Law Commons^™

It Takes A Village . . . But Let The Teenagers Vote, Joseph Fishkin

Notre Dame Law Review

In their article Give Parents the Vote, Kleinfeld and Sachs argue that we ought to give parents extra votes to cast by proxy on behalf of their minor children. In this response, I argue that their proposal misconceives the nature of voting itself. Unlike a child’s personal medical or financial decisions, which we entrust to those most responsible for a child’s care, voting is a collective act by which a political community makes collective choices. Each of us is obligated to cast our vote in the way we think best for the whole community. And each voter—whether a parent …

Trade Secrecy’S Information Paradox, Christopher Buccafusco, Jonathan S. Masur, Deepa Varadarajan

Notre Dame Law Review

Trade secret law is meant to encourage socially beneficial behaviors by permitting firms to protect their investments in the creation of valuable information. In theory, the ability to protect valuable information will make firms more likely to create that information in the first instance. But the law can also be used to shield socially harmful behaviors from public oversight. Firms can assert trade secret protection to prevent journalists, watchdogs, and criminal defendants from learning whether they are engaged in dangerous, wrongful, or biased activity. Ideally, trade secret law should sort socially beneficial uses from socially harmful ones, permitting only the …

Does The Law Ever Run Out?, Charles F. Capps

Notre Dame Law Review

Although laypeople commonly believe that a judge’s job is to decide every case as the law requires, a broad consensus exists among legal scholars that the law not infrequently “runs out,” leaving the judge to decide the case on extralegal grounds. This Article subjects that consensus to critical scrutiny. Tentatively, the Article concludes that none of the alleged sources of indeterminacy in the law—including permissive rules, balancing tests, vagueness, ambiguity, silence, contradictions, and uncertainty—actually causes the law to run out. More confidently, the Article maintains that the extent to which the law runs out, if it does at all, depends …

Foundations For Platform Liability, Kathryn E. Spier, Rory Van Loo

Notre Dame Law Review

From spreading misinformation to selling deadly products, bad actors use technology platforms to their advantage while causing devastating harms to privacy, health, and even democracy. Despite their central role in enabling these bad actors, the platforms almost entirely escape liability. This legal immunity is purportedly grounded in economics. From the beginning, courts and legislatures feared that liability would chill innovation, growth, and user access. They also speculated that platforms have sufficient market incentives to voluntarily police bad actors, making liability unnecessary.

Whereas many scholars have argued that platform immunity is blind to justice, this Article shows that it is also …

A Crisis Of Consensus: The Supreme Court’S Legitimacy And Recent Challenges Thereto, Abby Ulman

Notre Dame Law Review

Part I retells the history of Supreme Court decisions—from the time when Justices followed the British practice of issuing seriatim opinions to the time of Chief Justice John Marshall who instituted a policy of a single opinion for the Court. This norm of consensus lasted 140 years, during which the Court decided more than ninety percent of its cases unanimously. However, modern practice has been marked by division and dissensus, which have incited rhetoric of delegitimization. Part II examines two types of consensuses. Section A discusses internal consensus, or the extent to which the Justices agree with each other. Yet …

Habeas Corpus And Void Judgments, David Kinnaird

Notre Dame Law Review

In a string of recent opinions, Justice Gorsuch and Justice Thomas have posited that postconviction relief upon a writ of habeas corpus was historically unavailable except where the judgment of conviction was issued by a court lacking jurisdiction. In light of this history, Justices Gorsuch and Thomas have argued for a reconsideration of the modern scope of the writ, which generally allows for relitigation of alleged constitutional error in the course of criminal trial.

This Article argues that Justices Gorsuch and Thomas have the history half right. They are correct to assert that a valid judgment of conviction was a …

Give Parents The Vote, Joshua Kleinfeld, Stephen E. Sachs

Notre Dame Law Review

Many of America’s most significant policy problems, from failing schools to the aftershocks of COVID shutdowns to national debt to climate change, share a common factor: the weak political power of children. Children are twenty-three percent of all citizens; they have distinct interests; and they already count for electoral districting. But because they lack the maturity to vote for themselves, their interests don’t count proportionally at the polls. The result is policy that observably disserves children’s interests and violates a deep principle of democratic fairness: that citizens, through voting, can make political power respond to their interests.

