Constitutional Law Commons^™

Western Watersheds Project V. Schultz, Cv 22-149-M-Dlc-Kld, 2025 Lx 449507, 2025 Wl 2410283 (D. Mont. Mar. 27, 2025), Luke A. Zagar

Public Land & Resources Law Review

Western Watersheds Project v. Schultz delineates what the Forest Service is required to consider for revising Allotment Management Plans as prescribed by NEPA. Environmental plaintiffs sued, arguing that the Forest Service’s reliance on an older baseline assessment was arbitrary and capricious and that the revised AMP failed to consider major impacts on the grizzly bear population. The District of Montana held that the reliance on an older baseline assessment was acceptable but simultaneously found the AMP to be arbitrary and capricious under the “hard look” standard.

San Luis Obispo Coastkeeper V. Cnty. Of San Luis Obispo, 161 F.4th 590 (9th Cir. 2025), Erika C. Rader

Public Land & Resources Law Review

In San Luis Obispo Coastkeeper v. Cnty. of San Luis Obispo, the Ninth Circuit addressed how to consider a mandatory preliminary injunction for an Endangered Species Act claim when multiple listed species may be affected by the requested relief. The Plaintiffs brought ESA and state law claims to compel the County of San Luis Obispo to change its operation of the Lopez Dam on Arroyo Grande Creek, which they claimed adversely affected South-Central California Coast steelhead trout. The tidewater goby and California red-legged frog, both listed species, are also present in Arroyo Grande Creek. The Ninth Circuit determined the …

Unleashing Consultation: Tohono O’Odham Nation V. Department Of Interior And The Case For Reforming The National Historic Preservation Act, Elizabeth Tobey

Public Land & Resources Law Review

The Ninth Circuit’s 2025 decision in Tohono O’odham Nation v. Department of Interior highlights an ongoing failure by federal land management agencies to consult meaningfully with tribal nations as mandated by the 1966 National Historic Preservation Act. This article argues that the NHPA’s framework for tribal consultation enables federal land management agencies to sidestep meaningful engagement with tribes, undermining both cultural resource protection and the federal Indian trust responsibility. To address these deficiencies—particularly in the context of renewable energy development on federal public lands, directly at issue in Tohono O’odham Nation—this article proposes amendments to the NHPA informed by …

Wilderness Watch V. U.S. Forest Service, No. Cv 23-133-M-Dwm, 2025 Wl 2985292 (D. Mont. Oct. 23, 2025)., Gardner Dee

Public Land & Resources Law Review

This comment argues that the District of Montana’s decision in Wilderness Watch v. U.S. Forest Service correctly applied the Ninth Circuit’s Kofa framework to strike down a multi-agency native trout restoration project in the Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness, holding that the Forest Service unlawfully prioritized Yellowstone cutthroat trout conservation over the Wilderness Act’s mandate to preserve wilderness character. Dee further contends that while large wilderness watersheds offer valuable climate refugia for native coldwater fish, watershed-scale restoration projects will continue to conflict with the Act’s prohibitions on motorized and mechanized intrusions so long as agencies rely on helicopter transport and rotenone application at …

Qualified Immunity: Emerging Fault Lines In The Eleventh Circuit, Ricky J. Marc

University of Miami Race & Social Justice Law Review

Qualified immunity operates as a central doctrine in federal civil rights litigation, defining the threshold between government accountability and official protection from suit. Within the Eleventh Circuit, this doctrine has developed into a highly structured yet fact-dependent framework that shapes litigation strategy and judicial outcomes. This article offers a comprehensive analysis of qualified immunity in the Eleventh Circuit from 2022 to 2025, drawing on recent precedents involving law enforcement officers and correctional officials. It examines the Circuit’s treatment of clearly established rights, the role of objective reasonableness in determining constitutional violations, and the evidentiary dynamics that influence summary judgment and …

Presumed Guilty By Proximity: How Geofence Warrants Undermine The Fourteenth Amendment, Radha Patel

University of Miami Race & Social Justice Law Review

Geofence warrants are utilized as a surveillance tool to gather location data on every user within a specific area and are being integrated into policing without a stable legal framework. This integration threatens individual rights and disproportionately impacts people and communities of color. While these warrants are often scrutinized under the Fourth Amendment, this note argues that they significantly undermine the Fourteenth Amendment by granting law enforcement excessive discretion. This unchecked discretion allows systemic bias and racial profiling to influence criminal investigations, creating the potential for wrongful convictions. The analysis in this note details the three-step execution process of geofence …

Separate But Equal In The Bold New City Of The South: A Shadow Of What Remains, Charity Dera

