Category: Past Issues

Kole Lyons Consider the stories of two bakers: Bryan, a small business owner, who has developed his affinity for baking into a livelihood, and Jim, an employee working in his local grocery store’s bakery department. . . . Full Article.

Shayna Frieden On March 13, 2020, just after midnight, three plain-clothed officers broke down Breonna Taylor’s door with a battering ram to execute a search warrant. Breonna Taylor was in bed with her boyfriend, Kenneth Walker. Believing someone had broken in, Walker fired one shot from his licensed handgun, hitting an officer in the leg. The three officers immediately discharged thirty-two rounds, killing Breonna Taylor with six of those shots. Full Article.

John M. Yun App stores have become the subject of controversy and criticism within antitrust. For instance, app developers such as Spotify and Epic Games (creator of Fortnite) allege that Apple’s 30% cut of all sales in the App Store violates the antitrust laws and is indicative of monopoly power. The claim is that iPhone users are locked into Apple’s walled garden iOS platform, which frees Apple to engage in misconduct in the App Store “aftermarket” to the detriment of users and app developers. Full Article.

Felipe Jiménez This Article offers a theoretical framework for thinking about contract remedies. The argument starts from the distinction between rights and remedies in contract law. The distinction is consistent with the doctrinal structure of contract law in Western legal systems and with the available empirical evidence regarding contractual parties’ expectations. An adequate theory of contract remedies must start by taking this distinction seriously. The Article illustrates this point through an analysis of two influential views in the American law of contract remedies: Shiffrin’s analysis of the divergence between contract and promise, and Markovits and Schwartz’s defense of expectation damages.…

Derek E. Bambauer & Michael Risch The rise of algorithm-driven decision making enabled by Big Data has generated widespread concern among legal scholars. However, few critics have considered data on people’s existing preferences about the role of algorithms in decision systems. This Article uses empirical analysis of a novel, large dataset of consumer  surveys to elucidate those preferences. The surveys explore whether people prefer to have an algorithm or a human determine an outcome affecting their welfare in a range of representative scenarios with varying stakes. The Article examines how preferences change when one type of decisionmaker produces results that are more accurate, faster,…

Daniel Restrepo Fifty thousand years ago, a woman stands and stretches her arms, looking over America’s open plains. In the distance, she sees thirty very hairy and practically naked people speaking a language that will never be heard on the planet again. She runs, careful not to jostle the baby in her arms, joining them at the crest of a small hill. She and the other mothers, who have survived predation and the dangers of pregnancy during this hostile era, work together, stopping occasionally to nurse their children. The milk produced with the help of her community’s collective labors offers…

Nyla Knox On average, on-duty police officers shoot and kill one thousand individuals in the United States each year. One in every one-thousand black men will be killed by law enforcement in their lifetime. In nearly every instance, though, courts find that the officers responsible were legally justified in their actions. But how do a majority of officers escape accountability for their egregious use of excessive force? The answer arises from the doctrine of qualified immunity. Qualified immunity provides officers with civil immunity in an attempt to reduce frivolous suits and protect officers from the burdens of litigation. However, rather…

Shannon Hautzinger Aurora. Newtown. San Bernardino. Orlando. Las Vegas. Parkland. Pittsburgh. Thousand Oaks. Virginia Beach. El Paso. Dayton. Boulder. The grim commonality that links these cities needs no explanation, yet the ease with which it comes to mind demonstrates the gravity of America’s problem with gun violence. Still, deaths due to mass shootings represent only a miniscule percentage of all gun deaths in the United States. An average of 39,000 Americans are killed by guns every year, a figure that translates to about 100 fatalities per day. In the last decade alone, over one million Americans have been shot, guaranteeing…

Hon. Lawrence F. Winthrop “Equal justice under law is not merely a caption on the fa ade of the Supreme Court building. It is perhaps the most inspiring ideal of our society. It is one of the ends for which our entire legal system exists.” –Justice Lewis Powell “Can there be justice if it is not equal? Can there be a just society when some do not have justice? Equality, equal treatment is perhaps the most fundamental element of justice.” –Justice Antonin Scalia “Trust in the rule of law—the foundation of American democracy—depends upon the public’s faith that government seeks equal…

Judge Peter B. Swann & Sarah Pook The First Amendment to the United States Constitution provides unambiguously and without exception that “Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech.” Read literally, there is no room under the First Amendment for legislation protecting the public from any abuse of the right to free speech—including shouting “fire” in a crowded theater, child pornography, or manipulation of the public through vigorous disinformation campaigns. Yet before the First Amendment was incorporated against state law, the drafters of the Arizona Constitution took a more cautious approach: “Every person may freely…