Articles, notes, and symposia pieces published in CLR’s print volumes.
Print Edition
Restorative Justice as Regenerative Tribal Jurisdiction
For more than a century, the United States has sought to restrict Tribal governments’ powers over criminal law. Tribes are increasingly embracing Indigenous-based restorative justice models, which have regenerated Tribal jurisdiction and enhanced the well-being of Tribal members.
The Embarrassing Sixth Amendment
In his 1989 essay The Embarrassing Second Amendment, Sanford Levinson suggested that left-leaning scholars avoid studying the Second Amendment because they are embarrassed that its text might mean what gun-rights proponents claim it means—an individual right to bear arms. Levinson urged such scholars to better engage the text, both to model intellectual integrity and to avoid unnecessarily ceding the terms of a critical constitutional debate. This Article makes a similar argument with respect to the right to counsel granted by the Sixth Amendment.
LEAK! The Legal Consequences of Data Misuse in Menstruation-Tracking Apps
As patients become more sophisticated in managing their own health, they often turn to tracking apps to record and manage their health. Menstruation apps often track menstrual cycles, sexual activity, mood changes, and more.
Preventing the Next Global Crisis: Addressing the Urgent Need for Space Debris Removal
Space debris is an undeniable threat to the future use of orbital space around Earth. Most experts agree that we are reaching the point of maximum capacity in many parts of space and the threat of future collisions is growing more severe. However, little is being done to address the issue
Frederick Douglass’s Constitution
In the summer of 1854, the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society sent out word of a large gathering to be held at Harmony Grove in Framingham—sixteen miles from Boston—on the Fourth of July. For fifty cents, picnickers were offered “Special Trains” to and from the grounds.
Response to Professor Blight’s Frederick Douglass and the Two Constitutions: Proslavery and Antislavery
In his essay Frederick Douglass and the Two Constitutions, Professor David Blight explores the constitutional thought of the nineteenth century’s great human rights advocate, statesman, and orator, Frederick Douglass. How should we understand, he asks, Douglass’s arrival at a natural rights interpretation of the 1787 Constitution?
“A Fixed Principle of Honesty”: Frederick Douglass, False Certainties, and Words Without Memory
Even in a century notable for oratory, Frederick Douglass’s capacities as an orator were astonishing. He was a master of words, whether spoken or written.
Comment on Frederick Douglass and the Two Constitutions: Proslavery and Antislavery
Thank you for inviting me to participate in this symposium. I want to thank David Blight, in particular, for this rich and provocative Essay. It was fascinating for me to learn that he has come over to the position of my friends James Oakes and Sean Wilentz, with whom I have argued about the concept of the antislavery American Constitution.
Frederick Douglass and the Two Constitutions: Proslavery and Antislavery
Born a slave on the eastern shore of Maryland and spending the first twenty years of his life in bondage, Frederick Douglass possessed no conventional education. He did not spend a single day of his life in schools of any kind. His “education” came from people around him, from books, from journalism, from wide reading, and finally, from his personal experience and relationships.
Using Consent to Expand Tribal Court Criminal Jurisdiction
In June of 2022, the Supreme Court reversed two hundred years of precedent in Oklahoma v. Castro-Huerta, holding in a 5-4 opinion that states have concurrent criminal jurisdiction over crimes committed by non-Indians against Indians in Indian country.
When Judges Were Enjoined: Text and Tradition in the Federal Review of State Judicial Action
It is virtually a tenet of modern federal jurisdiction that judges, at least when they are acting as judges, are inappropriate defendants in civil suits. Yet on rare but salient occasions, state judges might be the sole or primary party responsible for violating the constitutional rights of citizens, for instance by imposing excessive bail or by opening their courtrooms to oppressive private suits like those under Texas’s Senate Bill 8 bounty regime.
The New Comity Abstention
In the past ten years, lower federal courts have quietly but regularly abstained from hearing federal claims challenging state court procedures, citing concerns of comity and federalism. Federal courts have dismissed a broad range of substantive challenges tasked to them by Congress, including those under the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Indian Child Welfare Act.
Democracy’s Other Boundary Problem: The Law of Disqualification
Almost all national constitutions contain one or more ways to disqualify specific individuals from political office. Indeed, the U.S. Constitution incorporates at least four overlapping pathways toward disqualification. This power of disqualifying specific individuals or groups stands at the heart of the complex project of maintaining democratic rule.
Coercive Control Legislation: Using the Tort System to Empower Survivors of Domestic Violence
This Note analyzes the various approaches to legislating against coercive control and ultimately recommends against criminalizing the behavior, as such efforts could cause backlash against survivors and are likely to disproportionately affect marginalized communities.
Reclaiming LA’s “Mulholland Moment”: Wastewater Recycling, the Public Trust Doctrine, and Saving the LA River
Los Angeles is experiencing an unprecedented “Mulholland Moment”: a period of bustling enterprise, skyrocketing socioeconomic inequality, and dwindling water resources. After years of yellow lawns and increasing water use restrictions, Angelenos are thirsty for local, reliable, and affordable water supplies even as climate change and prolonged periods of drought become the norm.
Family Policing and the Fourth Amendment
Each year, Child Protective Services (CPS) investigates over one million families. Every CPS investigation includes a thorough, room-by-room search of the family home, designed to uncover evidence of maltreatment. Most seek evidence of poverty-related allegations of neglect; few ever substantiate the allegations.
A Home for Digital Equity: Algorithmic Redlining and Property Technology
Property technologies (PropTech) are innovations that automate real estate transactions. Automating rental markets amplifies racial discrimination and segregation in housing. Because screening tools rely on data drawn from discriminatory—and often overtly segregationist—historical practices, they replicate those practices’ unequal outcomes in the form of algorithmic redlining.
Borrowing and Belonging
Both formal policies and informal norms encourage a consumerist vision of American belonging, with credit/debt as a primary means of consumption. Consequently, debt-based consumption implicates dignity in the American market society.
Rights Violations as Punishment
This Article argues that “punishment exemption”—the assumption that criminal punishment is exempt from traditional constitutional scrutiny—has no legal basis. Drawing on original empirical research, this Article first exposes a maze of modern non-carceral punishments that infringe on constitutional rights, justified by nothing more than the assertion that they are punishment and therefore permissible.
Jet-Setting to Napa Vineyards and Las Vegas Casinos on the Company’s Dime: How the SEC’s Recent Enforcement Actions Expose the Need for Executive Perquisite Reform
Despite the increased attention on executive compensation generally, little scholarship has focused on executive perquisites: benefits granted only to executives above and beyond their salary and untied to their job performance. Since 2006, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has refused to update its disclosure requirements…