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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 …

Moving Beyond Worker Rights To Worker Justice, Shefali Milczarek-Desai

Texas A&M Law Review

Precarious workers’ on-the-ground realities offer a startling truth often obscured by the jurisprudence of work—that worker justice is greatly circumscribed by and often lies beyond the reach of worker rights laws. This Article is the first to evaluate whether the worker rights paradigm can fulfill the goals of worker justice and, if not, to prefigure what might.

The worker rights paradigm emerged from a quest for worker justice that has been transmuted by work law and the political economy into a workers-as-rights-holders status requiring robust enforcement of worker rights laws. This Article introduces the concept of empirical critical work law …

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 …

Business Court Best Practices: Constructive Thoughts On The Challenging Work Of Effective Commercial And Corporate Law Adjudication, Leo E. Strine, Jr.

Texas A&M Law Review

A market-based economy governed by the rule of law constitutes part of our traditional freedom as Americans. And that economy’s fair and efficient functioning is important to the economic opportunities and security of all Americans. To aid in that important end, during the last two generations, many American states have attempted, by various means, to create judicial forums, often termed “business courts,” for the efficient and fair resolution of business disputes. Many of these business court initiatives have drawn inspiration from the success of the Delaware Court of Chancery and the Delaware Supreme Court in resolving corporate and commercial disputes …

The U.S. Tax Paradox, Doron Narotzki, Tamir Shanan, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah

Texas A&M Law Review

The U.S. federal tax system is a paradox. It rejects one of the most effective and widely used federal revenue tools while embracing one of the most inefficient and economically harmful taxes. U.S. policymakers dismiss proven solutions as politically unfeasible yet rely on a system that disproportionately burdens consumers and disrupts trade both domestically and internationally. This contradiction is not just irrational. It undermines the very principles of sound tax policy and economic stability.

This Article traces the historical roots of this paradox, from early American tax revolts to modern trade policies, exposing the irony of a nation that once …

Rethinking Remittitur In Texas Law, David M. Gunn

Texas A&M Law Review

The Texas appellate rules say next to nothing about remittitur. About as far as they go is to state in Rule 46.3 that a court of appeals “may suggest a remittitur.” The text and history of this provision might raise more questions than they answer. Nineteenth-century courts across the country began resorting to remittitur, but they spent little time explaining remittitur’s origins. Texas courts followed a similar path, until an 1893 statute expressly told the courts what to do in instances of excessive damages: they had a “duty” to “indicate” to the damage claimant the amount of the excess, with …

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 …

Fighting Fraud With Two Hands Tied Behind Your Back: Health Care Fraud In The New Administrative State, Joan H. Krause

Journal of Law and Health

Although not directed at health care fraud, recent Supreme Court administrative law decisions—particularly Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo and SEC v. Jarkesy—have destabilized the administrative foundations of federal health care fraud enforcement. The end of Chevron deference has shifted interpretive authority from agencies to courts, potentially increasing challenges to regulations and other administrative interpretations while encouraging agencies to rely more heavily on informal and less stable forms of guidance. Jarkesy further complicates enforcement by threatening the legality of civil monetary penalties, a common administrative penalty in health care fraud cases. Heightened judicial scrutiny, regulatory uncertainty, shifting executive priorities, …

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Cookies Crumble: Reimagining Internet Personal Jurisdiction Post Briskin V. Shopify, Gabriel Wherley

University of Cincinnati Law Review

No abstract provided.

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.

The More You Know, The More You Realize You Don't Know: The Impact Of Loper Bright On Traditional Notions Of Judicial Philosophy, Benjamin Baioni

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 …

Modular Securities Regulation, Anita K. Krug

University of Cincinnati Law Review

Securities regulation is not supposed to look like corporate law, yet in the market for interval and tender-offer funds, it increasingly does. The SEC’s modern exemptive practice for these registered investment vehicles—funds that offer periodic liquidity while investing in less-liquid strategies—is doing more than granting individualized relief. In effect, it is transforming the Investment Company Act’s closed-end structural constraints from mandatory architecture into conditional defaults that permit product modularity (particularly in terms of multiple share classes and distribution and servicing fees) when paired with governance and disclosure safeguards. The result is a distinctly corporate-governance-like move in federal securities regulation: The …

An Analysis Of The Increasingly Popular Evidentiary Objection That "The Opposing Expert Has 'Cherry-Picked' The Information Supporting Their Opinion"—An Objection That Is At Once Colorful And Dangerous, Edward J. Imwinkelried

University of Cincinnati Law Review

No abstract provided.

Bending The Arc: The Long Fight For, Over, And With Justice, Jon Hanson, Lica Porcile, Dean A. Strang

University of Cincinnati Law Review

No abstract provided.

