Law Commons^™

A Case Against Mass Deportation: The Japanese American Internment Camps And Recent Treatment Of Korematsu, Isaac Bloch

UC Law Journal

The large-scale deportation of non-citizens has become a preeminent policy issue. Unfortunately, executive curtailment of immigrant communities’ liberty is not without historical parallels. During World War II, federal officials sent individuals of Japanese descent to internment camps through a series of executive orders and military proclamations. Although attorneys in the Department of Justice believed aspects of these actions were unconstitutional at the time, the administration prevailed at the nation’s highest court. Can recognition of this past wrong aid challenges to contemporary immigration enforcement regimes? How do our courts formally account for the most egregious jurisprudential errors of the past, and …

Recent And Forthcoming

UC Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Comparative Authoritarian Law, Madhav Khosla, Benjamin L. Liebman

Faculty Scholarship

In recent years, comparative constitutional lawyers have turned their attention to the study of democratic backsliding. However, such scholarship is yet to draw on the now extensive literature on traditional authoritarian systems. The bifurcation of regime type that has structured comparative legal research for decades — for comparative constitutional lawyers and for scholars of specific authoritarian regions — is now under strain. With the global rise of authoritarianism and the growing use of law by authoritarian states, the world is harder to neatly separate into two camps than it once might have been. This Article reflects on how we might …

Finding Luis: A Creative Nonfiction Account Of Law & Society, Jason M. Leggett

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This essay explores the contradictions in legal theory and human experience through creative nonfiction. Its main purpose is to argue that a truly just society requires acknowledging the profound influence of individual narratives on the law. This is supported by blending personal narratives, critical analysis, and philosophical inquiry to reveal the gap between codified law and lived realities for marginalized individuals. This unique Legal Poetics methodology employs a series of six vignettes, such as the author's and Luis's shared experiences with traumatic brain injury and the denial of justice, as data. By integrating autoethnography, law as narrative, and performativity theories, …

Drug Scheduling As Institutional Design, Matthew B. Lawrence, David E. Pozen

Faculty Scholarship

Controlled Substances Act (CSA), U.S. drug law has simultaneously fueled mass incarceration, inhibited needed access, and enabled an opioid crisis. To make better choices, this Article argues that the CSA’s institutional design must account for three distinctive features of psychoactive drugs: the prohibition problem (drug bans tend to backfire when demand is inelastic), the pharma problem (drug companies have supercharged incentives to manipulate markets and exploit consumers), and the pluralism problem (drug policy involves irreducibly political questions that no expert discipline can answer). On their own, each of these problems calls for reform to the CSA. Taken together, they call …

New York Environmental Legislation In 2025, Michael B. Gerrard

Faculty Scholarship

In 2025, New York State overhauled its State Superfund law and extended the State Superfund Program for ten years. The state also enacted laws restricting chemicals in menstrual products and firefighter personal protective equipment; expanding the extended producer responsibility program for batteries to include electric scooter and bike batteries; and protecting monarch butterflies and horseshoe crabs. These and other new and amended environmental and energy laws — as well as notable vetoes — are discussed in this article.

Amendments to two of New York’s most important laws may be up for consideration by the Legislature during the current session. Governor …

The Eunomics Of Intellectual Property, Shyamkrishna Balganesh

Faculty Scholarship

Originally developed by the legal theorist Lon L. Fuller, eunomics is the “study of good order and workable arrangements,” directed at understanding the structure, form, or ordering adopted by an area of law. Yet, unlike the ordinary analysis of institutional design, eunomics views the form adopted by an area of law as neither preordained nor wholly contingent. Instead, eunomics sees form as playing an important role in clarifying and developing the goals of an area through a means-ends interaction. This Article develops the central insights of Fuller’s eunomics project for intellectual property. Until now, most theoretical accounts of intellectual property …

Does Law Constitute Society?, Jeremy K. Kessler

Faculty Scholarship

The resistance of capitalist inequality to legal reform has led a growing number of scholars to reconsider the explanatory virtues of Marxist legal thought. But what are those virtues? Some scholars hold that what makes Marxist legal thought special is its ability to explain the development of legal relationships in terms of the development of extra-legal relationships — specifically, the relations of production as they adapt to changes in the productive forces. Other scholars argue that this focus on the causal process by which extra-legal change (or stasis) drives legal change (or stasis) is too reductive. They contend that Marxist …

Trump V. Cook And The American Rule Of For-Cause Removal, Jane Manners, Lev Menand

Faculty Scholarship

Halfway through oral argument in Trump v. Cook, Justice Amy Coney Barrett asked Solicitor General John Sauer when a statute authorizing an officer’s removal should be read to require process. “Why shouldn’t we do the same thing that the Shurtleff court did,” Barrett asked, “and say that, well, as we said in Shurtleff, when a statute specifies the grounds for removal, there must be notice and a hearing given?”

