Digital Commons Network^™

Argument For Statewide Vaccine Mandates—An Ethical And Legal Analysis, Liv Hymowitz

Colorado Law Student Scholars

No abstract provided.

Judicial Underreach: Tiktok Inc. V. Garland'S Implications For National Security And Free Speech, Olivia Sharp

Colorado Law Student Scholars

No abstract provided.

The Domestic Mirror: Tiktok V. Garland, Data Privacy, And Meaningful Free Expression, Olivia Sharp

Colorado Law Student Scholars

No abstract provided.

Beyond The Shield: The Business Judgment Rule As A Tool For Esg Initiatives, Samuel Hawkinson

Colorado Law Student Scholars

No abstract provided.

A New Standard: Default Inclusion Of Children In Clinical Trials, Megyn Gordon

Colorado Law Student Scholars

No abstract provided.

Foreword, Jedediah Britton-Purdy, Justin Deystone

Publications

No abstract provided.

Law As A Form Of Life: On Capitalism And Critical Theory, Justin Deystone

Publications

No abstract provided.

The Borderline Constitution, Pratheepan Gulasekaram

Publications

This Feature identifies and theorizes a distinct constitutional regime that federal courts have constructed at, adjacent to, and because of the nation’s border. Drawing together strands of First, Fourth, Fifth, and Fourteenth Amendment law, along with habeas doctrine, constitutional torts, tribal sovereignty, and separation-of-powers concerns, this Feature demonstrates how constitutional guarantees systematically recede in the border’s shadow. These deviations from canonical and mainstream constitutional norms authorize intrusive state invasions of privacy and other fundamental rights, abdicate judicial oversight in favor of outsized executive discretion, and entrench racial and religious subordination.

The Feature further demonstrates that the effects of border exceptionalism …

The Internet And The Lost Law Of Transit, Vivek Krishnamurthy

Publications

For centuries, the law of transit has specified when states must permit foreign persons and goods to traverse their territory on journeys beginning and ending beyond their borders. Transit is a right — not a privilege — that tempers territorial sovereignty. Though largely forgotten today, the right to transit springs from states’ responsibilities to the international community when their territory hosts infrastructure of global utility.

Yet the internet stands as a striking exception to this tradition. Despite its importance, no doctrine of transit constrains states’ power to block or disrupt internet traffic that merely passes through their territory. This is …

The Law Of Health Equity, Govind Persad

Publications

Since 2025, health equity has faced increasing hostility from federal courts, agencies, and the executive branch. Yet health equity’s promise—to narrow stark health gaps along racial, economic, and other lines—remains urgent and widely endorsed by states, localities, and nongovernmental actors. Evaluating how health equity efforts might falter under or surmount these challenges requires understanding their legal underpinnings: the law of health equity.

This Article is the first in legal scholarship to comprehensively examine federal, state, and private sector health equity commitments. It reveals sustained societal recognition of health equity’s importance, while highlighting the need for more precise and actionable definitions. …

The Public Franchise Tradition As A Limit On Patent Takings, Laura E. Dolbow

Publications

A longstanding debate exists over whether patents are forms of “private property” that the Takings Clause protects. Recently, in a different context, the Supreme Court stated that a patent is a specific form of property: a public franchise. Several scholars have argued that the public franchise characterization means patents are not protected by the Takings Clause at all. This Article identifies another potential implication of the public franchise framing. It argues that even if patents are viewed as protected by the Takings Clause, the public franchise framing suggests that the scope of that protection should be quite narrow.

To explore …

The Spac Clock, Andrew A. Schwartz

Publications

Special purpose acquisition companies (SPACs) are public companies organized to die. Unlike ordinary corporations, which enjoy perpetual existence by default, SPACs are legally required to consummate a merger within a fixed period--usually two years, never more than three--or else liquidate and return investors' cash.

This Article takes that clock seriously and argues that limited life is foundational to the SPAC form: it disciplines sponsors by preventing indefinite warehousing of capital, reassures investors by guaranteeing liquidity, and makes the form marketable in the first place. A perpetual SPAC would be good for nobody.

At the same time, the SPAC clock distorts …

Climate Last Resorts, Michael Pappas

Publications

The United States faces a climate crisis, an affordable housing crisis, and, linking them both, an insurance crisis. At the intersection of these concurrent predicaments lie a set of little-known but surprisingly impactful policies: state Insurer of Last Resort (ILR) programs. ILRs are state policies that provide property insurance when private insurance is unavailable, such as when private insurers determine that climate hazards are too risky to underwrite.

This Article argues that long-overlooked ILR programs are quickly becoming lynchpins for addressing some of today’s most pressing concerns around climate, housing, and insurance. Accordingly, ILRs bear urgent attention and reevaluation. In …

On Shaky Ground: America’S Public Lands Face An Uncertain Future, John Leshy

Colorado Environmental Law Journal

No abstract provided.

The Fight For Public Rights On America’S Waterways, Mark Squillace

Colorado Environmental Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Greening With Justice: Evaluating Denver’S Urban Green Space Policies Through An Environmental Justice Lens, Vicente Tapia

Colorado Environmental Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Peak Bagging: The Land Acquisition History And Public Access Rights That Make It Mostly Possible, Andrea Shipton

Colorado Environmental Law Journal

No abstract provided.