University of Miami Race & Social Justice Law Review

This project undertakes the task of analyzing the historical and contemporary landscape of Jacksonville, Florida, the “Bold New City of the South,”1 from a multidisciplinary vantage point. It argues that the spirit of the overturned “separate but equal” holding of Plessy v. Ferguson2 and its bold segregationist ideologies reverberate today in both subtle and overt ways. Yet, that reality has not come without the resilience and perseverance of pioneering natives who have resisted such ideals in bold ways. While segregation is deeply rooted in U.S. history and scholars have readily addressed the contemporary effects of landmark cases such as Plessy …

Alaska Dep’T Of Fish And Game V. Federal Subsistence Bd., Mj Fiedler

Public Land & Resources Law Review

A subsistence hunt in Kake, Alaska, during the COVID-19

pandemic sparked a lawsuit from the State of Alaska Department of Fish

and Game challenging the authority of the Federal Subsistence Board to

open the hunt. This lawsuit is a recent addition to a long history of the

State of Alaska’s resistance to federal enforcement of the Alaska National

Interest Lands Conservation Act provision establishing priority for rural

subsistence users. The Ninth Circuit ultimately affirmed the Federal

Subsistence Board’s authority to open the subsistence hunt.

Child Support Factory: Racist History, Harm, And Unconstitutionality Of The Child Support System's Contractual Operations, Daniel L. Hatcher

William & Mary Journal of Race, Gender, and Social Justice

Within America’s justice institutions, the child support system has become a business. The intended mission of aid has been traded and abdicated through contractual deals to churn vulnerable families into factory-like revenue operations. Juvenile and family courts across the country have partnered through countless intertwined interagency contracts with human service agencies, prosecutors, attorneys general’s offices, probation departments, and policing offices—all aimed at generating revenue from impoverished children and parents rather than serving their best interests. The resulting child support factory is vast, harmful, unconstitutional, unethical, and grew from a racist history that devastated Black families, and still operates with starkly …

False Conflict: Colorblindness And Section 2 Of The Voting Rights Act, W. Kerrel Murray

Fordham Law Review

If friends and foes of section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 agree on one thing, it is the irrepressible conflict between section 2’s attention to race and constitutional colorblindness. They’re wrong. Rightly understood, section 2’s design is remarkably compatible with colorblind constitutionalism’s letter and spirit.

To show how, this Article first returns to section 2’s origins and the preexisting approach its text codifies. That approach had an underappreciated ethos: When intentional discrimination’s effects sufficiently distort a political system, an electoral rule’s results might impugn its unconstitutionality, even if the rule had been adopted without discriminatory purpose. Drawing …

2025 Martin Luther King, Jr. Keynote Lecture, Madiba Dennie

Villanova Law Review (1956 - )

No abstract provided.

Lowering Of The Lowered: The ‘Spectacular’ Construction Of ‘Humiliation’ In The Indian Prevention Of Atrocities Act 1989, Ashna Singh

National Law School of India Review

The Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989 is the only law in India that explicitly recognises caste-based insults or hate speech as an offence. In doing so, it captures the distinctive harm of such speech as humiliation. This article focuses on Section 3(1)(r) of the Act and argues that this recognition is significantly qualified by the “public view” requirement. Drawing on socio-political scholarship on humiliation, I show that judicial interpretation of this requirement has produced an extra-legislative condition of spectacularity. Courts tend to read caste-based humiliation through the paradigm of visible, overt, and collective atrocity, …

Lost And Found, Katherine M. Houlden

Nebraska Journal on Advancing Justice

No abstract provided.

Home Of The Brave, Land Of The Free: The Star-Spangled Banner's Contested History, Michael H. Hoffheimer

Nebraska Journal on Advancing Justice

No abstract provided.

Pearl's Perfect Last Will - Crushed By Infantilism Bias, Edward F. Fogarty Mr

Nebraska Journal on Advancing Justice

No abstract provided.

Dangerous Or Neglected, Amanda Landaverde

Nebraska Journal on Advancing Justice

No abstract provided.

The Call To Action, And My Reluctant Answer, Audrey R. Svane

Nebraska Journal on Advancing Justice

No abstract provided.

Legacy: Introduction To Issue 2, Nicholas L. Marti

Nebraska Journal on Advancing Justice

No abstract provided.

Volume 2, Issue 2 Masthead, Njaj Editorial Board

Nebraska Journal on Advancing Justice

No abstract provided.

Broadcasting Bigotry: A Proposal To Revive Group Defamation And Hold Modern Media Accountable For The Disparagement Of Asian Americans, Dominic Roschival

University of Cincinnati Law Review

No abstract provided.

Facing State-Created Danger In Facial Recognition Technology, Esha Jain

Washington Law Review

When the police wrongfully arrest someone, that person faces distinct harms. Various scholarship, news articles, and studies document that AI-powered facial recognition technology (FRT) disproportionately misidentifies individuals from marginalized racial groups when used irresponsibly. Many of those sources indicate that police reliance on FRT without adequate vetting results in wrongful arrests. Yet law enforcement continues to misuse FRT.