In response, Sauer distinguished between statutes authorizing removal for inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office (INM) — which he conceded require process — and statutes using the more …

Private Equity, Public Utility, Kristen Van De Biezendos, Melissa Powers

Faculty Scholarship

The explosion of investment in artificial intelligence and cryptocurrencies has spurred a data center boom, with politicians jostling to attract companies to build data centers in their states. The potential financial windfall from these data centers has also attracted the attention of private equity firms, which are seeking to capitalize on the potential riches to be made in supplying these projects with electricity by buying regulated public electric utilities. These utilities are unusual in our capitalist system, in that they are subject to both state and federal regulation regarding their duties to serve the public and the amount they can …

Table Of Contents

Missouri Law Review

No abstract provided.

Platform Privileges: A Framework For How Antitrust Law Should Police Digital Platforms’ Use Of Material Non-Public Information, Eric H. Siemens

Missouri Law Review

Where the Gilded Age Rockefeller oil monopoly once spurred antitrust reforms in the United States, the tech giants of Silicon Valley have ignited a similar frenzy for reform in legislators and populist scholars today. The unprecedented and rapid growth of digital platforms such as Google, Apple, Facebook, and Amazon has forced policymakers to confront the question of whether traditional antitrust law is sufficient to deal with the new-age giants. This has spurred calls on both sides of the political aisle for increased antitrust enforcement, leading Missouri Senator Josh Hawley to go as far as to argue that “[t]he Big Tech …

House Of Cards: An Examination Of Missouri’S Inconsistent Tax Assessment Regime And The Questionable Role Of The Court As Arbiter, Isabel Fenoglio

Missouri Law Review

“Taxes are what we pay for civilized society.” No one has offered a simpler rationale for the American tax system than the former Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. Despite their inevitability, taxes remain universally dreaded and misunderstood by Americans, but none more so than property taxes. Without property taxes, life as everyday Americans understand it would cease to exist. From streets to schools, from libraries to fire departments, the budgets of indispensable public services, which enable communities to flourish, would collapse.

Money Over Everything: Reimagining Health Care Enforcement, Jacob T. Elberg

Missouri Law Review

Annual press releases from the Department of Justice trumpet billions of dollars in annual recoveries and optimism that its health care enforcement regime deters even more fraud than it addresses. Yet DOJ’s consistent recoveries can be seen as a sign that fraud continues unabated. While some scholars have questioned the deterrent value of the government’s model of enforcement through civil settlements, little attention has been given to what may be the most important aspect of DOJ’s effort—its focus on money both as the sole measure of harm and the sole means of deterrence.

Pickering And Choosing: The Positive Outcome Of An Eighth Circuit Ruling Among The Chaotic World Of Government Employee Free Speech, Luke M. Severt

Missouri Law Review

Public employees do not shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the workplace gate. Nor do they shed them when they log on to their computer to send an email to their co-workers, superiors, or similar fellow government employees. In Mayfield v. Missouri House of Representatives, the Eighth Circuit undertook a multistep analysis to determine whether the defendant, as a public employer, violated the constitutional rights of its longtime employee, Tad Mayfield, when it terminated him only three days after he sent an email to state legislature leaders asking them to implement a mask mandate to …

Rule 11’S Unfulfilled Promise To Protect Noncitizen Defendants, Allison Mccarthy

Missouri Law Review

The federal criminal legal system is a deportation pipeline. Almost all noncitizen defendants waive their constitutional right to a trial and instead enter guilty pleas that have grave immigration consequences. Despite the constitutional guarantee of due process for all criminal defendants regardless of immigration status, many noncitizen defendants enter guilty pleas that are not both knowing and voluntary. Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 11(b)(1)(O) requires that courts, prior to accepting a guilty plea, provide a general warning that immigration consequences may result from a criminal conviction. Adopted in the wake of the United States Supreme Court’s decision in Padilla v. …

Back To Basics: Statutory Interpretation And The Demise Of The Dol’S Tip Credit Rule After Loper Bright, William T. Perryman

Missouri Law Review

The Fifth Circuit recently delivered a significant blow to the Department of Labor’s (“DOL”) regulatory authority in Restaurant Law Center v. U.S. Department of Labor, which vacated a rule delineating the permissible scope of non-tip-producing work for employees under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) for employers claiming a “tip credit.” The challenged regulation—often referred to as the “80/20 rule” with a “30-minute rule” addendum—sought to limit the amount of non-tip-producing work a tipped employee could perform if the employer claimed a tip credit. What renders this decision particularly notable is the Fifth Circuit’s relatively swift invalidation of a long-standing …

Faculty List

Missouri Law Review

No abstract provided.

Breaking Up The Dog Fight: Restoring Order To Supplemental Jurisdiction After Wullschleger, Lucas Reed

Missouri Law Review

In 2024, the United States had a “jurisdictional dog fight” on its hands; one between a defendant’s right to access federal courts through removal and a plaintiff’s status as “master of the complaint.” At stake was not mere technical procedure but the very balance between state and federal authority. When defendants began removing cases with embedded federal questions to federal court only to have plaintiffs amend their complaints to eliminate federal “hooks,” the resulting legal battle would test the boundaries of precedent and the logic governing forum selection. Royal Canin U.S.A., Inc. v. Wullschleger provided such a test.