Citizenship At Sea: A Comparative Perspective On Blue Justice In The Andaman Sea And The Mediterranean In The Context Of Climate Change, Emilio Cocco

Pace Environmental Law Review

Discourses of the ocean in the sociological and socio-legal world have, until recently, been approached from majoritarian, terrestrial, profane and nation-centric perspectives. These perspectives are embedded in legal and regulatory regimes to the detriment of Indigenous and marginalized maritime communities. Drawing on the blue turn in sociology and socio-legal scholarship, this Article, in comparing the experiences of the Moken people of the Andaman Sea with those of migrants, fishers, and island communities in the Mediterranean, exposes the violence of such narratives. Through a comparative analysis of maritime borders, marine protected areas, tourism, and fisheries regulation, the Article explores how governance …

Mass Resettlement Politics And The Future Of Hyper-Local Climate Migration Strategies, Sarah Rogerson

Pace Environmental Law Review

Climate change is requiring state and local governments to engage in short- and long-term strategic thinking and municipal planning. Critically, the movement of people from communities that have become uninhabitable due to climate change to other communities in more resilient areas (sometimes called “climate havens”) is a reality that most municipalities in the United States are not currently well-equipped to address. Experts predict as many as 1.2 billion climate-related migrants worldwide by 2050, with at least 93 million Americans expected to relocate to more habitable places by 2070. To put this into perspective, 93 million people is just under the …

Climate Migration And Reparations: Reflections On The Icj Advisory Opinion On Climate Change, Carmen G. Gonzalez

Pace Environmental Law Review

Climate mobility governance is at an inflection point. Major developments, such as the International Court of Justice (ICJ) Advisory Opinion on climate change, are opening legal pathways to climate reparations and reshaping global policy debates on climate-induced migration. Climate-vulnerable states and peoples are calling for reparations for the intertwined injustices of slavery, colonialism and climate change and for legal frameworks that recognize the right to stay and the right to migrate based on the right to self-determination. This article examines the legal and ethical basis for reparative approaches to climate-induced migration. The article discusses the link between climate change and …

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 …

Perception Is Reality: The Obvious Interest Of State And Local Governments In Fighting Corruption Through The Enactment Of Contribution Limits, Jordan Al-Rawi

San Diego Law Review

Individual campaign contribution limits are one of the few remaining constitutional tools in a state or local government’s toolkit for fighting corruption, or its appearance, in elections.  Because contribution limits marginally burden a contributor’s First Amendment freedoms, a challenged limit must survive an arduous tailoring analysis to ensure that the limit is closely drawn to the government’s purported interest in combatting actual or perceived quid pro quo corruption.  However, before a challenged limit is subjected to this tailoring analysis, the government must first demonstrate that it has an individualized interest in addressing the existence of actual or perceived quid pro …

Calling Balls And Three Strikes, Tobie J. Smith

San Diego Law Review

The Supreme Court has revitalized the jury’s role in criminal sentencing over the past quarter century, reaffirming that the Sixth Amendment right to trial by jury extends to factfinding that increases the punishment range for a conviction.  But one class of sentencing findings—those related to a defendant’s criminal history—has been excluded.  The Court has upheld an exception to the jury right where the fact to be found is whether a defendant has a prior conviction.  Relying on that prior-conviction exception, many jurisdictions have continued to allow judges to increase the possible sentence based on their own preponderance-of-the-evidence findings about disputed …

Stigma-Based Credentials: Reentry, Record-Based Exclusion, And The Rights Of Permatemps, Sarah Sallen

San Diego Law Review

Employers’ use of background checks to exclude long-term temporary workers (“permatemps”) with criminal records from permanent employment —despite proven performance—creates a hidden barrier to advancement in the labor market.  Permatemping, where workers remain in the same role for months or years through a staffing agency, has grown alongside the rapid expansion of temporary work, which has nearly tripled since the 1990s. U.S. staffing agencies now hire nearly 13 million temporary and contract workers each year, and a significant portion of this workforce has criminal records.  For many, staffing agencies are not just a last resort, but a deliberate pathway to …

Supreme Selection, Renee Knake Jefferson, Hannah Brenner Johnson

San Diego Law Review

For more than two centuries, the highest judicial body in the United States systematically excluded women. In 2026, just over five percent of all justices have been women, and only two have been women of color. No woman or minority has ever served as chief justice.

This Article is the first to delve into the extraordinary and often overlooked journeys of minority women who were shortlisted—and, in two historic instances, selected—for the United States Supreme Court. It traces a long arc of exclusion and partial progress, beginning with Sandra Day O’Connor’s groundbreaking confirmation in 1981 as the first female justice …