SLR Online

Essay

Man making online purchase with credit card

Essay

Kill Quill, Keep the Dormant Commerce Clause

History's Lessons on Congressional Control of State Taxation
by  Brian Galle  

Introduction The world of internet commerce was shaken to its foundations in January this year, when the Supreme Court granted certiorari in South Dakota v. Wayfair, Inc., in effect agreeing to reconsider its landmark holding in Quill Corp. v. North Dakota. For more than twenty-five years, Quill has barred states from imposing tax-collection obligations on retailers that…

Volume 70 (2017-2018)

Professionals dealing with taxes and markets

Essay

Itemized Deductions in a High Standard Deduction World

by  Emily Cauble  

New tax legislation enacted in December 2017 exacerbates the extent to which various itemized deductions, such as the charitable contribution deduction and the home mortgage interest deduction, disproportionately benefit high income individuals. This essay develops this critique and concludes by suggesting paths for reform that should be considered by a future Congress.

Volume 70 (2017-2018)

Supreme Court columns with American flag and US Capitol

Essay

Is the Federal Judiciary Independent of Congress?

by  Evan C. Zoldan  

Can Congress command a federal court to rule in favor of a particular party in a pending case? The answer to this seemingly simple question is unsettled. The Constitution permits Congress to enact rules of law that courts must follow; and it permits the courts to decide cases pending before them. Constitutional conflict arises when…

Volume 70 (2017-2018)

Pile of document files

Essay

The Costs of Aggregating Administrative Claims

by  Shannon M. Grammel & Joshua C. Macey  

Introduction Aggregation has emerged in the past few years as a critical tool by which agencies can quickly resolve groups of claims that would otherwise languish for years in bureaucratic limbo. The idea is simple: Consolidating many similar claims in a single proceeding would help agencies process claims more quickly, efficiently, and fairly. But aggregation…

Volume 70 (2017-2018)

Book and glass loupe

Essay

The Faulty Frequency Hypothesis

Difficulties in Operationalizing Ordinary Meaning Through Corpus Linguistics
by  Ethan J. Herenstein  

Introduction Promising to inject empirical rigor into the enterprise of statutory interpretation, corpus linguistics has, over the past couple years, taken the legal academy by storm. A product of linguistics departments, corpus linguistics is an empirical approach to the study of language through the use of large, electronic, and searchable databases of text called corpora.…

Volume 70 (2017-2018)

Block chain network concept on technology background

Essay

Blockchain’s Big Hurdle

by  Riley T. Svikhart  

Blockchain technology can maintain accurate chains of title to securities and other legal instruments in a reliable electronic form. As private industries begin to recognize the cost-saving and risk-reducing potential of this technology, state legislatures are responding. Arizona’s H.B. 2417 is a prototypical state solution. In essence, the law requires parties to treat blockchain-secured records,…

Volume 70 (2017-2018)

Investment and Stock Market watchdog

Essay

Leidos and the Roberts Court’s Improvident Securities Law Docket

by  Matthew C. Turk & Karen E. Woody  

For its October 2017 term, the U.S. Supreme Court took up a noteworthy securities law case, Leidos, Inc. v. Indiana Public Retirement System. The legal question presented in Leidos was whether a failure to comply with a regulation issued by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Item 303 of Regulation S-K (Item 303), can be grounds for a…

Volume 70 (2017-2018)

Statue of Confederate Soldier Looking at Copy Space

Essay

Confederate Statute Removal

by  Aneil Kovvali  

Certain state governments have adopted statutes that are designed to prevent city governments from eliminating memorials to Confederate forces and leaders. Critics of these controversial statutes generally focus on the moral issue of preserving statues honoring white supremacy. This Essay highlights a different set of concerns: These statutes suppress the speech of cities while compelling…

Volume 70 (2017-2018)

Scrabble Letters

Essay

The Words Under the Words

by  Patrick Barry  

The words lawyers choose can change the decisions people make. Psychologists call the mechanics of this change “framing.” They’ve found, for example, that more people will decide to have a surgery if they are told that the “survival rate is 90%” than if they are told that the “mortality rate is 10%”—even though a survival…

Volume 70 (2017-2018)

Faceless hooded anonymous computer hacker

Essay

Government Hacking to Light the Dark Web

Risks to International Relations and International Law?
by  Orin S. Kerr & Sean D. Murphy  

Introduction Government hacking is everywhere. Hackers working for the Russian government broke into computers run by the Democratic National Committee and stole e-mails relating to the 2016 Presidential election. Hackers traced to the Chinese government broke into U.S. government computers and copied personnel files of over 22 million employees. North Korean hackers intruded into Sony…

