Current Issue

Setting Boundaries: State Courts, Common Law, and Separation of Powers

By: Clint Bolick & Nina Burik.  State courts exercise sweeping power to determine the common law in areas such as torts, property, and contracts, but they rarely apply constitutional separation of powers principles in doing so.  This article argues that such principles should prevent courts from creating major new public policy under the guise of […]

Putting the “Why” in YIMBY

By: Brian J. Connolly.  In response to the vexing U.S. housing crisis, over 100 cities have deregulated their zoning laws to allow more dwelling units, prompted in some cases by the pro-housing “Yes In My Backyard,” or YIMBY, movement. This trend counters longstanding antigrowth tendencies in many communities, challenging existing legal and political economy scholarship […]

Decanonization

By: Sam Heavenrich.  Much has been written about the substantive canons of statutory interpretation—policy-based interpretative guidelines and legal principles—and the purportedly recent vintage of some substantive canons, such as the major questions doctrine and the First Congress canon. Virtually ignored by academic commentators, however, are canons that courts once invoked with regularity but have since […]

Normalizing Maternal Ambivalence

By: Elizabeth Kukura.  Normalizing Maternal Ambivalence argues that law’s cramped and punitive understanding of maternal ambivalence causes harm by signaling that mothers who fail to conform to idealized notions of the good mother should face stigma, scrutiny, and even punishment. In practical terms, punitive legal regulation of maternal ambivalence can rupture families by causing the displacement […]

A Finger in the Dike: Mobilizing State Health Care Transaction Notification and Corporate Practice of Medicine Laws to Scrutinize Private Equity Investment in Health Care

By: Kevin T. White, Tammy W. Cowart, & Vivek Pandey.  This article argues that current laws are inadequate to address the negative implications of private equity investment in healthcare. It advocates for a robust regulatory approach of strengthened corporate practice of medicine and transaction notification laws, and suggests consolidating these into a unified framework to […]

Ratifying Bruen in the States

By: Quinn Yeargain.  In Bruen, the U.S. Supreme Court laid down a new test for evaluating the constitutionality of gun regulations under the Second Amendment, which has unleashed a wave of new lawsuits challenging federal and state regulations alike. For state courts, this adds pressure to the extant state trend of amending their constitutions to incorporate […]

Strictly Foreclosed: A Call to Remove Strict Compliance for Referenda Following Surprise

By: McKenna Hunter.  In 2023, the Arizona Supreme Court ruled on a challenge to a local ordinance via referendum. While the appeal focused on a statutory aspect of Arizona referendum law, the Court showed open-mindedness to a potential challenge to the strict compliance requirement for referendums with state law. Although only recognizing as-applied challenges to the […]

The Constitutionality of Title IX’s Contact Sport Exception: A Proposal for Legislative Change in Modern Times

By: Kennedy Shulman.  Abstract.  Full Article