Enforcement, Fatma Marouf
Extraterritorial Rights In Border Enforcement, Fatma Marouf
Faculty Scholarship
Recent shifts in border enforcement policies raise pressing new questions about the extraterritorial reach of constitutional rights. Policies that keep asylum seekers in Mexico, expand the use of expedited removal, and encourage the cross-border use of force require courts to determine whether noncitizens who are physically outside the United States, or who are treated for legal purposes as being outside even if they have entered the country, can claim constitutional protections. This Article examines a small but growing body of cases addressing these extraterritoriality issues in the border enforcement context, focusing on disparities in judicial analyses that have resulted in …
Notice Pleading In Exile, Adam N. Steinman
Notice Pleading In Exile, Adam N. Steinman
Faculty Scholarship
According to the conventional wisdom, the Supreme Court's 2009 decision in Ashcroft v. Iqbal discarded notice pleading in favor of plausibility pleading. This Article — part of a symposium commemorating the Iqbal decision's tenth anniversary — highlights decisions during those ten years that have continued to endorse notice pleading despite Iqbal. It also argues that those decisions reflect the best way to read the Iqbal decision. Although Iqbal is a troubling decision in many respects, it can be implemented consistently with the notice-pleading framework that the original drafters of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure had in mind.
The Lost Promise Of Lambert V. California, Cynthia Alkon
The Lost Promise Of Lambert V. California, Cynthia Alkon
Faculty Scholarship
This Article will start with a brief overview of the Lambert case. It will then discuss the differing views on how to interpret this relatively short case. Next, it will review the cases citing to Lambert that illustrate the narrow approach that courts have taken when applying this case. Finally, it will offer some thoughts on how Lambert could have played a role in preventing some of the excesses of mass incarceration, but failed.
The Case Against Expanding Defamation Law, Yonathan A. Arbel, Murat C. Mungan
The Case Against Expanding Defamation Law, Yonathan A. Arbel, Murat C. Mungan
Faculty Scholarship
It is considered axiomatic that defamation law protects reputation. This proposition—commonsensical, pervasive, and influential—is faulty. Underlying this fallacy is the failure to appreciate audience effects: the interaction between defamation law and members of the audience.
Defamation law seeks to affect the behavior of speakers by making them bear a cost for spreading untruthful information. Invariably, however, the law will also affect members of the audience, as statements made in a highly regulated environment tend to appear more reliable than statements made without accountability. Strict defamation law would tend to increase the perceived reliability of statements, which in some cases can …
A Literary Lens Into Constitutional Interpretation And A Possible Synthesis Of Natural And Positive Law: The Silmarillion, Charles Edward Andrew Lincoln Iv
A Literary Lens Into Constitutional Interpretation And A Possible Synthesis Of Natural And Positive Law: The Silmarillion, Charles Edward Andrew Lincoln Iv
Student Scholarship
The nature of identity in the United States lies in the Constitution. Perhaps this is due to “veneration” of the document. It has also been argued that the Declaration of Independence holds a seminal role in the American identity.
The rift seems to occur with the concept of a “living constitution,” whereby the concept of an ever-evolving jurisprudence allows for an evolving interpretation of the Constitution as society changes.
This rift can be demonstrated by the world of J.R.R. Tolkien. In The Lord of the Rings and Silmarillion, the various languages of groups of Middle Earth represent and have distinct …
The Implications Of Environmental Law And Latino Property Rights On Modern-Age Border Security: Rejecting A Physical Border And Embracing A Virtual Wall, Kevin Hernandez
The Implications Of Environmental Law And Latino Property Rights On Modern-Age Border Security: Rejecting A Physical Border And Embracing A Virtual Wall, Kevin Hernandez
Student Scholarship
For many, the construction of a physical border is a rational solution to national security concerns at the southern border. However, there is much evidence indicating that the negative impacts of building a physical border wall far outweigh its benefits. Particularly, the border region’s eco-systems have much to lose in the form of extinctions, biodiversity reduction, and critical habitat destruction. On top of that, a number of Latino communities would be the victims of various eminent domain claims that would strip them of land that, in many cases, has been in their family for multiple gener- ations. The broad, almost …
Even Some International Law Is Local: Implementation Of Treaties Through Subnational Mechanisms, Charlotte Ku, William H. Henning, David P. Stewart, Paul F. Diehl
Even Some International Law Is Local: Implementation Of Treaties Through Subnational Mechanisms, Charlotte Ku, William H. Henning, David P. Stewart, Paul F. Diehl
Faculty Scholarship
Multilateral treaties today rarely touch on subjects where there is no domestic law in the United States, In the U.S. federal system, this domestic law may not be national law, but law of the constituent States of the United States. However, in light of the U.S. Constitution Article VI, treaties in their domestic application unavoidably federalize the subjects they address. The most sensitive issues arise when a treaty focuses on matters primarily or exclusively dealt with in the United States at the State or local level. Although U.S. practice allows for some flexibility to accommodate State/local interests, the federal government …