College Athletics, Coercion, and the Establishment Clause: The Case of Clemson Football
Once a person turns eighteen and goes to college, do they immediately become less susceptible to the influences of those in power and their peers? The Supreme Court tells us that they do. While consistently willing to find that prayers at middle …
Against Fiduciary Constitutionalism
A growing body of scholarship draws connections between fiduciary law and the Constitution. In much of this literature, the Constitution is described as a fiduciary instrument that establishes fiduciary duties, not least for the President of the …
Secrecy Surrogates
Debates about how best to check executive branch abuses of secrecy focus on three sets of actors that have access to classified information and that traditionally have served—in one way or another—as our surrogates: congressional committees, federal …
Conflicts of Precedent
The law of the circuit doctrine requires three-judge panels in the federal courts of appeals to give stare decisis effect to past decisions of the circuit, which can only be overruled by the circuit sitting en banc or by the U.S. Supreme Court. This …
Firearms, Extreme Risk, and Legal Design: “Red Flag” Laws and Due Process
Extreme risk protection order (“ERPO”) laws—often called “red flag” laws—permit the denial of firearms to individuals who a judge has determined present an imminent risk of harm to themselves or others. Following a wave of adoptions in the wake of …
Weaponizing the First Amendment: An Equality Reading
This Article traces how and why the First Amendment has gone from a shield of the powerless to a sword of the powerful in the past hundred years. The central doctrinal role of “content neutrality” and “viewpoint neutrality” in this development is …
Defining Appraisal Fair Value
Appraisal is a statutory mechanism that entitles dissenting stockholders of Delaware merger targets to receive a judicially determined valuation of their shares. During a decade when Delaware courts significantly constrained other legal avenues of …
Substance-Targeted Choice-of-Law Clauses
Recent cases highlight two persistent problems in United States litigation: the frequency with which parties seek to validate an otherwise unenforceable provision through a choice-of-law clause, and the disparate results courts have reached in such …
The Structures of Local Courts
Local courts are, by far, the most commonly used courts in our justice system. Cases filed in local courts outnumber those filed in federal court by a factor of over two hundred. Few litigants who receive local-court judgments appeal the matter …
Essentially Elective: The Law and Ideology of Restricting Abortion During the COVID-19 Pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic has put on full display the physical and doctrinal isolation of abortion from health care more generally. In early 2020, several states proclaimed that abortions had to be stopped or delayed for lengthy or indefinitely.
Pandemics, Risks, and Remedies
The coronavirus (“COVID”) pandemic exposed America’s brittle reliance on incarceration as means of promoting justice and social welfare. For each criminal detention site, a single prisoner infection ultimately threatened the entire institutional …
Education, Racial Legal Theory
Restoring Honor: Ending Racial Disparities in University Honor Systems
In student-led academic honor systems, students establish policies governing lying, cheating, or stealing (referred to as “academic misconduct”); adjudicate reports of academic misconduct among their peers; and determine appropriate sanctions..
Transatlantic Perspectives on the Political Question Doctrine
On September 24, 2019, the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom (UKSC) unanimously invalidated U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s attempt to suspend (or “prorogue”) Parliament. The UKSC’s decision, R (Miller) v. Prime Minister (Miller/Cherry), was a …
Designing Business Forms to Pursue Social Goals
The long-standing debate about the purpose and role of business firms has recently regained momentum. Business firms face growing pressure to pursue social goals and benefit corporation statutes proliferate across many U.S. states. This trend is …
Manipulating Opportunity
Concerns about online manipulation have centered on fears about undermining the autonomy of consumers and citizens. What has been overlooked is the risk that the same techniques of personalizing information online can also threaten equality. When …
Measuring Algorithmic Fairness
Algorithmic decision making is both increasingly common and increasingly controversial. Critics worry that algorithmic tools are not transparent, accountable, or fair. Assessing the fairness of these tools has been especially fraught as it requires …
Colonial Virginia: Incubator of Judicial Review
What is the historical origin of judicial review in the United States? Although scholars have acknowledged that British imperial “disallowance” of colonial law was an influential antecedent, the extant historical scholarship devoted to the mechanics …
Myopic Consumer Law
People make mistakes with debt, partly because the chance to buy now and pay later tempts them to do things that are not in their long-term interest. Lenders sell credit products that exploit this vulnerability. In this Article, I argue that …
A Right to a Human Decision
Recent advances in computational technologies have spurred anxiety about a shift of power from human to machine decision makers. From welfare and employment to bail and other risk assessments, state actors increasingly lean on machine-learning tools …
Constitutionalism in Unexpected Places
Before, during, and after the ratification of the Federal Constitution of 1787, Americans believed that they were governed under an unwritten constitution, a constitution that described an arrangement of power, confirmed ancient rights, and …