Explore JLSP's archived issues below. Navigate Volumes 59–42 by using the horizontal menu above. Sort by topic tag or search term by using the vertical menu on the right. For access to Volumes 1–42, please email jlsp@law.columbia.edu. (Journal articles are also available on the WestLaw, Lexis, and Hein databases.)
By Esteban Gutierrez-Alvarez The tension between state constitutional provisions promising municipal self-governance and the reality of state legislative supremacy creates a fundamental paradox at the heart of home rule doctrine. Cities across America face unprecedented governance challenges—from economic transformation to climate adaptation—while remaining constrained by a legal framework that forces […]
By Caroline Connor The U.S. legal system has long regarded individuals with intellectual disabilities and children as requiring special protections, including in criminal contexts. However, judicial and statutory consideration of the particular needs of children with intellectual disabilities—who are in some senses doubly vulnerable compared to either population in isolation—has […]
By Katerina Kakkis In 2023, a husband lost his wife to an avoidable allergic reaction at a Disney restaurant in Florida. When he sought accountability for his wife’s death, Disney asked the court to toss the case because of a binding arbitration clause—a clause in a contract the husband entered […]
By Alec J. Goldstone The ethics rules of the U.S. House of Representative and U.S. Senate seek to minimize the use of government resources to support incumbents’ reelection campaigns. Government-paid congressional staff are prohibited from engaging in campaign activity during their working hours. However, congressional staff may engage in paid […]
By Emily R. Holtzman The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990 (NAGPRA) recognized the rights of Indian Tribes and Native Hawaiian organizations to their own ancestral human remains, associated and unassociated funerary objects, sacred objects, and objects of cultural patrimony. The promise of NAGPRA was to repatriate […]
By Jeffrey Fastow For more than a century, the federal courts have improvised their way through the overseas territories—sometimes treating them as states, sometimes as colonies, and often as something in between. This Note argues that this uncertainty is not merely historical but structural. Territorial courts, grounded under Article IV […]
By Henry Merschat On October 31, 2023, the Second Circuit dealt a major blow to the disgorgement remedy, holding in SEC v. Govil that courts cannot order securities law violators to cough up their ill-gotten gains unless the SEC can point to a victim who has lost money. In other […]
By Anthony J. Mejia This Note offers a novel approach to bringing suit against the executor of the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Intensive Supervision Appearance Program (ISAP), Behavioral Interventions, Incorporated (BI). BI is contracted by DHS to run ISAP, the government’s only alternative to detention for newly arrived immigrants. […]
By Malik Morris-Sammons Since the Supreme Court decided its landmark fair housing case, Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs v. Inclusive Communities, the federal judiciary has proven a formidable battleground for communities of color seeking to enforce their civil rights under the Fair Housing Act (FHA). The opinion created […]
By Matthew R. Nola While 42 U.S.C. § 1983 is one of the most commonly utilized statutes in federal civil litigation, federal prosecutors hardly afford the statute’s criminal counterpart, 18 U.S.C. § 242, the same attention. Since the volume of federal rights–vindicating cases under Section 1983 far outstrips that under Section 242, […]
By Melanie Mignucci In the modern workplace, employers commonly subject their workers to electronic monitoring and algorithmic management practices. Under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), this surveillance does not comprise an unfair labor practice because it is not “out of the ordinary.” But this interpretation is mistaken: Algorithmic management’s […]
By Gabriela Landolfo The legacy of imperialism thrives in the modern European museum. From Alutiiq masks in Berlin to a Pawnee Chief’s remains in Stockholm, museum displays resign tribal emblems to the same fate as the people who produced them: forcibly separated from their culture and assimilated into a foreign […]
By Seth McDowell For decades, the Supreme Court has favored arbitration agreements in employment and struck down state attempts to limit their use. In so doing, the Court has often cited the Federal Arbitration Act’s (FAA) supposed “liberal federal policy favoring arbitration.” In its 2021–2022 term, the Court broke with […]
By Michael Sosnick Delaware courts recognize that corporate directors have a duty of good faith, which includes an obligation to avoid knowingly violating the law, even if doing so could increase profits. In re Caremark International Inc. Derivative Litigation and Stone v. Ritter extended liability to situations in which directors […]
By Charlotte G. Cooper Foreign governments breach national borders through physical and digital means to surveil, coerce, harass, kidnap, and kill members of diaspora and exile communities. This phenomenon is known as transnational repression (TNR). No longer an exceptional tool, TNR is becoming a normalized practice used to silence citizens […]
By Eitan M. Ezra It is getting harder for executive branch agencies to win in court. One prominent reason for the harsh climate that agencies face is the Major Questions Doctrine, which has grown more important in statutory interpretation since the Supreme Court decided West Virginia v. EPA. If the […]
By Elana Egri-Thomas The data privacy landscape in the United States is ineffective and fragmented across state lines. There is no federal data privacy law or data protection administrative agency. The state data privacy laws that do exist are heavily influenced by the tech industry and ignore substantive harms to […]
By Joshua Kipps In Bostock v. Clayton County, the Supreme Court ushered in a new era of employment law by holding that workplace discrimination against gay and transgender people violates Title VII’s prohibition of discrimination because of sex. The Court reached this historic result by using textualism to interpret Title […]
By Daniel S. Anduze On July 2, 2024, the Supreme Court of the United States granted certiorari in Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton—a case involving a First Amendment challenge to Texas H.B. 1181. That statute, aimed at limiting youth exposure to sexual material online, requires pornography companies to verify that […]
By Jay S. Burgin When mobile app developers like Epic Games—creator of the massively popular online video game Fortnite—make their product available on Apple’s App Store, they enter the “walled garden,” a closed digital ecosystem wherein iPhone and iPad users cannot download games through other digital marketplaces. They also agree […]
By Celine Simone Family content creation is a multibillion-dollar industry. Though most parents at some point share content of their children online, for many “influencer” parents and their children, putting in the hours to curate the perfect online image means legions of fans and an enviable income from advertising and […]
By Aliza M. Tresser The plain text of the Eighth Amendment prohibits the government from punishing people with excessive fines. But until the Excessive Fines Clause was incorporated in 2019, it did not apply to municipal or state governments. In applying federal doctrine to the local context, many courts have […]
By Dylan R. McDonough In 2021, over 98% of criminal cases at the federal level terminated in guilty pleas, many of which were the result of plea agreements between the prosecution and the defense. The numbers were similar at the state level. Despite this prevalence of plea agreements, many U.S. […]
By Rachel M. Wagner Following a rash of headlines about infant abandonments in the 1990s, every state passed a Safe Haven Law (SHL) which permits the anonymous surrender of infants to a safe place, like a hospital. Over 4,000 infants have been surrendered in the last quarter century. SHLs received […]
By Ray Lu In September 2022, outdoor apparel company Patagonia captured national attention when it announced that a specially designed trust and nonprofit would own and oversee the private for-profit corporation. Patagonia’s novel structure, rooted in the concept of steward-ownership, uses a trust to create a mechanism for direct stakeholder […]
