When is a design just a design, and when is it a trademark? Over the last several decades, courts have developed a clear framework for evaluating the distinctiveness of certain unconventional marks, especially those typically conceived of as “trade dress.” The Supreme Court has drawn a line between product packaging, on the one hand, and…
A potent myth of legal academic scholarship is that it is mostly meritocratic and mostly solitary. Reality is more complicated. In this Article, we plumb the networks of knowledge co-production in legal academia by analyzing the star footnotes that appear at the beginning of most law review articles. Acknowledgments paint a rich picture of both…
Conventional wisdom describes environmental law as a field filled with rigid mandates. Many critiques of the field start with that rigidity as a key premise, and they allege that inflexibility is a central failing or, alternatively, a squandered virtue. Influential reform proposals follow from both allegations. This Article demonstrates that these premises are often mistaken.…
Since January 2021, forty-two states have introduced “anti–critical race theory” (anti-CRT) bills that restrict discussions of racism and sexism in public schools. As teachers, administrators, and civil rights organizations scramble to interpret these bills, many wonder: How can this be constitutional? At the heart of this broader question is a legal problem that remains unaddressed…
