Digital Commons Network^™

The Indirect Taxes, Conor Clarke, Ari Glogower

Scholarship@WashULaw

Article I of the Constitution empowers Congress to “lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises.” It is arguably Congress’s most important power. A government’s first task is to fund itself, and the absence of an enforceable funding mechanism under the Articles of Confederation was a primary reason for the Constitution in the first place. Yet scholarly and judicial attention has focused mostly on the term “taxes” (and specifically what constitutes a “direct tax” that must be apportioned) while largely overlooking the three terms that follow—the duties, imposts, and excises that are collectively known as the “indirect taxes.” 

While poorly …

Recent Case: Executive Power - The Supreme Court Relies On Historical Context To Protect The Federal Reserve's Independence In Trump V. Cook, Charles Britton

ConLawNOW

The Supreme Court in Trump v Cook carved out an exception for the Federal Reserve Bank to the unfettered right of the president to terminate administrative employees at will, a right it established the same day in Trump v. Slaughter. Rather than entirely eliminating the need for “cause,” the Court maintained the requirement in the bank context and defined it as something more than just a reason to dispose of a political adversary. The Court relied on historical and traditional support for insulating the Federal Reserve and pragmatism to protect against national economic turmoil. This Note explains how the …

Recent Case: Equal Protection - Transgender Discrimination In Women's Sports: West Virginia V B.P.J., Joey Martinez

ConLawNOW

This Recent Case Note analyzes the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in West Virginia v. B.P.J. (2026) in which the Court upheld state laws banning transgender women and girls from competing on women’s and girls’ sports teams. By holding that the state bans were justified by concerns with physical safety and fair competition, the Court rejected a claim that the bans violated the Equal Protection Clause and applied an arguably less demanding heightened scrutiny standard than its prior cases seemingly required. The Court deferred to the state legislatures on the contested questions of medical and sports science, applying a weakened “new …

Cumulative Reasonableness: A Doctrine Of The Combined Effect Of State Intrusions, Tonja Jacobi

Texas A&M Law Review

The Supreme Court has recognized that a single state action, such as forced surgery to retrieve a bullet as evidence, can be so intrusive as to be unreasonable, even when police have probable cause and a warrant. Yet, the Court permits significant intrusions into a person’s privacy and bodily integrity when the state acts in multiple steps. It permits police to, among other things: subject a person to a stop, even when that stop was driven by racial discrimination; use evidence found in a search of the person, even when the stop was illegal; arrest that person, even when the …

Incidental Jurisdiction, Mark Moller

Texas A&M Law Review

Federal courts have incidental, or implied, powers. On this, there is general agreement among originalist researchers. But there is also wide consensus that, whatever incidental powers Article III courts enjoy, these powers do not include incidental subject matter jurisdiction. Article III must confer federal subject matter jurisdiction expressly.

The conventional wisdom against incidental jurisdiction, though, is entirely unexamined. It is also wrong as an original matter. This Article presents new evidence that the express terms of Article III did not cash out the scope of federal subject matter jurisdiction. The outer boundaries of subject matter jurisdiction were defined, instead, by …

Judicial Independence As A Constitutional Construction, Keith E. Whittington

Texas A&M Law Review

An independent judiciary, in the American context, might best be understood as a constitutional construction. That is, it is a politically constructed set of practices, institutions, and norms that extend, but do not contradict, the legal requirements of the formal constitution. As such, judicial independence has come to occupy a fundamental status within our inherited constitutional order. But importantly, it is mutable. Our inherited practice of judicial independence has been built up and fought over across time, and within the contours of the written constitution, can be significantly reconstructed.

The example of judicial independence can serve as a useful illustration …

The Price Of Texas Values: Texas S.B. 22 And Content-Based Film Incentives, Juliana (Ani) Tookoian

Texas A&M Law Review

In 2025, the Texas Legislature enacted Senate Bill 22, committing $1.5 billion to expand the Texas Moving Image Industry Incentive Program and attract film and television production to the state. While the law aims to stimulate economic growth and job creation, it conditions eligibility for financial incentives on vague and subjective standards requiring productions to avoid portraying Texas negatively and to promote “Texas values.” This Comment argues that these content-based restrictions undermine the program’s economic objectives and raise significant First Amendment concerns. By granting state officials broad discretion to evaluate expressive content, the statute risks viewpoint discrimination and the chilling …

