Current Issue
Published in Volume 56, Issue 4, Winter 2024
Sandra Day O’Connor Eulogy
By Hon. Ruth McGregor. Today we mourn the death of Sandra Day O’Connor and gather to share our grief. But today is also a day to celebrate the life of this extraordinary woman. We grieve and celebrate together because we are all connected to Sandra O’Connor in some way. For some, the connection is deeply […]
Tribute to Justice O’Connor
By Hon. Mary M. Schroeder. Sandra Day was raised in the Tenth Circuit and spent her childhood among cowboys on the Lazy B Ranch that straddled Arizona and New Mexico. She rode real horses, not rocking horses, and her first pet was a bobcat. She became a true daughter of the Ninth Circuit after she […]
Dedication
By Erin Jenkins & Isabella Santos. The Arizona State Law Journal staff was deeply saddened to learn of the passing of former United States Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor on December 1, 2023. We respectfully dedicate this issue of the Arizona State Law Journal to her memory. Full Text.
Remarks About Sandra Day O’Connor
By Justice Sonia Sotomayor. I thank the Chief Justice and the O’Connor family for the privilege of speaking today in honor of my life role model Sandra Day O’Connor. I start where I believe she would have started, by introducing her beloved family: Scott O’Connor and his wife Joanie, with their children Courtney, Adam, and […]
Demsetzian Property Theory and America’s Border Lands
By Kaitlyn Vance. In 2022, the former governor of Arizona, Doug Ducey, placed shipping containers on federal land in an effort to halt migration across the Arizona–Mexico Border. Similarly, in 2023 Governor Greg Abbott of Texas built a buoy barrier in federal waters to deter migrants from crossing the Rio Grande. Both governors acted contrary […]
Progressive Supersession: Arizona’s Innovative Use of State Prosecutorial Power
By Rosemarie C. McCormack. When the U.S. Supreme Court decided Dobbs in 2022, Arizona had several conflicting abortion-related statutes and injunctions in place. During this post-Roe uncertainty, Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs issued an Executive Order that vested all prosecutions of abortion-related offenses in the Arizona Attorney General’s Office. Attorney General Kris Mayes then announced she […]
Second-Guessing State Courts in Election Cases: Arrogation and Evasion Under Moore v. Harper
By Michael Weingartner. In Moore v. Harper, the Supreme court rejected the most extreme version of the Independent State Legislature Theory, which would have insulated state election laws from state courts and state constitutions, but left open a path for federal courts to second-guess state courts in election cases to ensure that they stay within “the […]
Dobbs, Deliberative Interference, and Legitimacy
By Matthew Slovin. Esteemed Supreme Court correspondents have reported that the Dobbs leak impacted deliberations by locking in the vote count. This Article argues that such “deliberative interference” undermines the legitimacy of the Court’s decision. It also proposes strategies for how to prevent deliberative interference and offers solutions on how to address judicial decisions impacted […]
Gender Differentials in the Content of Judicial Opinions
By Kaleigh A. Ruiz. Existing work on gender and the judiciary traditionally finds that women and men on the court decide cases similarly. However, given what we know about women in other American institutions, it’s possible that gender differences exist in the judicial process that culminates in these comparable opinions. This Article tests that proposition, […]
Arizona’s Elimination of Peremptory Challenges: A First Look
By Paul J. McMurdie, Lexi Carroll, Rebecca Freed, & Eric M. Wilkins. A jury must be fairly representative of its community to effectuate the Sixth Amendment right to a jury trial. Yet historically, trial attorneys have used peremptory challenges to remove jurors discriminatorily based on race and ethnicity. To combat this issue, Arizona became the […]
The Elected Judge
By Matthew D. Kim. This Article explores whether elected judges’ fear of electoral backlash for countermajoritarian decisions is justified. The results from survey experiments and a dataset of online and social media coverage suggest that voters value principled legal analysis and rarely punish judges for countermajoritarian decisions. Voters appear to treat the judiciary as a […]
The Virtues of Optional Legislation
By Jacob Bronsther & Guha Krishnamurthi. In this Article, the authors continue their work on a new solution to legislative dysfunction in Washington: optional legislation. Imagine that states could opt in to a new federal program—say, Universal Basic Income or Medicare for All—on the condition that they alone foot a higher tax bill to pay […]