This Comment contends that the 42 U.S.C. § 1983 state-created danger doctrine offers a potential remedy for plaintiffs harmed by police reliance on FRT. To prevail under this doctrine, plaintiffs must prove affirmative conduct, deliberate indifference, and proximate causation. If successful, these …

"In Better Times": The Basis Of Representation And The Forgotten History Of The Fourteenth Amendment, Jessica I. Gorovitz

Fordham Law Review

Over the past several years, the U.S. Supreme Court has incorporated history into the analysis of unenumerated individual rights, like abortion, and enumerated ones, like the right to keep and bear arms. But it has not incorporated history into its approach to individual rights claims of racial discrimination under the Equal Protection Clause, a methodological gap the Court has left unexplained. Rather, it has held that the purpose of the Fourteenth Amendment is to prevent racial classifications, largely citing its own precedent, eschewing the Amendment’s history. This approach conflicts with section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which requires states …

Outbound Investment Restrictions And International Law’S Challenge, Harlan Grant Cohen

Seattle University Law Review

The Outbound Investment Rule, restricting U.S. investment in certain Chinese advanced technology sectors, has largely been portrayed as an incremental measure, a modest extension to fill loopholes in the existing investment screening regime. But while perhaps the logical next step in the securitization of the economy, the Outbound Investment Rule actually reflects a momentous shift in the relationship between governments and business, one playing out in the United States and around the world and worth attention. Unlike traditional investment screening, the Outbound Investment Rule operates like a sanctions regime, designed not to protect the U.S. economy, but to hamper the …

Resilient Dispute Resolution Systems For International Energy Conflicts, Guillermo J. Garcia Sanchez

Seattle University Law Review

Energy-related conflicts are on the rise, spanning diverse issues such as the impacts of rare mineral mining on local communities, the impacts of sanctions on energy investments due to the Russia-Ukraine war, and the impacts of expanded subsidies on the electric vehicle and solar panel industries. Increasingly, companies, communities, and governments are clashing over the challenges of pursuing disparate and sometimes competing energy policies. This Article argues that dispute resolution mechanisms in the energy investment sector must be fundamentally rethought. Traditional semi-adjudicatory models, which focus on winners and losers, fail to accommodate the complex and multifaceted nature of contemporary energy …

Restricting Data Flows Is A Sign Of Weakness, Nikolas Guggenberger

Seattle University Law Review

There has been a seismic shift in American attitudes toward the free flow of data across borders.  In less than a decade, the United States has transitioned from condemning barriers to digital trade to constructing a digital fortress of its own. It passed legislation requiring TikTok’s parent company to divest its U.S. operations or face a nationwide ban affecting 170 million U.S. users, citing national security concerns about its ties to China and the potential for data surveillance and content manipulation. Upon legal challenge by TikTok on First Amendment grounds, the Supreme Court affirmed the ban’s constitutionality. Recent federal legislation …

Product Nationality And Corporate Identity, Trang (Mae) Nguyen

Seattle University Law Review

Global supply chains have long depended on a deceptively technical device: the attribution of a “nationality” to goods. A trade law principle, rules of origin assign products an “economic passport” that governs how they are treated at the border, including what markets they may enter and which tariff rates apply. In recent years, however, product nationality has taken on a new and far more ambitious role. As U.S. trade policy increasingly intersects with national security and human rights policy, policymakers rely on nationality-based measures to police supply chain linkages, curb geopolitical issues, and discipline firms for their links to forced …

Global Supply Chain Resilience In Emerging Technologies: A Case Study Of Bitcoin Mining, Kishanthi Parella, Carla L. Reyes

Seattle University Law Review

The United States has put into motion bold plans in critical and emerging technologies to bolster its national and economic security.  For example, the federal government created a national bitcoin strategic reserve and a stockpile of other cryptocurrency; while several states have committed to or are considering similar goals.  However, the security of these reserves is dependent on two types of supply chains within the Bitcoin mining industry: analogue supply chains, relating to the physical components needed for Bitcoin mining, and data supply chains, relating to the complex and layered logistical network of actors that create input into the software …

Volume 49 Masthead

Seattle University Law Review

Volume 49 Masthead

A Comparative Study Of Chinese And American Approaches To Shaping International Outer Space Law And Norms, Ariel G. Silverman

Seattle University Law Review

This article explores convergences and divergencies in the United States and PRC’s responses to the stalemate in the United Nations over the future of outer space resource governance. I do so by systematically analyzing these leading space-faring nations’ policy-positions and tactics deployed to shape norms around three substantive areas of outer space resource governance: rights of ownership and scope of utilization of space resources, mechanization of the “benefits sharing” principle, and the rights and responsibilities of the private sector. I theorize that these leading space-faring nations have adopted divergent approaches due to their differing historical relationships with international law and …

Table Of Contents

Seattle University Law Review

Table of Contents