Articles, notes, and symposia pieces published in CLR’s print volumes.
Print Edition
The Elastic Meaning(s) of Human Trafficking
What is human trafficking? When is an expansive definition of trafficking justifiable? How does trafficking relate to other concepts—like domestic violence, sexual assault, labor exploitation, and prostitution—with which it often overlaps? These questions have become increasingly salient after the U.S. Congress defined the crime of human trafficking in the Victims of Trafficking and…
The Urban Environmental Renaissance
City governments were an important source of environmental protection in the United States from the 1800s until well into the 1900s. However, since Congress passed a series of landmark environmental statutes in the 1970s, scholars have primarily equated environmental law with federal law. To the extent that scholars consider subnational sources of environmental law, they…
Morality: An Important Consideration at the Patent Office
Recent developments in biotechnology have opened new avenues not only for research but also for patenting. However, recent United States Supreme Court decisions such as Association for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics demonstrate the interpretive difficulties these new technologies raise in patent law. Many scholars, for example, have argued that rather than using the “product…
Using a Court Rule to Address Implicit Bias in Jury Selection
In Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 79 (1986), the U.S. Supreme Court attempted to eliminate racial discrimination in jury selection by prohibiting the use of peremptory challenges to intentionally strike prospective jurors based on their race. Today, more than thirty years later, Batson’s now-familiar three-part framework is widely considered to be a toothless and inadequate…
The Disgorgement Remedy of Design Patent Law
Until recently, the disgorgement of profits remedy in US design patent law garnered little attention from scholars or practitioners. Congress created this remedy in the late nineteenth century to overrule two Supreme Court decisions that awarded nominal damages as the sole compensatory remedy for infringements of design patents. Under the new remedy, a design…
Predatory Cities
Between 2011 and 2015, the Wayne County Treasurer completed the property tax foreclosure process for one in four properties in Detroit, Michigan. No other American city has experienced this elevated rate of property tax foreclosures since the Great Depression. Studies reveal that the City of Detroit systematically and illegally inflated the assessed value of most…
An Unstable Core: Self-Defense and the Second Amendment
In District of Columbia v. Heller, the Supreme Court announced for the first time that self-defense, not militia service, is the “core” of the right to keep and bear arms. However, the Court failed to articulate what that means for the right’s implementation. After Heller, most courts deciding Second Amendment questions have mentioned self-defense only superficially…
Unaccompanied Minors, Statutory Interpretation, and Due Process
In recent years, there has been a massive influx of unaccompanied minors (UMs) crossing the southern border. Under the Trump administration, migrant children are being held in detention centers at unprecedented levels, with a five-fold increase in the last year alone. Without legal representation, UMs have little to no capability to defend against removal charges and to advocate for any existing statutory…