An emerging literature on the social determinants of health reveals that subordination is a major driver of public health disparities. This body of research makes possible a powerful new alliance between public health and civil rights advocates: an initiative to promote the “civil rights of health.” Understanding health as a matter of justice, and civil rights law as a health intervention, has...
How Not to Lie About Affirmative Action
This Article empirically examines the six primary deficiencies impacting extant research on affirmative action in law schools and highlights how inattention to—and sometimes outright disregard for—these issues continues to muddy the debate over affirmative action.
The Hollowed Out Common Law
We measure the evolution of the common law using a comprehensive data set of cases regarding the enforceability of online consumer contracts. We find a steady decline in the number of cases adjudicated in state courts relative to federal courts, and a parallel rise in class actions migrating to federal courts. Erie notwithstanding, the common law is driven by federal court decisions, building...
Codification and the Hidden Work of Congress
This Article provides the first in-depth scholarly examination of the process by which enacted laws are organized and presented for public consumption, known as codification, a process that has mostly escaped the notice of judges and scholars of legislation, and even fails to make it into textbooks meant to introduce lawyers to the creation and interpretation of law. It argues that the failure to...
Abortion Regulation as Compelled Speech
This Article outlines a novel First Amendment compelled speech claim against a growing body of abortion restrictions, including fetal demise and burial laws, premised on a state interest in “expressing respect for potential life.” It weaves Fourteenth Amendment limitations together with developments set out last year in NIFLA v. Becerra to demonstrate that the Court’s expanding First Amendment...
Derivable Works
From sequels and spin-offs to physical merchandise, copyright and trademark law together give a creative work’s owner exclusive control over a range of derivative products. This Article argues that, under the right conditions, that control can tilt artistic investment away from standalone works and toward the ones that are most likely to generate future derivatives. It explores this phenomenon...
Big Data Prosecution and Brady
As helpful as new forms of centralized data collection might be for investigators, there remains a critical open issue: the systems were not designed to identify the exculpatory and impeaching material prosecutors are required to disclose under Brady v. Maryland. This Article is the first to examine the design flaw at the core of the intelligence-driven prosecution model – a flaw that creates a...
Episode 5.1: Criminalizing Survival: Homelessness and the Law
This episode is the first of a two part series examining the complexity of addressing homelessness. In Los Angeles in particular, as the voters were passing measures for significantly increasing the amount of money available to address homelessness and help people find housing, the city continued to enforce ordinances that violated the civil rights of people who did not have a home. In this...