Multistate Litigation Networks, Elysa M. Dishman, Kristina Bishop

Texas A&M Law Review

State lawsuits challenging executive orders and agency regulations not only disrupt executive policymaking but also reshape constitutional structures. States sue the federal government in highly coordinated multistate coalitions led by state attorneys general. These state coalitions target federal agencies and officials in strategically selected courts seeking sweeping injunctions to block executive actions. Following the Supreme Court’s opinion curtailing universal injunctions for private litigants without class certification, states are uniquely poised to obtain broad injunctive relief against the federal government. This Article theorizes that multistate litigation involves a series of network relationships among state plaintiffs, federal defendants, and federal courts and …

Animus And Heightened Scrutiny: A Way Out Of The ‘Dead End’, Steve Sanders

Texas A&M Law Review

Laws or government actions that are grounded in animus rather than proper public purposes violate the Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection. This principle arises from four canonical cases decided by the Supreme Court between 1973 and 2013. These cases remain good law. Yet in the past decade the Roberts Court has given scant attention to the animus doctrine, and lower courts appear to be in a muddle about how to use it. As a result, the animus doctrine has reached what one prominent scholar calls a “dead end.” The animus cases are often described as exhibiting a more skeptical, more …

Reconstructing The Administrative State In The Shadow Of The Unitary Executive, William Thomas Worster

ConLawNOW

The Supreme Court’s unfolding embrace of the unitary executive theory has now substantially restricted Congress’s ability to insulate administrative agencies from presidential control. In Trump v. Slaughter, the Court invalidated the Federal Trade Commission’s statutory removal protections and, in turn, shifted its substantial regulatory, adjudicative, and enforcement powers from independence to far more enhanced presidential supervision. The decision thus exposes a fundamental problem in the constitutional organization of, and legislative assumptions supporting, the administrative state, that have evolved over a substantial part of the nation’s history. Modern agencies are classified as “executive,” firmly placed within Article II under the …

Birthright Citizenship Deserves Universal Injunctions, Jin Lim

University of Cincinnati Law Review

No abstract provided.

Punishing Homelessness: An Analysis Of Criminalizing Outdoor Sleeping, Maggie Hazelbaker

University of Cincinnati Law Review

No abstract provided.

Turning The Page Backward: Reconciling The Current Circuit Split On Whether The First Amendment Can Be Used To Challenge Modern Book Banning, Stella Brocker

University of Cincinnati Law Review

No abstract provided.

From Pickering To Participation: Rebalancing Speech And Equality In Government Employment, Madeline Pendleton, David Schultz

University of Cincinnati Law Review

Public employees occupy a uniquely precarious position in American constitutional law. They retain First Amendment rights as citizens while simultaneously operating within institutional hierarchies that may legitimately regulate their expression. Title VII and the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause protect them from discrimination, yet the doctrinal frameworks designed to safeguard them often pull in opposite directions. This Article examines the resulting doctrinal confusion, arguing that the intersection of the Pickering/Garcetti framework governing public employee speech with Title VII’s hostile work environment doctrine and the Equal Protection Clause’s intent requirement has generated genuine uncertainty about the scope of constitutional protection—uncertainty that …

Buddy, Can You Spare A Claim?: Sparing Debtors' Claims From Dismissal Under The Doctrine Of Judicial Estoppel, Post-Keathley V. Buddy Ayers Construction, Inc., Abigail Bright Willie

ConLawNOW

In Keathley v. Buddy Ayers Construction, Inc., the Supreme Court considered the (decidedly) unglamorous issue of the proper standard for determining when judicial estoppel may be applied. While the case did not attract front page news, those in the bankruptcy law world knew the stakes, as evidenced by the amicus briefs filed by retired bankruptcy judges, bankruptcy scholars, and national bankruptcy organizations. They recognized that, if a merely inadvertent omission by a debtor in required disclosure documents could result in dismissal on judicial estoppel grounds of an otherwise prosecutable claim, there would be profound implications for the estate and …

Les Monarchies De La Péninsule Arabique : Conditions De La Survie, Ghassane Salamé

Proche-Orient, Études juridiques

No abstract provided.

Les Mécanismes De Protection De La Liberté De Conscience Dans Un État Multi‑Communautaire : L'Exemple Libanais, Pierre Gannagé

Proche-Orient, Études juridiques

No abstract provided.

La Protection Des Droits Fondamentaux Par Le Conseil D'État Du Liban, Hassan-Tabet Rifaat

Proche-Orient, Études juridiques

No abstract provided.

Le Point De Départ Du Délai Du Recours Pour Excès De Pouvoir À La Suite D'Une Déclaration D'Utilité Publique En Droit Libanais, Elias Haswany

Proche-Orient, Études juridiques

No abstract provided.

