Full Text PDF In Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue,1 the Supreme Court ruled that providing state funds to private secular schools but not private religious schools amounted to unconstitutional discrimination against religion in violation of the Free Exercise Clause.2 In this short piece, I explain how the Court’s decision is inconsistent with its prior Establishment Clause precedents on religious school funding.…
Essay
Zoom Wills
By Alberto B. Lopez
Full Text PDF Abstract This brief essay suggests that suddenly popular online meeting platforms like Zoom can be used to execute wills while people are subject to shelter-in-place orders following the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. Although will execution ceremonies using Zoom do not strictly comply with statutory formalities, Zoom-based ceremonies satisfy the two primary curative doctrines—the substantial compliance doctrine…
Commentary
Who Wrote This?: Modern Forensic Authorship Analysis as a Model for Valid Forensic Science
By Janet Ainsworth and Patrick Juola
Introduction On September 5, 2018, the New York Times published what might be, according to one commentator, “the most significant and consequential op-ed ever published.”[1] The article, purportedly authored by a “senior official” within the Trump administration, contained a number of explosive assertions concerning the fitness of the President and claimed that the author, together with other officials in the administration,…
Essay
Combating Arbitrary Jurisprudence by Addressing Anchoring Bias
By Michael Conklin
PDF Copy Abstract Anchoring is a powerful behavioral bias that significantly affects decisions. Numerous studies have shown that juries and even judges are susceptible to its effects. This article contributes to the existing research by measuring how even subtle, irrelevant anchors in the legal system affect decisions, thus filling a gap in the literature in this area. Additionally, the article…
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Cold Cases Freeze: Law Enforcement Locked Out of DNA Database Used for Investigative Genealogy After Consumers Object to Being Genetic Informants