Invoking Criminal Equity’s Roots
Equitable remedies have begun to play a critical role in addressing some of the systemic issues in criminal cases. Invoked when other solutions are inadequate to the fair and just resolution of the case, equitable remedies, such as injunctions and …
Interpretive Entrepreneurs
Private actors interpret legal norms, a phenomenon I call “interpretive entrepreneurship.” The phenomenon is particularly significant in the international context, where many disputes are not subject to judicial resolution and there is no official …
Why BIPOC Fails
Racial tensions have been endemic to the U.S. since its founding. In 2020, this racial conflict bubbled over into the streets as those supporting Black Lives Matter and opposing a long history of racist police violence congregated to demand justice. …
Remedying Police Brutality Through Sentencing Reduction
Police brutality is a widespread problem that causes significant physical and psychological trauma, undermines faith in the law, and disproportionately impacts communities of color. Existing remedies to police brutality—including civil suits for …
Mail-In Ballots and Constraints on Federal Power Under the Electors Clause
Crisis often begets crisis, and the COVID-19 pandemic has proven to be no exception. With rising concerns over crowding at the polls, many states during the 2020 elections opted to allow voters to use mail-in ballots to vote in the general election. …
The Origins of Accommodation: Free Exercise, Disestablishment, and the Legend of Small Government
In 1813, Father Anthony Kohlmann, rector of St. Peter’s Church in New York City, found himself between a rock and a hard place. One of his parishioners, James Keating, had reported a theft of jewelry to the police. Later, Keating withdrew his …
Vagueness Attacks on Searches and Seizures
The void-for-vagueness doctrine promises to promote the rule of law by ensuring that crimes are defined with sufficient definiteness to preclude indefensible and unpredictable applications. But the doctrine fails to fulfill that promise with respect …
Nondelegation and Criminal Law
Although the Constitution confers the legislative power on Congress, Congress does not make most laws. Instead, Congress delegates the power to make laws to administrative agencies. The Supreme Court has adopted a permissive stance towards these …
The Corrective Justice Theory of Punishment
The American penal system is racist, degrading, and inefficient. Nonetheless, we cannot give up on punishment entirely, for social peace and cooperation depend on the deterrent threat of the criminal sanction. The question—central to determining the …
Can the Reasonable Person Be Religious? Accommodation and the Common Law
Since the 1990s, in theory, the Supreme Court has applied rational basis review to neutral and generally applicable laws that incidentally burden religious practice. Strict scrutiny is reserved for those laws that lack neutrality or general …
Settled Law
“Settled law” appears frequently in judicial opinions—sometimes to refer to binding precedent, sometimes to denote precedent that has acquired a more mystical permanence, and sometimes as a substantive part of legal doctrine. During judicial …
Conflict Avoidance in Constitutional Law
Hard cases present a dilemma at the heart of constitutional law. Courts have a duty to decide them—to vindicate rights, to clarify law—but doing so leads to errors (judges do not know the “right answer”) and strains the credibility of courts as …
The Constitution’s First Declared War: The Northwestern Confederacy War of 1790–95
What counts as the first presidential war—the practice of Presidents waging war without prior congressional sanction? In the wake of President Donald Trump’s attacks on Syria, the Office of Legal Counsel opined that unilateral presidential …
Foreword
If a foreword were to be limited to one word, and one word only, this foreword’s one word would be joy. It is a joy to introduce to you a diverse group of authors and their writings on the past, present, and future of a social justice movement that …
Bostock’s Inclusive Queer Frame
Bostock v. Clayton County is the Supreme Court’s first major decision on gay rights written since Justice Kennedy’s retirement. It is a victory for the LGBT community—a momentous one. But this Essay argues that Bostock is even more momentous than …
Termites in the Master’s House: Abortion Rap and Florynce Kennedy’s Contributions to Racial and Gender Justice
Contemporaries recognized Kennedy as “an outspoken activist for the rights of African Americans, women, sex workers, and members of the LGBT community.” In this way, Kennedy united social movements with divergent agendas. She believed that only …
Shaping Our Freedom Dreams: Reclaiming Intersectionality Through Black Feminist Legal Theory
Black feminist legal theory has offered the tool of intersectionality to modern feminist movements to help combat interlocking systems of oppression. Despite this tremendous offering, intersectionality has become wholly divorced from its Black …
A Dangerous Imbalance: Pauli Murray’s Equal Rights Amendment and the Path to Equal Power
In January 2020, Virginia became the thirty-eighth and final state needed to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment (“ERA”). Because Virginia’s ratification—and those of Nevada and Illinois —occurred four decades after Congress’s ratification deadline, …
Blackness as Fighting Words
Where I grew up, the wrong words could turn an innocent sparring match of playground taunts and after-school gibes into a full-out asphalt brawl. Naïve boys enacting popular tropes of Black hypermasculinity, we would often form a circle around the …
The Role of the Doctrine of Laches in Undermining the Holocaust Expropriated Art Recovery Act
From 1933 to 1945, the Nazi regime looted art on a scale with few historical competitors. The Nazis used this state-sanctioned theft to dehumanize the Jewish population and carry out the “Aryanization” of German society..