La Décentralisation Territoriale : Contribution À Un Débat Politique Et Administratif Fondamental, À Partir De L'Exemple Français, A.-H. Mesnard

Proche-Orient, Études juridiques

No abstract provided.

Zero-Sum Empathy: The Supreme Court's 2025 Term Decisions On Gender Identity, Susan Etta Keller

ConLawNOW

This past term, the Supreme Court majority continued to follow a pattern of rendering transgender individuals essentially invisible in the cases that concern their rights. In last year’s United States v. Skrmetti, the transgender youth affected by the ban on transgender care were largely absent from the majority opinion holding that such bans discriminated on the basis of neither sex nor transgender status. This term, the majority continued a similar trend, deciding two cases on the emergency docket that ignored the lived experience of transgender individuals while significantly affecting them, and one case on the merits, West Virginia v. …

Deportation By Deception: Coerced Administrative Voluntary Departures And The Illusion Of Choice, Fonda Pham

Washington and Lee Law Review Online

Administrative voluntary departure allows noncitizens facing removal to leave the United States by waiving their right to a hearing before an immigration judge. Although this process provides noncitizens with a quicker alternative to a lengthy removal hearing, the process is not always as “voluntary” as its name suggests. Over the past four decades, noncitizens have alleged that immigration officers threatened and intimidated them in order to obtain waivers of consent, including threats against family members, prolonged detention, and physical abuse. Although the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution states that all persons physically present in the U.S. must receive due process …

Les Réformes Récentes En Matière D’Expropriation, Antoine Moarbès

Proche-Orient, Études juridiques

No abstract provided.

L'Exercice De La Fonction Législative Au Liban : Approche Juridico‑Politique, Daoud Sayegh

Proche-Orient, Études juridiques

No abstract provided.

المحكمة العليا الأميركية في النقاش القانوني المعاصر: مراجعة المحكمة القضائية بين نظرية جن هارت إيلي ونظرية روبرت بورك, شبلي الملاّط

Proche-Orient, Études juridiques

No abstract provided.

La Constitution Américaine Et La Cour Suprême Des États-Unis : Un Envers Juridique De Robert Bork : John Hart Ely, Chibli Mallat

Proche-Orient, Études juridiques

No abstract provided.

Les Éléments Structurels Du Blocage : Rupture Du Consensus Et Institutionnalisation De La Dyarchie, Fadia Habib

Proche-Orient, Études juridiques

No abstract provided.

Norm-Based Remedies For Statutory Inequalities, Evan H. Caminker

Articles

Upon finding that a statute creates an unconstitutional inequality, courts face an intriguing remedial question: how to enjoin executive officials henceforth to implement the statute in a nondiscriminatory manner. There are almost always two options: “leveling up” to extend a statutory benefit or burden to the initially excluded group, and “leveling down” to withdraw the benefit or burden from the initially included group.

For decades, the Supreme Court has approached this remedial enterprise as if no substantive constitutional values guide the choice between leveling up and leveling down; so long as the remedy establishes prospectively equal treatment at any level, …

International Law Can't Get No Respect, Cindy G. Buys

ConLawNOW

This Essay addresses the recent trend in the U.S. Supreme Court of refusing to seriously engage with the United States’ commitments under international law. It argues this refusal to acknowledge the role of international law in U.S. law disregards the U.S. Constitution’s inclusion of treaties as part of the Supreme Law of the Land and the Court’s own long-standing position that “international law is part of our law.” This Essay uses two cases from the Court’s 2025 term, Mullin v. Al Otro Lado and Cisco Systems, Inc. v. Doe to illustrate the Court’s disregard of international law and highlights some …

When The Modern Public Square Goes Private: The Supreme Court's Struggle Over Social Media As The New First Amendment Frontier, Jason M. Shepard, Kathleen Bartzen Culver

Loyola Interdisciplinary Journal of Public Interest Law

In the wake of the Supreme Court’s 2024 decisions in Moody v. NetChoice and NetChoice v. Paxton, the meaning of free expression in the digital age is being rewritten. Our research analyzes how the Court, advocates, and amici invoked decades of First Amendment and media law precedent to define whether social media platforms act as speakers with editorial rights or as common carriers open to regulation. Relevant doctrines include First Amendment implications of medium-specific regulations, common carrier definitions, speaker autonomy, editorial discretion, expressive conduct, intermediate and strict scrutiny analysis, content-based regulations, viewpoint neutrality, and public forum analysis. Drawing on an …