Abstract After centuries of colonial subordination, Black and Brown former colonies are still fighting to achieve the fruits of decolonization. The traditional theory is that former colonies will emerge from the colonial period with the legal mandate and international recognition needed to chart their own futures. But, for those Black and Brown British colonies that achieved political...
Art After Warhol
Abstract Copyright law generally prohibits copying. Contemporary art has increasingly come to rely on copying. Thus, the two are on a collision course—or so the traditional argument goes. This purported clash between the law and creative practice seemed to reach its apex in the Supreme Court’s recently decided Warhol v. Goldsmith, which refused to find that Warhol’s famous brand of unlicensed...
First Amendment Protections for Detained Organizers
Abstract Immigration detention is one of the most active sites of struggle for justice in the United States, and the First Amendment may be an underutilized tool in the movement to abolish immigration detention. When people detained by ICE organize against the unjust conditions they endure, they routinely experience repression and retaliation for their speech. While some of ICE’s retaliation...
Familial Association Under Siege: The Implications of United States v. Magdaleno on the Black Community
Abstract This Comment delves into the fundamental right to familial association and integrity in the United States, tracing its historical significance and its erosion in the criminal legal system. Focusing on the Ninth Circuit’s case, United States v. Magdaleno, it scrutinizes a supervised release condition that restricts interactions with siblings, revealing a potential avenue for family...
Special Education Entwinement
Abstract The privatization of public K-12 education in the United States has accelerated dramatically in recent years, blurring the line between public and private schooling. This shift has raised critical constitutional and statutory questions, particularly for students with disabilities. Although the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) provides robust protections for this...
Racial Reckoning and the Police-Free Schools Movement
Abstract Across the country, students of color face daily threats of arrest, exclusion, and violence at the hands of school police officers. Whether deemed threatening, defiant, or hypersexualized, Black students, in particular, pay a heavy price to access their right to free public education. Despite victories in dismantling educational carcerality since the mid-2000s, efforts to formally remove...
The War on Higher Education
Abstract Higher education is under assault in the United States. Tracking authoritarian movements across the globe, domestic attacks on individual professors and academic institutions buttress a broader campaign to undermine multiracial democracy and the institutions that sustain and safeguard it. Reflecting on the past academic year, this essay charts the increasingly brazen right-wing efforts...
Presuming Disparate Treatment: A Solution to Title VII’s Doctrinal Puzzle of Accent Discrimination
Abstract In Professor Mari Matsuda’s article Voices of America: Accent, Antidiscrimination Law, and a Jurisprudence for the Last Reconstruction, Professor Matsuda identifies a doctrinal puzzle in the courts’ approach to accent discrimination cases: Courts recognize that accent discrimination can be a form of national origin discrimination, yet courts are overly deferential to employers’ claims...