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California, Climate, and Dormant Foreign Affairs Preemption (Again)

After President Trump withdrew the United States from the Paris Climate Accord, California announced its continued commitment to the cause by entering into agreements to control global temperature increases with other subnational governments from around the world. This comment analyzes possible dormant foreign affairs preemption challenges posed by such agreements.

“Where There Is a Right (Against Excessive Force), There Is Also a Remedy”: Redress for Police Violence Under the Equal Protection Clause

This comment considers the ways in which modern qualified immunity implicates or undermines the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause. It argues that qualified immunity often deprives victims of police brutality of their only viable remedy. As such, in the context of excessive force claims, qualified immunity violates the Equal Protection Clause and should be overruled.

Autonomy in the Family

This Article accomplishes two key goals. First, it offers a novel lens through which to reconsider how best to promote meaningful choice in family form. Second, this Article draws on nonmarital parentage law, as well as the almost entirely overlooked body of what I call “interstitial marriage cases,” to demonstrate that courts are capable of applying more capacious rules that give effect to...

The Venue Shuffle: Forum Selection Clauses and ERISA

Forum selection clauses are ubiquitous. Historically, the judiciary was hostile to contracts limiting a plaintiff’s venue options. The tide has since turned. Today, lower courts routinely enforce such clauses. This Article challenges this reflexive response in the special context of ERISA cases.

Regulating Bot Speech

Concerns over bot speech have led prominent figures in the world of technology to call for regulations in response to the unique threats bots pose. This work is the first to consider how efforts to regulate bots might run afoul of the First Amendment.

Remote Killing and the Fourth Amendment: Updating Constitutional Law to Address Expanded Police Lethality in the Robotic Age

This comment focuses on the Fourth Amendment implications of the remote use of lethal force. It examines the current constitutional standard for analyzing the reasonableness of the use of force under Graham v. Connor and discusses why it falls short in situations in which the officer has time to consider her options, as any officer engaging an individual via remotely controlled vehicle...

Keeping Consumers Out of the Crossfire: Final-Offer Arbitration in the Pharmaceutical Market

Social value in the drug industry comes from ensuring that consumers get the drugs they need, but also from encouraging new drug development. In the United States, where new drug development is largely in the hands of drug manufacturers, these objectives directly conflict. To achieve a suitable balance, this Comment proposes two changes to the pharmaceutical market that ensure reasonable coverage...

Disability, Discipline, and Illusory Student Rights

The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act contains provisions that ostensibly guard against disproportionate suspending and expelling school students with disabilities. This article demonstrates that these provisions are woefully inadequate to achieve their goal. It argues that current flaws can be mitigated by altering the burden of proof and expanding the type of data that schools must...

Rethinking the Nonprecedential Opinion

Nearly 90 percent of the opinions issued by the federal courts of appeal are unpublished and lack precedential effect, and where these cases lay out new legal rules, this phenomenon cannot be reconciled with the Supreme Court’s settled retroactivity jurisprudence. This article highlights this inconsistency and proposes use of the “new rule” construct as a mechanism for differentiating those...

Black Twice: Policing Black Muslim Identities

The article focuses in on the experiences of policing faced by Somali Muslims within a larger Black Muslim community. It examines how federal “Countering Violent Extremism” program has been used against this group of Black Muslims and puts it in the broader historical context of Black Muslims in America, revealing inherent racialization of religion, and the antiblack origins of American...

No Mere Acquittal: Pimentel-Lopez and the Use of Declarations of Innocence to Clarify Sentencing

This comment explores questions regarding declarations of innocence that surface in light of the Pimentel-Lopez opinion holding that the sentencing court is bound by the jury’s factual determination within the special verdict. The comment concludes that the optimal use of declarations of innocence should be limited to determination of specific offense characteristics and adjustments under the...

The Central Assumptions of Patent Law: A Response to Ana Santos Rutschman’s IP Preparedness for Outbreak Diseases

In response to Professor Rutschman’s questioning of the patent system’s preparedness to address the unique challenges posed by outbreak diseases like Ebola and Zika, Professor Lichtman offers a solution of his own: to recognize that, in this setting, government funding, prize systems, and other innovation-producing mechanisms should fully displace the normally attractive market-based patent...

IP Preparedness for Outbreak Diseases

The article addresses the role of IP in the development of vaccines for outbreak diseases like Ebola and Zika. It concludes that IP inefficiencies result in a lack of “IP preparedness” that weakens our ability to respond to outbreaks. The author proposes a new legal mechanism: a dormant license, agreed upon in the pre-outbreak period, that would become active once a public health emergency is...

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