Copyright

Missouri Law Review

No abstract provided.

Google Geofences: Navigating The Fourth Amendment In The Digital Age, Maverick L. L. Lewis

Missouri Law Review

In December 2018, twenty-three-year-old Jorge Molina was wrongfully arrested for murder based on location data received from a Google geofence—a virtual perimeter around a specific geographic location, created using Google’s location services. Despite law enforcement confirming his alibi within twenty-four hours, Molina spent six days in jail before he was released. As a result, Molina lost his job and car, suffered reputational damage, and was forced to drop out of college. Molina’s stepfather was later arrested and charged for the murder after law enforcement learned he had been using Molina’s old phone, which was still logged into his email. In …

Eugenics And The Carceral State: Progressive-Era Reform & The Creation Of The Modern Criminal Justice System, Laura I. Appleman

Missouri Law Review

No abstract provided.

Russia’S Soft Power In Nahdlatul Ulama’S Art Exhibition Russia-Indonesia: Within The Framework Of Art, Nurul Rahmawati, Ahmad Fahrurodji

International Review of Humanities Studies

This study analyzes the construction of Russian cultural diplomacy in news media coverage of art exhibitions. Russia-Indonesia: Within the Framework of Art. The research uses the method Critical Discourse Analysis with Norman Fairclough's model and concept soft power Joseph Nye and the skeleton Taxonomy of Soft Power from Ohnesorge to map actor relations in cultural diplomacy practices. The results show that Russia utilizes art, religious symbols, and collaboration with Nusantara Utama Gallery and the involvement of Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) artists as an instrument of soft power to build appeal and legitimacy among the Indonesian Muslim public through cross-media discourse …

Humanity Is Evolving Its Consciousness: The Role Of Archetypal Energies As Guides During An Unfolding Weeding Out And Alignment Process, Carroy U. Ferguson

Psychology Faculty Publication Series

Humanity is evolving its consciousness at individual and collective levels.  Given these seemingly tumultuous times, as of this writing (January 2026), to make such a statement may sound like a strange thing to say.  However, I suggest that if you are alive today and if you are reading these words, these are the very times for which you were born—to assist Humanity as it evolves its consciousness with your unique gifts, whatever they may be.  That is, this period of our individual and collective human being-ness may be characterized as an unfolding period of weeding out and alignment with the …

Masthead

Missouri Law Review

No abstract provided.

Debating The Self-Pardon: A Dialogue Of The Evidence For And Against The Constitutionality Of A Presidential Self-Pardon, Michael Conklin, Peter B. Bayer

Missouri Law Review

In light of recent events, the constitutionality of presidential self-pardons is set to potentially become one of the most pressing constitutional questions of the twenty-first century. This Article consists of a dialogue between two scholars regarding the evidence for and against the constitutionality of presidential self-pardons. By providing their best arguments for and against each side, readers are left better equipped to reach their own educated conclusions. The benefits of discussing this issue before anyone attempts to self-pardon are considerable, as doing so could contribute to solutions, potentially averting, or at least helping to resolve peaceably, a true constitutional crisis. …

Disinterestedness In Bankruptcy Cases: Does It Really Matter?, Michelle M. Harner

BYU Law Review

The title of this Essay asks whether disinterestedness (of professionals) in bankruptcy cases really matters. Spoiler alert: Yes, it really does.

Between Borders And Bodies: Sovereignty, Universality, And The Crisis Of Enforcement In International Law, Aliaa Riad Hassanien Aliaa Riad

Theses and Dissertations

Atrocities such as genocide and war crimes persist not despite international law, but within its very structure. Although international law is designed to protect humanity, it repeatedly fails to do so due to its inability to enforce its most fundamental norms. In the absence of enforcement, the law exists—but merely stands still. This failure stems from the structural contradictions embedded in the system—specifically, the tension between the principles of sovereignty and universality. As a result, international law has become a selective, politicized, and ineffective framework. Incidents such as the Rwandan genocide and the civil wars in Syria and Sudan demonstrate …

A Proposal For Citizenship As Reparations For Descendants Of The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, Dan Olson

Student Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Fighting The Black Snake: The Dapl And The Case For Indigenous Environmental Stewardship, Kenny Moll

Student Theses 2015-Present

This thesis analyzes the current scope of environmental injustice on Native lands in the U.S. Specifically it examines The Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) and its impacts on the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe of North Dakota. Western colonialism and capitalism have dominated North American ecosystems since their forcible introduction hundreds of years ago, causing the commodification of natural resources and leading to injustices such as that of the “Black Snake.” However, the story of The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s resistance will be analyzed through the framework of Indigenous philosophy and environmental justice. Chapter 1 analyzes the implementation of the DAPL and …