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A common assumption underlying the current public discourse and legal treatment of unauthorized immigrants is that unauthorized immigrants are lawless individuals who will break the law—any law—in search of economic gain. This notion persists despite substantial empirical evidence to the contrary. Drawing on original empirical data, this Article examines unauthorized immigrants and their...

Although there is no universal definition of “decriminalization,” approaches to decriminalization largely focus on modifying how conduct is sanctioned or punished. This Article argues that there is a need to broaden approaches to decriminalization beyond sanctions and give more consideration to the other ways in which criminalization fosters state control over civilians—including police authority...

Drones “allow for the most discriminating uses of force in the history of military technology,” and can thus be a profound humanitarian advancement in warfare. State actors alone, however, can actualize this potential. Although the United States complies with international humanitarian law from strike authorization through strike execution within the Afghanistan theatre of war, its methods for...

Since the passage of the 1968 Fair Housing Act (FHA), there have been clear legal tools and strategies for combating segregation and promoting diverse cities and towns. While the FHA and zoning laws have been used successfully to ensure that formerly all-white city neighborhoods and towns are accessible to diverse residents, a new problem is emerging for those who value integrated neighborhoods:...

It is notoriously difficult for copyright owners to bring small infringement claims. Just finding an attorney willing to take the case can be a challenge. Then there is the high cost of litigating in United States District Court—the only court with jurisdiction. For many, the obstacles are so daunting that they do not even try. The U.S. Congress has recognized the problem and asked the Copyright...

Marijuana is being decriminalized in many states and localities throughout the United States. While recreational use of marijuana is legal in only a handful of states, in many other areas it has become a type of pseudo-violation with such low criminal penalties that defendants may be issued just a citation or ticket and are often not entitled to the assistance of a public defender. While low...

In this Article, Mario Barnes, Erwin Chemerinsky, and Angela Onwuachi-Willig examine and analyze one recent, affirmative action case, Fisher v. University of Texas, Austin, as a means of highlighting why the anti-subordination or equal opportunity approach, as opposed to the anti-classification approach, is the correct approach for analyzing equal protection cases. In so doing, these authors...

Courts frequently confine constitutional litigation to a single remedial avenue. For example, courts typically allow enforcement of Fourth Amendment rights by providing either exclusion of evidence or a civil remedy under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, but not both. Yet this practice is at odds with judicial treatment of remedies in other arenas. Courts rarely limit common law litigants to a single remedy...

Over the last sixty years, the courts, Congress, and the President—but mostly the courts—first increased integration in schools and neighborhoods, and then changed course, allowing schools to resegregate. The impact of these decisions is illustrated by the comparative legal histories of Detroit and Louisville, two cities which demonstrate the many benefits of metropolitan-level cooperation on...

Multinational corporations use intellectual property (IP) to avoid taxes on a massive scale, by transferring their IP to tax havens for artificially low prices. Economists estimate that this abuse costs the U.S. Treasury as much as $90 billion each year. Yet tax policymakers and scholars have been unable to devise feasible tax-law solutions to this problem. This Article introduces an entirely new...

The struggle over marijuana regulation is one of the most important federalism conflicts in a generation. The ongoing clash of federal and state marijuana laws forces us to consider the preemptive power of federal drug laws and the appropriate roles for state and federal governments in setting drug policy. This conflict also creates debilitating instability and uncertainty on the ground in those...

Long-running debates over military privatization overlook one important fact: The U.S. military’s post-2001 contractor workforce is composed largely of migrants imported from impoverished countries. This Article argues that these Third Country National (TCN) workers—so called because they are neither American nor local—are bereft of the effective protections of American law, local regimes, or...

The United States incarcerates a larger percentage of our population than any other country. Minority populations make up a substantially disproportionate percentage of those incarcerated. For a variety of reasons, violence perpetrated against incarcerated persons, including sexual assault, is endemic and inmates have very limited opportunities to protect themselves. The state has an obligation...

The Voting Rights Act passed fifty years ago and its success at curbing electoral discrimination is unquestioned. Section 5’s preclearance, which requires specific jurisdictions to seek federal preapproval of election laws, was central to this success. Yet the Supreme Court, in Shelby County v. Holder, invalidated the formula that selected preclearance jurisdictions. Without the formula...