Abstract This Essay retells the Dred Scott story as a set of intersecting stories about judicial racism and judicial antiracism. Part I defines racism and antiracism, then discusses how racist and antiracist ideas are realized through government power. Next, this Essay visits one of the most prominent moments of judicial racial history: the story of Dred Scott. Part II walks through the...
“You Write in Cursive, I Write in Graffiti”: How #BlackLivesMatter Reorients Social Movement Legal Theory
This Comment compares and contrasts: (1) analyses and recommendations posited by longstanding Constitutional scholars discussing social movements, with (2) the efforts and achievements by the Black Lives Matter movement. Using the scholarship of Jack Balkin and Reva Siegel as examples, this Comment argues that their prescriptions for social movements that seek to affect changes in constitutional...
Forgiven, Forgotten? Rethinking Victim Impact Statements for an Era of Decarceration
Abstract Laws enacting victim impact statements flourished in the 1980s and 90s, a period defined by draconian crime control measures and mass incarceration. During an emerging era of decarceration, the effect of victim impact statements on excessive prison sentences has been largely overlooked. Reshaping retributive laws governing victim impact statements is essential to comprehensive...
Rescinding Admission Offers in Higher Education: The Clash Between Free Speech and Institutional Academic Freedom When Prospective Students’ Racist Posts Are Exposed
Abstract This Article examines the tension between a prospective college student’s First Amendment freedom of speech and a public university’s unenumerated, inchoate right of institutional academic freedom. The friction between these interests was cast in high relief in 2020 when several schools confronted dual issues: (1) whether to rescind offers of admission to individuals who later were...
When Contact Kills: Indigenous Peoples Living in Voluntary Isolation During COVID
Abstract During the global pandemic, people around the world are at risk of serious illness and death from contact and proximity to other people. But Indigenous peoples, particularly those in voluntary isolation, have always faced that risk. International organizations have relied on the right to self-determination as the primary legal grounds to justify the principle of no-contact for...
Post-COVID Courts
Abstract As with so much else in American life, the COVID-19 crisis delivered a gut punch to our justice system. And the worst is yet to come, as federal and state courts alike are soon to fill with cases reflecting the failing finances and fraying relationships of our sheltered-in-place lives. But in truth, our courts were already at a crossroads: chronically underfunded, increasingly...
Presidential Crimes Matter
Abstract The resignations of United States Attorneys Geoffrey Berman and Jessie Liu from their respective positions in the Southern District of New York and the District of Columbia, and Attorney General William Barr’s and President Donald Trump’s persistent undermining of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russian interference and obstruction of justice investigations and prosecutions are clarion...
The Law & Politics of Cyberattack Attribution
Attribution of cyberattacks requires identifying those responsible for bad acts, prominently including states. To guard against baseless or false attributions, this Article argues that states should establish an international law requirement that public attributions of state-sponsored cyberattacks must include sufficient evidence to enable cross-checking or corroboration of the accusations.