Professor William Baude asks, “Is qualified immunity unlawful?” He refers to the § 1983 defense, under which officers avoid liability for damages unless they have violated “clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known.” Baude concludes that qualified immunity is unlawful because…

The following (fictional) opinion of the (fictional) Zootopia Supreme Court of the (fictional) State of Zootopia is designed to highlight one particularly interesting issue raised by Solon Barocas and Andrew Selbst in Big Data’s Disparate Impact. Their article discusses many ways in which data-intensive algorithmic methods can go wrong when they are used to make employment and other sensitive…

In response to Ezra Rosser’s article, The Ambition and Transformative Potential of Progressive Property, 101 Calif. L. Rev. 107 (2013), Timothy Mulvaney expresses more confidence than does Rosser in property’s potential to serve a role in furthering a progressive society. If property is to serve in this role, however, Mulvaney suggests it is important…

In this response to William Baude’s article, “Rethinking the Federal Eminent Domain Power,” Christian Burset challenges Baude’s claim that antebellum legislators, commentators, and judges uniformly refused to acknowledge a federal eminent domain power. Examining historical sources and case law, Burset highlights how changing political attitudes influenced historic beliefs…

In her response to “Innocence Interrupted: Reconstructing Fatherhood in the Shadow of Child Molestation Law” (101 Calif. L. Rev. 609), Professor Melissa Murray compares contemporary criminal child molestation statutes to Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon, the all-observing watchtower that normalizes expectations of constant state surveillance. Arguing that the enforcement of child-molestation laws creates…

In an effort to curb sexual assault behind bars, the Los Angeles County Jail currently houses inmates deemed homosexual and transgender in a special unit called “K6G.” Professor Russell Robinson’s Article, “Masculinity as Prison: Race, Sexual Identity…

Almost no one in the legal academy has written more (or better) about guilty pleas and plea bargains than Stephanos Bibas. It is, therefore, fitting that he should author one of the first articles on Padilla v. Kentucky—a guilty-plea decision that may be the most…

In Fixing Failed States, John Yoo shows why intervening states that seek to massively transform the social, economic, and political framework of failed states aim to do too much and ultimately fail. Yoo proposes that the role of intervening states should be minimal…

For many years David Cole has been grappling, both in the courtroom and in the pages of the law reviews, with the difficult task of maximizing civil liberties while adequately addressing concerns related to terrorism and other national security threats. By and large, he has played the role of government critic in these debates, highlighting perceived abuses and drawing particular attention…