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In Hoffman Plastic Compounds, Inc. v. NLRB, the U.S. Supreme Court held that an undocumented immigrant who has been fired in retaliation for exercising his right to engage in union organizing activity must nevertheless be denied the remedy of backpay. The majority reasoned that awarding backpay to vindicate the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) would run afoul of conflicting provisions of the...

A new constitutional design is emerging in Mexico to address investment and expropriation disputes. Assurance of the rule of law, understood as independent legal process to resolve disputes, is a key element. Although the rule of law assumed growing importance as Mexico’s historical expropriations progressed, questions persisted as to its effective application. Mexico’s opening to global...

The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) has two faces: the real and the symbolic. Although the “real” NAFTA—tariff-free trade, increased investments, and new mechanisms for cooperation on environmental protection within North America—has been substantially successful, NAFTA as a symbol of disappointed hopes for a better life and fear of globalization continues to resonate in the popular...

U.S. immigration law is premised on the fundamental idea that it is permissible, desirable, and necessary to restrict immigration into the United States and to treat borders as a barrier to entry rather than a port of entry. In this Article, Kevin Johnson seeks to add to the scholarly dialogue on immigration law by considering the possible reimagination of the meaning and significance of the...

The statistics are clear: Between 1990 and 2002, there have been more than 3000 dead and missing unauthorized immigrants and 15,000,000 apprehensions and deportations along the Mexican-U.S. border. The border strategy of U.S. authorities has forced undocumented immigrants to pay higher prices to "coyote guides," providing enormous financial incentives for smuggling. The immediate effect has been...

The conquest of Mexico between 1846 and 1848 has largely disappeared from public consciousness as a significant historical event with contemporary consequences. Yet this conquest resulted in the annexation by the United States of approximately one-half of former Mexico, constituting most of the current southwestern United States. In this Article, I describe the roles that race and racism played...

No federal statute explicitly authorizes victims of workplace sexual orientation discrimination to sue their employers for damages. Nevertheless, many such victims have advanced novel legal theories that analyze sexual orientation discrimination as a kind of sex discrimination, thus bringing sexual orientation discrimination within the protection of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. This...

In 2002, the puck-related death of thirteen-year-old Brittanie Cecil at a National Hockey League game spurred calls for improved safety measures in professional sports arenas. However, common law tort principles—under which injured fans’ claims have traditionally failed—are unlikely to provide the impetus for any such change. Under the “baseball rule,” stadium owners owe the “limited duty” of...

For more than two centuries, the Rule against Perpetuities has served as the chief means of limiting a transferor's power to tie up property by way of successive contingent interests. But recently, at least seventeen jurisdictions in the United States have enacted statutes abolishing the Rule in the case of perpetual (or near-perpetual) trusts. The prime mover behind this important development...

Among the major forms of corporate ownership, the not-for-profit ownership form is distinct in its behavior, legal constraints, and moral obligations. A new empirical analysis of the American hospital industry, using eleven years of data for all urban general hospitals in the country, shows that corporate form accounts for large differences in the provision of specific medical services. Not-for...

This Article mainly is for federal district judges, who keenly appreciate how modern patent law challenges their competence. The Supreme Court's 1996 Markman decision requires district judges to make highly scientific and technological decisions in patent cases. But these judges typically have no background in science or technology at all. This Article surveys six concrete steps judges should...

Until recently, little attention has been paid to the law governing not-forprofits, and in particular (1) whether the not-for-profit director should be held to a trust standard, a corporate standard or some other standard in fulfilling his fiduciary duties, and (2) who should have standing to enforce those fiduciary duties. In the 1990s these issues were pushed to the forefront by public scandals...

In 1955, as part of its historic drive to desegregate the nation's public schools, the Supreme Court authorized district judges to set in motion and oversee desegregation programs in hundreds of school districts throughout the country. Within a few decades of this decision, however, such desegregation programs quickly came under attack. In the 1991 decision Board of Education v. Dowell, the...

The anticircumvention provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act penalize both the circumvention of technical protection measures, and supplying the means for such circumvention. These prohibitions are entirely separate from the exclusive rights under copyright, causing some commentators to dub the anticircumvention right as "paracopyright." Such paracopyright effectively grants copyright...