Yet there’s a …

Give Young Adults The Vote, Nicholas O. Stephanopoulos

Notre Dame Law Review

Joshua Kleinfeld and Stephen Sachs make a significant contribution to the literature on children’s disenfranchisement by describing and defending parental proxy voting: empowering parents to vote on their children’s behalf. The authors’ democratic critique of the status quo is particularly persuasive. Children’s exclusion from the franchise indeed distorts public policies by omitting children’s preferences from the set that policymakers consider. However, Kleinfeld and Sachs’s proposal wouldn’t do enough to correct this distortion. This is because contemporary parents diverge politically from their children, holding, on average, substantially more conservative views. The proxy votes that parents cast for their children would thus …

What Is Voting For?, Joshua Kleinfeld, Stephen E. Sachs

Notre Dame Law Review

Responding to these views requires some reflection on the nature of voting and parenting both. At root, Stephanopoulos and Fishkin don’t think parents are the right people to represent their children politically, and we do. We unpack these theoretical differences as to both voting and parenting in Part I. In Part II, we address Stephanopoulos’s and Fishkin’s concrete policy proposals.

A last note: While our response below naturally focuses on points of disagreement, as that is the way of these things, that focus shouldn’t detract from the crucial fact that all four of us—from different political perspectives—think the status quo …

Appropriations By Any Other Name: The Illegality And Unconstitutionality Of Supplemental Environmental Projects, Andrew Olson

Notre Dame Law Review

This Note fleshes out the history of SEPs and the recent arguments against them. First, Part I traces the history of SEPs, from the early use of third-party payments, through the development of formal policies governing SEPs, to the Trump and Biden administrations’ dueling approaches to them. Then Part II explains what’s wrong with SEPs. Expanding on the arguments made in the various Justice Department memoranda, this Note argues that SEPs contravene both the Miscellaneous Receipts Act (MRA) and the Antideficiency Act (ADA). Next, the Note argues that while their illegality might be remedied by statute, SEPs also present deeper—and …

Crimes Of Violence And Violent Crime, Erin C. Blondel

Notre Dame Law Review

Why can’t federal law define “violence”? Major federal statutes turn on whether someone was convicted of a violent crime. But judges and scholars widely agree that the law defining violence is “chaos.” This Article treats the problem as one of statutory design and construction. What’s violent is a fact-based judgment call—it’s a standard meant to be interpreted case by case through factfinding and adjudication. But Supreme Court jurisprudence increasingly treats it like a rule, insisting that courts must define violence without the facts and discretion that would give that interpretation coherence across countless unique cases.

Chaos is not inevitable. Predicate …

Erie And Aggregate Settlement In Diversity Jurisdiction Suits, John D. Spengler Jr.

Notre Dame Law Review

Over the last decades, United States federal courts have sharply curtailed the ability of parties to reach a global resolution, including through voluntary settlement, in mass tort and similar class action lawsuits. As a result, the multidistrict litigation (MDL) statute continues to play an ever-increasing role in the resolution of these mass claims. Primarily, this is because the MDL process forgoes the more strenuous requirements for class certification under Federal Rules of Civil Procedure 23(a) and 23(b). In an MDL proceeding, the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation (JPML) can order individual cases, either sua sponte or on the request of …

In Defense Of The Major Questions Doctrine, Louis J. Capozzi Iii

Notre Dame Law Review

The major questions doctrine, which requires agencies claiming important powers to identify clear authority from Congress, is transforming administrative law. Breaking with recent practice, the doctrine prevents the executive branch from issuing laws addressing pressing, novel issues without Congress’s affirmative consent.

In response, scholars have generally criticized the doctrine and questioned its legitimacy. Critics have alleged that the doctrine was fabricated by the Supreme Court without proper justification, is incapable of principled application, frustrates the intent of past Congresses to delegate broad power to agencies, aggrandizes judicial power, and hinders desirable executive branch lawmaking.

This Article disagrees with those criticisms …

May Federal Courts Answer Questions When Not Deciding Cases?, Benjamin B. Johnson

Notre Dame Law Review

Conventional wisdom says that Article III’s case-or-controversy requirement prevents federal courts from answering legal questions when they are not deciding cases. This is only partially correct. This Article shows conditions under which a federal court may answer questions even when not deciding a case. To do so, it traces the appellate power back to its origins in English common law courts and through the early American judiciary. For centuries, common law judges have answered questions sent to them by lower courts when doing so would help those lower courts to decide pending cases. In England, the “case stated” procedure facilitated …

Immunity For Imaginary Policy In Tort Claims Against The Federal Government, Gregory C. Sisk

Notre Dame Law Review

Fictional policy justifications for official negligence are regularly accepted by the federal courts to shield the federal government from liability for ordinary tortious wrongdoing. The lower federal courts have adopted an extravagant interpretation of the discretionary function exception to the Federal Tort Claims Act that applies whenever a policy implication can be theorized. Under this “susceptible to policy analysis” approach, the United States government escapes accountability through after-the-fact speculation regarding policy factors that could have played a role (but actually did not) in the harmful government conduct.

