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Recentering Tribal Criminal Jurisdiction

The boundaries of modern tribal criminal jurisdiction are defined by a handful of clear rules—such as a limit on sentence length and a categorical prohibition against prosecuting most non-Indians—and many grey areas in which neither Congress nor the Supreme Court has specifically addressed a particular question. This Article discusses five of the grey areas: whether tribes retain concurrent...

The Politics of Inclusion: Indigenous Peoples and U.S. Citizenship

This Article explores the dynamics of U.S. citizenship and indigenous self-determination to see whether, and how, the two concepts are in tension and how they can be reconciled. The Article explores the four historical frames of citizenship for indigenous peoples within the United States—treating indigenous peoples as citizens of separate nations, as wards of the federal government, as American...

Tribal Sovereignty, Tribal Court Legitimacy, and Public Defense

In June 2016, the Supreme Court held in United States v. Bryant that uncounseled tribal court convictions could serve as predicate offenses under 18 U.S.C. § 117(a). Citing the public safety crisis in Indian country, the limitations of tribal court sentencing, and the legislative history of Section 117(a), the Court upheld the federal statute enacted to address domestic violence offender...

The Double-Edged Sword of Sovereignty by the Barrel: How Native Nations Can Wield Environmental Justice in the Fight Against the Harms of Fracking

Natural resource extraction has become an appealing form of economic growth for many Native nations. Nations have experienced booming economic growth and prosperity from oil and gas development, but this has come at the expense of environmental and social harms to their communities. These environmental and social harms develop because the oil and gas industries and the Native nations’ governments...

How Governments Pay: Lawsuits, Budgets, and Police Reform

For decades, scholars have debated the extent to which financial sanctions cause government officials to improve their conduct. Yet little attention has been paid to a foundational empirical question underlying these debates: When a plaintiff recovers in a damages action against the government, who foots the bill? In prior work, I found that individual police officers virtually never pay anything...

Second-Order Participation in Administrative Law

Public participation has long been a cornerstone of administrative law. Many administrative procedures require participation, and underlying normative theories embrace participation as a way to legitimate the administrative state. It is well recognized that interest groups dominate this participation. Yet the implications of interest-group dominance have been largely overlooked. Administrative...

The Freedom of Speech and Bad Purposes

Can otherwise constitutionally protected speech lose its protection because of the speaker’s supposedly improper purpose? The Supreme Court has sometimes said “no”—but sometimes it has endorsed tests (such as the incitement test) that do turn on a speaker’s purpose. Some lower courts have likewise rejected purpose tests. But others hold that, for instance, a purpose to annoy or distress can turn...

Evolving Jurisdiction Under the Federal Power Act: Promoting Clean Energy Policy

In response to an emerging electricity sector, Congress passed the Federal Power Act (FPA) in 1935 and enshrined a division of jurisdiction between the federal government and the states. Federal jurisdiction would control wholesale electricity and transmission while state jurisdiction would control retail electricity. While Congress intended to establish a jurisdictional bright line...

Election Speech and Collateral Censorship at the Slightest Whiff of Legal Trouble

Collateral censorship occurs when an intermediary refuses to carry a speaker’s message for fear of legal liability. Election speech intermediaries are prone to engage in collateral censorship because their interests do not align with the interests of election speakers, yet the common law places liability on intermediaries and speakers alike. But collateral censorship is not a problem unique to...

Accidents of Federalism: Ratemaking and Policy Innovation in Public Utility Law

Decarbonizing the electric power sector will be central to any serious effort to fight climate change. Many observers have suggested that the congressional failure to enact a uniform system of electricity regulation could stifle the transition to a low-carbon electricity grid. This Article contends that the critique is overstated. In fact, innovation is occurring across different aspects of the...

Protecting Disfavored Minorities: Toward Institutional Realism

Constitutional theorists in the United States once believed courts could protect politically disfavored minorities from the excesses of democracy. Eventually, many lost faith in constitutional reform through litigation, as they saw courts fail to effectively implement rights protections. Given the judiciary’s institutional limitations, it appeared the only reliable way to secure constitutional...

Insider Trading and Market Structure

This Article argues that the emergence of algorithmic trading raises a significant challenge for the law and policy of insider trading. It shows that securities markets are dominated by a cohort of “structural insiders,” namely a set of traders able to utilize close physical and informational access to trade at speeds measured in milliseconds and microseconds, a practice loosely termed high...

Defending Criminal(ized) “Aliens” After Padilla: Toward a More Holistic Public Immigration Defense in the Era Of Crimmigration

The unprecedented U.S. system of mass incarceration and the intensifying merging of criminal and immigration law have devastated individuals, families, and entire communities, especially poor communities of color. Noncitizens who come into contact with the criminal justice system are too often stripped of even the slightest chance of reintegration; returning home means removal to their countries...

Public-Private Divide in Parker State-Action Immunity

The U.S. Supreme Court’s jurisprudence on Parker state-action immunity from federal antitrust laws has remained largely muddled since its inception. The Court recently attempted to bring clarity to the doctrine in North Carolina Board of Dental Examiners v. FTC, holding that state occupational licensing boards with a controlling number of active market participants are subject to the same active...