For conservatives, what I have described is an occasion for great celebration. They have succeeded in their goal of a very conservative Court. For liberals, like me, the challenge is enormous. No longer can we imagine the Court as a possibility for progressive change. We must look to state courts and the political process for that, while fearing how the Court will strike down progressive federal, state, and local laws…

But, in 2020, lawyers cannot afford to buy the myth that trauma is an aberration in the profession of otherwise Teflon-coated lawyering machines. Negotiating trauma is perhaps as old as the profession, even though we may have never given that emotional labor nomenclature or visibility, to our detriment…

Courts around the country have adapted to the reality of socially distanced litigation, allowing virtual hearings and even trials to take place over the Internet. This infrastructure will outlast COVID-19 and will minimize the burden of traveling for litigation. In the face of these changes, the JPML should accordingly limit the importance of geographic centrality when choosing a forum for multidistrict litigation…

But in other cases, textualists proceed as if legal texts have an ordinary meaning even when they do not. Judges see a rabbit, or a duck, when other reasonable readers see a duck, or a rabbit. Such judges are “seeing as.” Nonetheless, they insist that they are “seeing that.” They do not think, do not know, and might not even believe, that “someone else could have said of [them]: ‘He is seeing the figure as a…

If the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s successor is confirmed before the 2020 presidential election or in the post-election lame-duck period, and if Democrats come to have unified control of government on January 20, 2021, how can they respond legislatively to the Court’s new 6-3 conservative ideological balance? This Essay frames a hypothetical 117th Congress’s options, discusses its…

Steven Universe, a children’s cartoon that follows the lives and adventures of the half-human, half-alien boy Steven Universe and his family of intergalactic space aliens, “the Crystal Gems,” upends these narratives, instead modeling restorative justice principles—empathetic, dialogue-based communication, non-punitive conflict resolution, and communal healing—for children…

Popular selection of judges offers a partial answer to the charge that the judiciary has usurped the role of the People in constitutional governance. Particularly in today’s intensely polarized environment, whether judges are selected through a process that actually reflects popular preferences is thus of critical importance to the democratic legitimacy of the constitutional order…

Proposition 16 would undo Proposition 209. Its passage would not create racial quota systems, which the Supreme Court, in University of California v. Bakke, deemed unconstitutional, but would make it possible for state offices to consider applicants’ identities when making decisions about where resources are allocated and access is granted…

Social justice movements must abandon their longstanding reliance on the Supreme Court to stave off the worst threats to the rights of members of marginalized and vulnerable groups. The fight for rights in the United States may well start to more closely resemble, for perhaps the first time since the civil rights movement, that in many places abroad…

To achieve adequate representation, House elections should strive to achieve as few distortions of the popular will as possible, while maintaining identifiable, local representation. Most U.S. elections are first-past-the-post, also known as single-member district plurality systems (SMDP). SMDP produces identifiable local representatives but fails to accurately reflect voter sentiment. Instead, House elections should implement a single-transferable vote system (STV) within multimember districts…

No state agents have been impressed into service. But the anti-commandeering doctrine is based on a theory of political accountability, which is undermined by these unmarked federal agents. Thus, while there is no formal commandeering happening, the federal government’s use of unmarked agents creates exactly the kind of confusion in the lines of political accountability that the anti-commandeering doctrine is designed to prevent…

The controversies over social media center on some fundamental ideas—namely, free speech and its societal value. Historians debate why the Framers chose to add the protection of free speech to the First Amendment. But depending on one’s legal philosophy, the Framers’ intentions should not be the only issue on this matter. Like with most normative questions, the value of free speech splits into two camps of thought: the utilitarian and the deontology…

In a time of constitutional hardball, the Supreme Court’s quorum requirement raises the questions of how and whether a tactic of strategic recusal—or “sitting out”—can be effectively employed by a four-Justice minority and whether utilizing such a tactic would be appropriate…

By unleashing military tactics and weapons onto American streets, police departments around the country are violating a value that traces its intellectual roots to the very founding of our country and which has been crystallized in statute for well over a century.

The bar exam must be abolished in order for the legal profession to better achieve full and equal participation in the justice system, and a competent, ethical, and diverse legal profession…

When it comes to global health, the World Health Organization (WHO) is the most widely acknowledged international authority and the major coordinator of international efforts to contain communicable diseases. However, the organization is now under close scrutiny as the media and governments of some Member States have accused the WHO of responding to the unprecedented crisis in a disappointing way…

Law enforcement has a responsibility to facilitate the rights of civilians, including the First Amendment right to peaceful protest—not to quash expression of those rights. Those who protest and advocate for equality and justice should not have to risk being the victim of the extensive reach of the state while merely exercising their constitutionally mandated rights…

The dirty little secret of the juvenile delinquency system—or what its apologists insist on calling the juvenile “justice” system—is not actually particularly secret. In study after study, independent researchers arrive at the same, discomfiting conclusion: the delinquency system fails at its core function of preventing youth who have committed crimes from doing it again. This sobering conclusion is one that bears repeating—the very system tasked with rehabilitating our youth is actually doing exactly the opposite…

Recently, White women have placed their bodies between riot officers and Blacks Lives Matter protesters, capitalizing on their privileged position with police. But once the protests end, it is likely fearful women will continue to reflexively call the cops, and police departments will continue to tout their role as women’s protectors. The time to end the feminist-police alliance is now…

The COVID-specific resentencing found under compassionate release offers a unique opportunity for humanizing a defendant. It is important to recognize, however, that humanizing defendants in a dehumanizing system will never solve pervasive structural problems like anti-Black racism, mandatory minimums, society’s refusal to examine prisons, or the global pandemic…