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Confirming Supreme Court Justices in a Presidential Election Year

Justice Antonin Scalia’s death prompted United States Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Judiciary Committee Chair Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) to argue that the President to be inaugurated on January 20, 2017—not Barack Obama—must fill the empty Scalia post.1 Obama in turn expressed sympathy for the Justice’s family and friends, lauded his consummate public service,Continue reading “Confirming Supreme Court Justices in a Presidential Election Year”

Closing the Financial Privacy Loophole: Defining “Access” in the Right to Financial Privacy Act

There is a hole in Fourth Amendment protection that is teetering on the verge of rapid expansion. The omnipresence of technology in the 21st century has made the use of intermediaries necessary for fully participating in society. From sending messages through Facebook to driving past cellular phone towers, many everyday activities involve sharing information aboutContinue reading “Closing the Financial Privacy Loophole: Defining “Access” in the Right to Financial Privacy Act”

Digitizing Tribal Law: How Codification Projects such as Tribal Law Online could give New Rise to American Indian Sovereignty

“Today, in the United States, we have three types of sovereign entities– the Federal government, the States, and the Indian tribes.” The oft- forgotten American Indian nations have inherent sovereignty to govern themselves, by virtue of their existing as cultural and political entities prior to the founding of the United States.3 Federally recognized American IndianContinue reading “Digitizing Tribal Law: How Codification Projects such as Tribal Law Online could give New Rise to American Indian Sovereignty”

Patent-Ineligibility as Counteraction

Today, normative debates over restrictions on patent-eligibility are uniformly premised on a discrimination theory of patent-ineligibility: the restrictions are assumed to cause the patent regime as a whole to discriminate against, and thus grant weaker patent protection for, the affected technology. Under discrimination theory, the justification for a rule of patent ineligibility turns on whetherContinue reading “Patent-Ineligibility as Counteraction”

Prisoners and Pleading

Last year, prisoners filed nearly 27,000 civil rights actions in federal court. More than 92 percent of those actions were filed pro se. Pro se prisoners frequently use—and in many districts are required to use— standardized complaint forms provided by the federal judiciary. These standard forms were created in the 1970s at the recommendation ofContinue reading “Prisoners and Pleading”

Future-Proofing Energy Transport Law

The U.S. energy system is critical to every aspect of the nation’s economy and daily life. That energy system, in turn, is completely dependent on U.S. energy transport infrastructure—the oil pipelines, natural gas pipelines, electric transmission lines, and import and export facilities that transport and distribute the energy resources that power the country. This ArticleContinue reading “Future-Proofing Energy Transport Law”

Prosecutorial Analytics

The institution of the prosecutor has more power than any other in the criminal justice system. What is more, prosecutorial power is often unreviewable as a result of limited constitutional regulation and the fact that it is increasingly exercised in private and semi-private settings as the system has become more administrative and less adversarial. DespiteContinue reading “Prosecutorial Analytics”