The mascot and team name of the Washington, D.C. professional football team is making headlines. What do Authentic Indians really think about it? This essay clears the air by replacing the liberal media talking points with an actual viewpoint from Indian Country. This perspective gives an inside view into the significant efforts to maintain longstanding…

The Supreme Court’s decision in Shelby County v. Holder striking down part of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 has sparked debate over voting, race, history, and, surprisingly, footnotes. This Essay examines Westlaw’s characterization of the Court’s earlier decision upholding the VRA in South Carolina v. Katzenbach…

The SEC and the Judiciary are at odds over whether an individual must report potential securities law violations directly to the SEC in order to qualify as a whistleblower under the Dodd-Frank Act. This Essay examines the statutory language at the heart of the conflict, the SEC regulation that potentially clarifies the scope of whistleblower…

Are we entering an era where investors can acquire an equity stake in an individual? A new family of marketplace transactions provides individuals with financing for business, entrepreneurship, education, or diversification purposes in return for the individual’s promise to pay a percentage of her income for a period of years. This Essay briefly discusses the…

This essay addresses the issue of transparency in the judiciary regarding the sealing of applications for electronic surveillance. Specifically, it concerns the experiences of a federal magistrate who attempted to unseal a number of surveillance applications and orders…

Professor Fredrick Vars criticizes the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Metrish v. Lancaster. That case broadened the prohibition on introducing evidence of mental illness to negate intent in criminal cases. Because many states allow evidence of intoxication on intent, Professor Vars argues that it is illogical and unfair…

In the wake of several proposed patent reform bills, James Bessen and Professor Brian Love introduce an unconventional approach to discouraging so-called “patent trolls”: levying a Pigovian tax on patent holders by increasing maintenance fees for older patents. The pair argue that establishing a tiered fee structure…

In this essay, Professor Brian Clarke examines the Supreme Court’s various articulations of the proper standard for determining causation in employment discrimination cases. Professor Clarke then proposes a novel solution that the Court should adopt in its opinion in University of Texas Southwest Medical Center v. Nassar in order to…

The regulation of domestic drone use has been the subject of much media attention. In addition to how much domestic drones should be regulated, scholars and policymakers are debating a more complex question, which is who should regulate drones. In this Essay, Margot Kaminski, Executive Director of the Yale Information Society Project…

University of Connecticut School of Law Professor Bethany R. Berger looks at the relationship between descent-based tribal citizenship requirements and race or racism. She argues that tribal citizenship laws that require Indian or tribal descent are generally neither the…

Michigan State University College of Law Professor Matthew L.M. Fletcher examines the late Berkeley Law Professor Philip P. Frickey’s call for more grounded and empirical American Indian legal scholarship. Fletcher analyzes the state of American Indian legal…

Human trafficking is big business, with industry estimates running in the billions of dollars annually. Much of that profit accrues to traffickers, illegal profiteers, and organized crime groups. However, the private sector-including legitimate businesses and industries-also reaps economic benefits, directly and indirectly, from the trafficking and related exploitation of persons…

Like many who attend law school, I was an undergraduate history major. The humanities, my college pre-professional advisor assured me, were ideal preparation for the rigors of law school. I believed the hype. Three years later, on my first day of Contracts, my blind faith in…

Why do I include films, art and novels in the study of property law? The reason for this, as I argue in this Essay, is quite simple. I contend that deploying these materials in the classroom deepens my students’ understanding of property law. The study of property law…

I began teaching Contract Law in 1997, and because I wanted my students to benefit from an interdisciplinary approach to the subject, I chose a wonderful casebook edited by Amy Kastely, Deborah Waire Post, and Sharon Hom, called Contracting Law. Rather than…

I spend a full month on marriage in Family Law, and I use a fair range of what I’ll call “extrinsic evidence” from the humanities. Because there is so much one could use, I am fairly strict with myself about what I do use. It seems important that when we take the time to…

I am currently in my fifth year as a law professor at Drexel University, where I teach Civil Procedure, Jurisprudence, and a Literature & the Law seminar. While Jurisprudence and Literature & the Law are fields arising directly out of the humanities, Civil Procedure…

The Professional Responsibility course has the potential to have the greatest impact on our students’ futures in the profession. Paradoxically, however, it remains one of the most undervalued courses in most law school curricula. The complexity of teaching…

My assignment for this symposium is to discuss ways of integrating the humanities into the core law school courses on criminal law, criminal procedure, and evidence—what you might call the Dick Wolf courses. In one respect the topic is trivial and almost…

Tort law is frequently taught in terms of economic concepts: efficiency, capture, cost distribution, risk allocation, and so on. Alternatively, or in parallel, a philosophical perspective may wend its way into the first-year tort curriculum through discussions of…