Article 1, Section 2 of the United Nations Charter enshrined the “self-determination of peoples”—the ability to choose one’s destiny—as a fundamental right of every country. In 1970, the UN General Assembly passed the Friendly Nations Declaration, which further defined this principle by making illegal any actions that would “dismember or impair, totally or in part, the territorial integrity or political unity of sovereign and independent states.” This declaration…

Roe v. Wade and Miranda v. Arizona are among the most notable decisions handed down by the Supreme Court. Issued less than a decade apart, these two opinions are widely recognized as being foundational to our legal system…

The Supreme Court’s decision in Arthrex is the latest in a growing set of decisions regarding administrative patent law. A close look at this entire series suggests that Arthrex is a culmination of a subtle shift in the Court’s approach to such cases…

The #MeToo Movement cast a spotlight on sexual harassment in various sectors, including higher education. Studies reveal alarming percentages of students reporting that they have been sexually harassed by faculty and administrators. Despite annually devoting hundreds of millions of dollars to addressing sexual harassment and misconduct, nationwide university officials largely take an ostrich approach when…

Since 2012, beneficiaries of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) have enjoyed a certain normalization, however tenuous, of their status in the United States: they can legally work, their removal proceedings are deferred, and they cease to accrue unlawful presence. Regarding subsidized health coverage, however, DACA beneficiaries remain on the outside looking in. Although other…

Black Law Students experienced a different COVID-19 pandemic than their majority counterparts due in part to the emotional and physical toll caused by the violent, public mistreatment of Black persons at the hands of law enforcement. While some law faculty at some institutions were proactive in identifying the struggles that their Black students were facing…

This piece is part of the Reckoning and Reformation symposium, which brings together scholars writing broadly about the law, justice, race, and inequality. The California Law Review published two other pieces as part of this joint effort with other law reviews…

In 2018, the California legislature passed the Safe Sidewalk Vending Act (SSVA), which decriminalized street vending, an immigrant-dominated industry that operates within urban spaces in California and across the United States. Shortly thereafter, Los Angeles County supervisors created a regulatory system that would create formal opportunities for street vendors to sell food products through an…

Public interest law has played a critical role in American social movements and change. Abolitionist societies and lawyers litigated fugitive slave cases that led to the Civil War and the formal end of slavery. Lawyers figured prominently in organized efforts toward political reform thereafter. These include, but are not limited to, the Progressive movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth…

When foreign labor recruiters, acting on foreign soil as agents of domestic growers, intentionally prefer young, non-disabled men as temporary agricultural workers in the United States, federal antidiscrimination law traditionally has offered no recourse because of the presumption against extraterritorial application of domestic statutes. Accordingly, prospective migrant workers face discrimination abroad by American employers’ agents…

No one likes being told what to do. It’s the reason that philanthropists prefer to contribute to the charitable causes of their choosing, rather than paying more in taxes. It’s the reason that courts have equated enforcing a contract with imposing involuntary servitude. It’s the reason for viewing government as a “necessary evil,” rather than a fortuitous collective agreement…

The coronavirus pandemic has surfaced many new and interesting legal issues. Among them: What legal recourse is available to a business that lost significant profits after a governmental order forced it to close? In March 2020, for example, the Bay Area enacted a shelter in place mandate and ordered all non-essential businesses…

Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, and other gig companies who authored and advertised Proposition 22 spent a record $200 million on the ballot initiative to persuade Californians to vote it into law. In the weeks leading up to the 2020 general election, Uber and Lyft bombarded its riders and drivers with endless messaging through its apps and by saturating the television and digital ad space…

In a June 2016 interview, then-Vice President Joe Biden cast doubt on the utility of interventionist foreign policy. Citing the shortcomings of the 2011 NATO-led military intervention in Libya, Biden stated that he was “strongly” against the intervention. In reference to the ouster of Libyan leader Muammar Qadhafi…

While this nation is reeling and recovering from a tumultuous election cycle, voting rights remain at the forefront of the legal and political discourse. This year, the Supreme Court is deciding two cases regarding Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA), an act passed in 1965 to end White supremacist voting laws. These decisions…

Mandatory reporting laws for competent adult victims[1] of sexual assault and intimate partner violence, which require healthcare providers to submit a report to police when they have treated such patients, may seem beneficial at first glance, but can significantly harm survivors. Such laws can endanger survivors, retraumatize them, infringe upon their autonomy, violate patient confidentiality…

On January 8, the Citizen Power Initiatives for China (CPIFC), along with six anonymous plaintiffs, sued Tencent America LLC for its censorship practices on the social media app WeChat. The suit was filed as a class action in the Superior Court of California in Santa Clara County…

Despite the social and economic devastation wrought by the Covid-19 pandemic, the year 2020 has witnessed an initial public offering (IPO) boom in the U.S. capital market—494 IPOs were recorded for the entire year and $174 billion raised, more than twice the scale in 2019, making it literally the busiest year for IPOs since the…

From the time that European colonists set foot on American shores and made contact with Native peoples, they have sought to control the land and resources that first belonged to the tribes. One means of control was defining what it meant to be an “Indian.” The dominant White society in the United States has changed…

The federal antitrust laws—three statutes enacted over a century ago—are in the spotlight. The year 2020 brought a new reckoning with corporate power and a resurgent interest in using antitrust law as a force for populist change. The “hipster antitrust” movement argues that the focus of antitrust policy should not be limited to market power…