By textual command, the exception shields only government decisions “based on,” that is, …

The Solicitor General, Consistency, And Credibility, Margaret H. Lemos, Deborah A. Widiss

Notre Dame Law Review

This Article offers the first comprehensive look at cases in which the Solicitor General (SG) rejects a legal argument offered on behalf of the United States in prior litigation. Such reversals have received considerable attention in recent years, as shifts in presidential administrations have produced multiple high-profile “flip-flops”—as the Justices sometimes call them—by the SG. Even those observers who defend the SG, including veterans of the office, caution that inconsistency in legal argument poses a threat to the SG’s credibility with the Court. Our goal is to better understand the circumstances that lead the SG to change its position on …

The Equity In Corporate Law, Andrew S. Gold, Henry E. Smith

Notre Dame Law Review

It is no secret that equity is a central part of corporate law. Yet a fuller appreciation of what equity means for corporate law is still lacking. This Article offers a new account of corporate law’s equity, showing that it is a kind of meta-law—or law about law—that operates ex post to address polycentric problems, conflicting rights, and opportunism. As we argue, much of the structure of corporate law—its architecture—is explained by the need for a robust equity that can intervene where needed, while also avoiding the dangers of unconstrained judicial discretion. Corporate law maintains a careful balance, one that …

When Religious Exercise And Private Rights Collide, Brent J. Nymeyer

Notre Dame Law Review

This Note proposes that the state action doctrine—where state statutory and common law, or the judicial finding of liability thereunder, is government burdening to the same extent that a criminal law or prosecution is government burdening—should extend to always allow religious exercise claims and defenses in disputes involving only private parties. Part I lays out the development of religious exercise jurisprudence under the federal and state systems and the current landscape of jurisdictions’ treatment of religious exercise claims and defenses in private disputes.

Part II proceeds in two sections: Section A presents representative cases from criminal law and relevant areas …

Venality: A Strangely Practical History Of Unremovable Offices And Limited Executive Power, Jed Handelsman Shugerman

Notre Dame Law Review

The Roberts Court has asserted that Article II’s “executive power” implied an “indefeasible” or unconditional presidential removal power. In response to counterevidence from the Founding era, unitary executive theorists have claimed a “British Backdrop” of a general removal power under the English Crown and European “executive power.” These assumptions are incorrect.

This Article shows that many powerful executive officers through the late eighteenth century, especially high English Treasury offices and even “department heads” in the cabinet, were unremovable. A long common law tradition protected many English offices as freehold property rights. Moreover, this Article explains why it was widely understood …

A Remedy-Centered Approach To Antitrust, John O. Mcginnis, Grace Stippich

Notre Dame Law Review

This Article advocates for a remedy-centered approach to antitrust law, placing remedial concerns at the forefront of antitrust analysis. It asserts that the limits of effective remedies should fundamentally shape the scope of antitrust liability. Drawing on the “nirvana fallacy” from economic theory, the Article argues that antitrust should only intervene when a judicial remedy can reliably improve upon market conditions. If no such remedy exists, liability should not be imposed. The Article further demonstrates how remedial considerations already play a significant, if often unrecognized, role in antitrust doctrines, including the definitions of “agreement,” monopolists’ duties to deal, and the …

The Trouble With Classifications, Aziz Z. Huq

Notre Dame Law Review

The Supreme Court relies increasingly on anticlassification rules to implement the Constitution’s various commands of evenhanded state treatment. These rules direct attention to whether an instance of a forbidden classification is present on the face of a challenged law. They contain two necessary steps. First, a court defines a general category of impermissible terms. Second, a court ascertains whether an instance of the category is found in enacted text—so triggering the familiar strict scrutiny analysis. So defined, anticlassification rules now dominate equal protection, free speech, “dormant” Commerce Clause, and even free exercise jurisprudence. The Roberts Court celebrates these doctrinal tests …

Ad Hoc Constructions Of Penal Statutes, Joel S. Johnson

Notre Dame Law Review

The Supreme Court construed penal statutes in forty-three cases from the 2013 Term through the 2022 Term. In those cases, the Court tended to adopt narrow constructions, a preference consistent with several substantive canons of construction, such as the rule of lenity and the avoidance of constitutional vagueness concerns. Substantive canons were routinely included in party briefs, frequently raised during oral argument, and occasionally explicated in concurring opinions. Yet the Court did not rely on substantive canons in the vast majority of the narrow-construction cases. For example, the Court never firmly relied upon the rule of lenity—the substantive canon most …

