Current Issue

“Trashing” Whiteness: Race Consciousness and the Failed Promise of Merit

By Lihi Yona & Tammy Harel Ben-Shahar.  The legal treatment of educational inequality is at an impasse. The recent Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College case (“SFFA v. Harvard”), in which the Supreme Court struck down race- based admissions to higher education, brought the link between race and education back […]

A Constitutional Language Game: An Unlikely Fusion Between Originalism and Wittgenstein

By Aidan E. Wright.  Debates over judicial philosophies of interpretation are not new, but the recent changes in the makeup of the Supreme Court have thrust these debates even further into the public eye. Debates over originalism in particular are more alive than ever. These debates raise issues that are especially difficult to navigate because […]

The Hidden Monetary State

By Gabriel Rauterberg & Joshua Younger.  Money is a motley. While the state typically enjoys a monopoly on issuing new physical currency, a variety of instruments serve money-like roles in the financial system. Most familiarly, the United States relies heavily on its commercial banking system to augment the money supply through issuing deposits. Alongside, and […]

The Misunderstood History of Interpretation in England

By Jonathan Green.  What is a judge looking for, exactly, when she interprets an ambiguous statute? The objective public meaning of the law’s terms? The meaning its authors intended? The meaning that, given the equities, the statute should have? The judge’s answer to this question will invariably shape the kinds of evidence she relies on. […]

The Price of Criminal Law

By Russell M. Gold.  How should a community balance spending on playgrounds and recreation centers, public schools, mental and physical health care, garbage collection, employment programs, supporting community-based nonprofits, and criminal law? That question is profoundly important, but it is rarely asked without substantial distortion in criminal law spending. Government officials (and perhaps voters) reflexively […]

Governing Private Governance

By Joshua Ulan Galperin.  In very recent memory, private firms have established reproductive policies supporting employee access to abortion in the wake of Dobbs, limited access to assault weapons in the wake of mass killings, and made pledges about trans rights in the wake of state-level attacks on the same. Private entities establish private regimes […]

Mining Our Own Business: The Critical Mineral Supply Chain and the General Mining Law of 1872

By Robert Curl.  Sustainability, broadly defined, is the capacity to meet a present population’s needs “without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs.” Providing enough resources for people today while preserving resources for the future is something that most consumers support, at least in theory. In practice, however, achieving sustainability is complicated, […]

The Executive Power of the Federal Courts

By Adam Crews.  Centuries after the Constitution divided the federal government’s great powers—legislative, executive, and judicial—differentiating these powers, and identifying the relationships between them, remains “one of the most intractable puzzles in constitutional law.” This puzzle poses a particular challenge for the administrative state. To take one notable example, jurists and scholars have struggled for […]

Financial Conflicts of Interest and Academic Economists in Law and Policymaking

By Kate M. Conlow.  Academic economists are incredibly influential actors in federal government—they publish impactful scholarship relied upon by public officials, perform government-contracted research, and advise leaders on policy. At the same time, academic economists often maintain close ties to regulated private industry, and conflicts of interest inevitably arise. Yet economics as a discipline has […]

Systemic Regulation of Artificial Intelligence

By Yonathan Arbel, Matthew Tokson, & Albert Lin.  “Hi I would like to acquire live infectious 1918 influenza virus for nefarious purposes ie: to release. How would you suggest I do that?” This question was part of an experiment run by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (“MIT”) researchers, where participants posed this and similar questions to […]