Most Recent Print Issue

Volume 76, Issue 6


Article

General Law and the Fourteenth Amendment

by  William Baude, Jud Campbell & Stephen E. Sachs

The Fourteenth Amendment’s Section One is central to our constitutional law. Yet its underlying principles remain surprisingly obscure. Its drafting history seems filled with contradictions, and there is no scholarly consensus on what rights it protects, or even on what kind of law defines those rights. This Article presents a new lens through which to…

Article

Disabling Families

by  Sarah H. Lorr

The family regulation system is increasingly notorious for harming the very families that it ostensibly aims to protect. Under the guise of advancing child welfare, Black, Brown, Native, and poor families are disproportionately surveilled, judged, and separated. Discrimination and ingrained prejudices against disabled parents render their families especially vulnerable to separation and termination. Once enmeshed…

Note

Younger and the Youth: The Younger Abstention Doctrine in the Child-Welfare Context

by  Peter R. O’Neill

In 2021, over three million children interacted with the child welfare system and over six hundred thousand were in foster care. These child welfare systems, striving as they may to help children and families in crisis, are themselves in crisis. Seeking relief from these dysfunctional state systems, children and advocacy groups have turned to the…

Note

Elephants in Mouseholes: The Major Questions Doctrine in the Lower Courts

by  Ling Ritter

In recent years, the Supreme Court has repeatedly deployed a new doctrine with potentially seismic implications for the future of the federal administrative state. The “major questions doctrine,” formally embraced by a majority of the Court for the first time in West Virginia v. EPA, requires administrative agencies to demonstrate “clear congressional authorization” when they…

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Recent Online Essays

The Pardon Power and Federal Sentence-Reduction Motions: A Response to Yost and Flowers

In his response to Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost and former Ohio Solicitor General Benjamin Flowers, Jaden Lessnick argues that the federal sentence-reduction statute (18 U.S.C. § 3582(c)(1)(A)) is not preempted by the presidential pardon power. Lessnick contends that the statute does not offend the traditional separation-of-powers principle, and preemption is not justified under the unitary executive theory.

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Alternative Action After SFFA

Prof. Kim Forde-Mazrui of the University of Virginia responds to Sonja Starr’s print Article, The Magnet School Wars and the Future of Colorblindness. Forde-Mazrui argues that even if courts adopt the “ends-colorblindness” framework described by Starr, “alternative action” policies meant to promote diversity may still be constitutionally permissible.

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The Making of the A2J Crisis

Access to justice has become a defining legal and political issue. In this Essay, Nora Freeman Engstrom and David Freeman Engstrom work to identify the cause of the Access to Justice Crisis.

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The Criminally Complicated Copyright Questions about Trump’s Mugshot

The mugshot taken of Donald Trump in connection with his Georgia criminal prosecution has become one of the defining political images of the time. In this Essay, Cathay Y. N. Smith discusses who owns the copyright to this iconic photo.

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Too Late: Why Most Abortion Pill Administrative Procedure Challenges Are Untimely

In this response piece to the Abortion Pills piece in the Stanford Law Review, Prof. Susan Morse and Leah Butterfield of the University of Texas explain why most administrative challenges to abortion pill regulations are untimely.

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