The Lost History Of Judicial Restraint, Derek A. Webb

Notre Dame Law Review

For over 125 years, jurists and scholars who have championed judicial restraint have looked back to James Bradley Thayer’s 1893 Harvard Law Review article, The Origin and Scope of the American Doctrine of Constitutional Law, as the seminal authority for the rule that courts should presume the constitutionality of a challenged law and only invalidate it if its unconstitutionality is “clear” and “beyond a reasonable doubt.” But Thayer presented those three rules (presumption of constitutionality, clear error rule, and reasonable doubt standard) as rooted in historical legal practice in America. And yet none of his twentieth or twenty-first century …

A Uniform Choice? Esas And The State Right To Education, Hadiah C. Mabry

Notre Dame Law Review

Education savings accounts (ESAs) are on the rise. Just since 2023, ESAs have been on the legislative docket in Alabama, Georgia, Iowa, Montana, Ohio, Texas, Tennessee, and Wyoming, with ESAs already active in eleven other states. These programs provide funds directly to parents on a per-child basis which can be used on any number of educational pursuits. While ESAs are relatively young in the world of school choice, they are also the natural outgrowth of a greater push toward educational freedom for parents. They join the ranks of more established programs like school vouchers, tax credits, and charter schools.

Unlike …

Roving Extraterritoriality: The Murky Doctrine On State Laws Regulating Absent Citizens, Leo Schlueter

Notre Dame Law Review

It is generally agreed that sovereigns have the power to punish the crimes of their citizens abroad, at least in some situations. But sovereigns rarely exercise this power, and its contours are not well understood. This is especially true in the context of American federalism. It is unclear to what degree states have retained their sovereign extraterritorial powers, and the Supreme Court has never had occasion to fully explain their limits. Recent political developments, however, make it plausible that the question will soon arise. This Note attempts to provide some insight into the future debate over state criminal extraterritorial jurisdiction …

The Seventh Amendment Right To Jury Trial In The Administrative State: Recognizing The Dangers Of The Constitutional Moment, Martin H. Redish, Samy Abdelsalam

Notre Dame Law Review

One prominent constitutional scholar has sought to legitimize this constitutional transformation through resort to a strange and controversial analytical model he describes as the “constitutional moment.” In this Article, we plan to establish two important points: (1) there exists no principled mode of analysis of the Seventh Amendment right to jury trial that justifies the Court’s categorical dichotomy between Article III and non–Article III forums for purposes of the right’s applicability, and (2) while the theory of the “constitutional moment” would in fact justify the Court’s insulation of the administrative state from Seventh Amendment applicability, reliance on such a theory …

Proper Parents, Proper Relief, Katie Grace Graziano

Notre Dame Law Review

Indian children belong with Indian parents—or so says the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA). ICWA requires certain procedures for carrying out the adoption of an Indian child. Among those procedures is an explicit preference for Indian families over non-Indian families. The hierarchy is so strict that a court must prioritize placing a child with an Indian family even if she is already thriving in the home of a non-Indian family, and even if her biological parents chose a non-Indian family to adopt her. This regime presents a clear constitutional issue. Can the government deny a family the adoption of a …

Non–Article Iii Federal Tribunals: An Essay On The Relation Between Theory And Practice, Richard H. Fallon Jr.

Notre Dame Law Review

Since the 1980s, the Supreme Court’s decisions involving the permissible uses of non–Article III federal tribunals have repeatedly invoked two competing theories. A “historical-exceptions” or “formalist” model would insist that only Article III judges can exercise federal adjudicative power except in three categories of cases that history marks as exceptional. A rival approach, often labeled “functionalism,” would allow further deviations from the historical norm if they are supported by sound practical justifications and do not threaten the fundamental role of the Article III judiciary within the separation of powers. This Article explores the relationship between theory and practice in explaining …

The Public/Private Rights Critics, Ann Woolhandler, Michael G. Collins

Notre Dame Law Review

In Adjudication in the Political Branches, Professor Caleb Nelson provided an influential account of when federal adjudication might take place outside of the Article III courts. The ability of Congress to place adjudicative matters outside of Article III courts largely depended on whether the matter might be considered one of public or private rights. Nelson also traced changes over time that undermined the coherence of the traditional public/private right distinction, and recommended returning to the traditional model. Later writers have attempted either to qualify or refute the existence of the public/private-rights framework by studying particular areas of law that …

Whose Equity? Interpreting Statutes Authorizing Equitable Remedies, Drew Garden

Notre Dame Law Review

The role of equity in federal law has sparked significant recent debate. Much ink has been spilled over the appropriate role of the general equity power in federal jurisprudence. Less attention has been paid to the interpretation of statutes explicitly authorizing equitable remedies. Equity, by its very nature, is a shifting field. In fact, equity came into being precisely because of this need for flexibility, and the role it has played throughout English and American history has been possible solely because of its ability to adapt. Thus, when a statute authorizes equitable remedies but does not specify which remedies, the …