State Constitutionalism's Fragile Wall, Adam B. Sopko

Publications

The adequate and independent state grounds (AISG) doctrine has long demarcated the perimeter of the U.S. Supreme Court’s authority to review state court decisions, limiting review to questions of federal law. AISG maintains the Court’s primacy over federal law and state courts’ supremacy over state law. A comprehensive review of all filings on the Court’s docket from state courts over the last twenty years reveals that recent applications of AISG consist of subtle but significant departures from existing norms that, together, suggest a reformulation of the Court’s power over state courts that threatens their sovereign law development role. This Essay …

Moody V. Netchoice And Telecom Law's First Amendment, Blake Reid

Publications

No abstract provided.

Gender Therapy False Equivalency, Scott Skinner-Thompson

Publications

One critical dispute surrounding the rights of LGBTQ people and societal recognition of their existence is the legal debate regarding very different types of gender therapy. On the one hand, several states have banned the provision of gender-affirming medical care to transgender youth, positing that it is a dangerous form of mutilation. A separate set of states has banned the practice of so-called gay or gender conversion therapy that seeks to transform youth away from their queer identities, concluding that it is a form of abuse. Both sets of laws have been challenged in courts with the Supreme Court recently …

Finite Ventures, Andrew A. Schwartz

Publications

The law endows corporations and other business organizations with the awesome power of perpetual life—unless the charter expressly provides for a certain duration, such as ten years. But does anyone ever actually choose limited life? Why would they?

This article reveals that limited-life business entities—finite ventures—play a significant and underappreciated role in modern commerce. Private equity and venture capital funds, SPACs, and insurance syndicates are all organized with a limited lifespan.

Their motivation? This article claims that limited life is a valuable, but often overlooked, tool for ameliorating agency costs: the managers of a finite venture know they must produce …

The Idea Of Air, Jonathan Skinner-Thompson

Publications

How we view air, especially clean air, has meaningful normative and practical implications. Today, it is commonly recognized as an exhaustible natural resource. But air was not always thought of as something to be conserved, developed, and used. This Article is the first to explore and interrogate that view.

The shift to seeing air as a resource started in the first part of the twentieth century. Previously, air was characterized by its limitless supply of oxygen: a pure public good. Over time, the quality of that good changed, and a precious resource emerged. That resource—especially its chemical and physical characteristics—inspired …

Separation Of Copyright Powers, Blake Reid

Publications

The United States Copyright Office’s multifarious roles in the U.S. copyright system have long prompted uncertainty about its position among the branches of the federal government. From its formal home in the Library of Congress, the chameleonic Office has accumulated a wide range of advisory, rulemaking, adjudicative, and administrative functions that have long prompted questions about both agencies’ exercise of dueling legislative and executive powers.

Despite its increasingly sprawling portfolio and unusual configuration, the Office has never faced a serious separation-of-powers reckoning—until now. In the span of just five days in May 2025, Donald Trump fired the Librarian of Congress …

Against A Medical Exception To Equal Protection, Govind Persad

Publications

Government regulations of medicine sometimes treat patients differently based on their race or sex. Does heightened scrutiny apply to such regulations—as is usual when law treats someone differently based on a protected characteristic? Or is there a medical exception to equal protection?

Recently, in United States v. Skrmetti, the Supreme Court upheld a law that restricted access to medical treatments for transgender minors. Though its holding did not rely on medical exceptionalism, its discussion reinvigorated interest in a "medical exception" to equal protection: that medical decisions are exempt from the searching review applied when governmental decisions consider protected characteristics.

For …

Advocacy Matters, Richard B. Collins

Publications

The Supreme Court’s 2022 Castro-Huerta decision was wrong on the points it discussed. It was doubly wrong for a reason it ignored. But the latter error was shared because all briefs and the dissenting opinion ignored it as well. The question presented was whether a nineteenth-century federal Indian country statute provided for exclusive federal jurisdiction over interracial crimes, or for concurrent authority with states. The Court held that the statute allowed concurrent jurisdiction. But it ignored the fact that Congress and the Court, until fairly recently, avoided concurrent federal-state jurisdiction over crimes. Had the self-styled originalist Justices taken their theory …

Jawbreaking And Counterboning, Blake Reid

Publications

FCC Chairman Brendan Carr’s public campaign of unlawful threats against television broadcasters, culminating in the high-profile preemption and later return to air of late-night host Jimmy Kimmel, provides an important natural experiment for the law of jawboning. The Kimmel-Carr episode highlights the challenges of legal remedies against government officials over even the most flagrantly coercive, unlawful, and public jawbones. It also highlights the importance of intermediaries refusing to comply with unlawful demands—what this Essay calls jawbreaking.

Using the Kimmel-Carr episode as a case study, this Essay proposes moving beyond voluntary incentives for jawbreaking to impose a mandatory duty to jawbreak …

Adversarial Certification Of Evidentiary Software, Nicholas G. Vincent, Bryan H. Choi, Eli Siems, Clay Halbert, Katherine J. Strandburg

Publications

No abstract provided.

Manufactured Monstrosity: Analyzing And Challenging The Narrative Of Lgbtq+ Terrorism, Samantha Salter

Colorado Law Student Scholars

No abstract provided.

Front Matter, Colorado Environmental Law Journal

Colorado Environmental Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Regulating Cultured Meat Labels In The United States, Natalie Mousa

Colorado Environmental Law Journal

No abstract provided.