Volume 70 (2017-2018)

Programming code abstract technology background of software deve

Essay

Transformative Use in Software

by  Clark D. Asay  

Introduction Fair use is copyright law’s most important defense against claims of copyright infringement. Major corporations depend on it to pursue a variety of technological innovations; universities rely on it for a number of educational purposes; and innovative parties frequently resort to it in creating works that build upon the creativity of others. In short,…

Volume 70 (2017-2018)

manhattan office building

Essay

A Better Way to Revive Glass-Steagall

by  John Crawford  

Introduction The financial crisis of 2007-2008 repeatedly forced regulators to face terrible choices between risking catastrophic contagion by letting particular firms or markets fail, and intervening to bail them out. One explanation of why these dilemmas arose was that financial firms were “too big to fail.” Nearly a decade after the onset of the crisis,…

Volume 70 (2017-2018)

Old Cadillac Eldorado

Essay

‘Cadillac Compliance’ Breakdown

by  Todd Haugh  

Introduction The recent defeat device scandal at Volkswagen, in which VW engineers created and installed a computer algorithm to cheat emissions testing on over eleven million automobiles, brings together two things I spend time thinking about: white collar crime and cars. While that may seem like an odd combination, VW’s troubles happen to marry my…

Volume 69 (2016-2017)

USA Supreme Court Building

Essay

American Pipe Tolling, Statutes of Repose, and Protective Filings

An Empirical Study
by  David Freeman Engstrom & Jonah B. Gelbach  

I. American Pipe Tolling and the Problem of Protective Filings In American Pipe & Construction Co. v. Utah, the Supreme Court wisely rationalized class action law and policy under Rule 23 by holding that the filing of a class action complaint “suspends the applicable statute of limitations as to all asserted members of the class…

Volume 69 (2016-2017)

Young boy playing Pokemon Go

Essay

Gotta Collect It All!

Surveillance Law Lessons of Pokémon Go
by  Brandon R. Teachout  

Days after the release of the mobile game Pokémon Go, a privacy flap ensued from press reports revealing that users on Apple phones who logged in through a Google account had unwittingly granted the developer, Niantic, access to their entire Google account. Moreover, the application’s (app’s) privacy policy allowed Niantic to disclose any information it…

Volume 69 (2016-2017)

Self driving vehicle

Essay

A Loophole Large Enough to Drive an Autonomous Vehicle Through

The ADA’s “New Van” Provision and the Future of Access to Transportation
by  Bryan Casey  

“If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, we have at least to consider the possibility that we have a small aquatic bird of the family Anatidœ on our hands.” —Douglas Adams Introduction In August 2016, Uber startled the world by announcing that its customers would soon have a small chance of…

Volume 69 (2016-2017)

Joshi

Essay

Bakke to the Future

Affirmative Action After Fisher
by  Yuvraj Joshi  

Introduction On June 23, 2016, the Supreme Court announced its much-anticipated decision in Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin, allowing affirmative action in college admissions to continue. No single feature of Fisher surprised court watchers more than its author, Justice Anthony Kennedy. As Richard Primus wrote in the New York Times: “[T]he most deceptive…

Volume 69 (2016-2017)

iStock_000005404447_Small

Essay

Sexual Assault as a Law of War Violation and U.S. Service Members’ Duty to Report

by  Chris Jenks & Jay Morse  

Introduction This Essay considers when U.S. service members deployed to Afghanistan are obligated to report allegations of sexual assault by Afghan security forces (ASF) against Afghan nationals to the U.S. military. The answer requires applying a longstanding Department of Defense (DOD) policy for reporting law of war (LOW) violations and hinges on when sexual assault…

Volume 69 (2016-2017)

FERC

Essay

FERC v. EPSA

Functionalism and the Electricity Industry of the Future
by  Matthew R. Christiansen  

Introduction The Supreme Court’s recent decision in Federal Energy Regulatory Commission v. Electric Power Supply Association (EPSA) may ultimately rank among the most significant energy law cases of all time. Unsurprisingly, the case has received considerable attention within legal circles and even within the popular press. EPSA upheld one of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s…

Volume 68 (2015-2016)

iStock_000069982485_Small

Essay

In Defense of Corruption

CNN Debates, the Press Clause, and Campaign Finance Regulation
by  Michael Francus  

Introduction This election cycle, CNN’s Republican presidential debates have twice violated campaign finance law, specifically by failing to issue invitations based on “pre-established objective criteria.” These violations went unpunished, not because of the ineptitude of the regulators, but because of the absurdity of the regulation violated, which presumes that television debates violate campaign finance law,…

Volume 68 (2015-2016)