In Charting a New Course on Digital Consumer Protection at the Federal Trade Commission, former FTC Chair Lina Khan and her co-authors Samuel Levine and Stephanie Nguyen set out a fundamentally new regulatory framework for privacy that seeks to move beyond the “notice and consent” paradigm that has dominated privacy law for a generation. They…
I meant what I said, and I said what I meant. An elephant’s faithful, one hundred percent! —Dr. Seuss, Horton Hatches the Egg Introduction This Comment seeks to defend Justice Neil Gorsuch’s approach to statutory interpretation, arguing against pragmatist efforts to reduce the Supreme Court’s reliance on textualism and against efforts by fellow self-proclaimed textualists…
Montana v. US is a case about tribal civil jurisdiction. Yet it has had a second life in a surprising context: federal statutes of general applicability that do not mention tribes. This Comment explores the circuit split on these silent statutes and shows that Montana is the doctrinal lynchpin for every court that has considered…
Introduction The creation of Indian reservations largely coincided with and was facilitated by the development of presidential authority to withdraw public lands for Indian purposes. Of the roughly 42.8 million acres of total tribal trust lands in 1951, slightly over 23 million were set aside through executive order. That number far dwarfs any other method…
I. Implicit Divestiture Presumes Cultural Incompatibility Tribes have a precarious political posture in relation to the United States. Tribes are distinctly sovereign and extra-constitutional, but are also without meaningful external infrastructure to define and protect their legal status in relation to the United States. That is, the U.S. recognizes Tribes as “domestic dependent nations,” but…
Introduction For more than two centuries, the United States has maintained—in law and in practice—a colonial system designed to destroy Indigenous peoples’ culture. My work has explored this phenomenon from a property lens, explaining how attacks on Indigenous cultures traverse and encompass all categories of property, including real, tangible, and intangible. From a property perspective,…
Introduction After rising from the depths of eras in which the United States intended to eliminate Native Nations, tribal sovereignty remains ascendant. With respect to natural resources, the governance of Native Nations has expanded to more fully occupy the legal space reserved in treaties with the United States. Across the country, Native Nations have built…
Introduction The Supreme Court is accumulating power. Call it “concentrating power in the court,” a “judicial power grab,” or (as a growing number of scholars are calling it) “judicial aggrandizement” or “judicial self-aggrandizement.” Each of these ideas describes a Supreme Court that is upsetting accepted notions of the separation of powers—accumulating power for itself, often…
There is something irritatingly wrong with Indian law practice at the Supreme Court. Oral argument at the Supreme Court is a bitterly unpleasant affair for Indigenous people and tribal advocates for a lengthy variety of reasons. It is canonical that tribal advocates must attempt to avoid Supreme Court review; the strategic thinking is that the…
Introduction Imagine the lost world of “lawfinding.” In that world, there was a general common law for federal judges to find. And in that world, each statute had a “single, best meaning” for judges to unearth with the traditional tools of statutory interpretation. Of course, we are not going back to that world. Too much…
Something bizarre is happening in Oklahoma. The state’s high courts, well-versed by long experience in federal Indian law, are rewriting fundamental rules of that field. Since 2022, the Oklahoma Supreme Court and Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals have rejected challenges to state jurisdiction over tribal citizens in child welfare, domestic violence, and ordinary criminal matters.…
In Trump’s second term, courts face mounting pressure to issue broad, sweeping remedies in response to clear executive overreach. While Samuel Bray and James Pfander often disagree about judicial authority to issue universal injunctions, they join forces in this adversarial collaboration to explore modern application of equitable traditions. Where do they agree and where precisely do their views diverge?
Aditya Bamzai and Peter Shane trace the enduring debate of the President’s removal power. Together they provide a comprehensive yet succinct history of this question from the First Congress to Trump’s latest removals, then offer their competing interpretations of how history and doctrine define the limits of executive power today.
Sonia Mittal–a senior January 6 prosecutor–details the firings, demotions, and investigations of DOJ prosecutors. Mittal argues these executive actions are part of a systemic attempt to “capture the referees,” a term used by political scientists to describe authoritarian consolidation, and highlights the dangers of politicizing law enforcement, especially when career officials face reprisals for impartial legal work.
As Trump targets law firms with punitive executive orders, firms face a familiar dilemma: all would benefit from resistance, but acting alone may risk everything. This Essay diagnoses the legal profession’s collective action problem and prescribes a united, classwide solution.
Can courts review the President’s retaliatory decision to revoke security clearances? In this Essay, Stanford J.D. Candidate Shreeya Singh argues Supreme Court precedent says “yes,” but a recent court decision seems to effectively immunize the executive branch from judicial scrutiny in these cases in the name of national security.
Reviving Nixon-era arguments, the Trump Administration claims the power to unilaterally withhold congressionally appropriated funds. In this Essay, Zachary Price dismantles the constitutional and practical case for presidential impoundment, and warns that letting the executive control the purse would threaten separation of powers and undermine democratic accountability.
President Trump has leveraged federal funds to induce private entities, like universities, to suppress individuals’ free speech. Bernadette Meyler proposes extending the “independent constitutional bar” test—traditionally applied to states—to private funding recipients when individual rights are affected. Otherwise, the federal government may evade accountability when it acts through intermediaries to circumvent constitutional limits.
Drawing on global political histories, Diego Zambrano explores why many democracies abroad rally around “the rule of law,” while Americans reach instinctively for “due process.” He argues that distinction isn’t just rhetorical: it may leave Americans less equipped to recognize and resist attacks on democratic institutions.
Introduction Lower courts are grappling with challenges to what were, until recently, settled Second Amendment laws—most notably, the federal laws prohibiting felons and those involuntarily committed from purchasing or possessing firearms. These categorical prohibitions are two of the most prominent so-called “federal prohibitors.” People who fall into one or more of the prohibited categories…
