Columbia Law Review

Plaintiffs in securities class actions have increasingly relied on reports published by anonymous short sellers when alleging the element of loss causation. Indeed, short-seller reports are useful for plaintiffs, as they purport to reveal negative information about a targeted company and generally cause a decline in the targeted company’s stock price. Unlike other types of corrective disclosures, however, short-seller reports are unique in that[...]

This Essay surfaces an obstacle to decarceration hiding in plain sight: progressives’ continued support for the carceral system. Despite progressives’ increasingly prevalent critiques of criminal law, there is hardly a consensus on the left in opposition to the carceral state. Many left-leaning academics and activists who may critique the criminal system writ large remain enthusiastic about criminal law in certain areas— often areas in which[...]

It is conventional wisdom that the states are free—within wide constitutional parameters—to structure their governments as they want. This Article challenges that received wisdom and argues that the Supreme Court has drawn on an eclectic set of constitutional provisions to develop a broader body of federal constitutional rules of state structure than previously understood.

This Article gathers and systemizes that body of law. It first[...]

The Columbia Law Review launched its Karl Llewellyn Lecture series on March 19, 2024, celebrating pioneers in the law who have innovated and challenged legal theory. The inaugural Lecture was delivered by Judge Guido Calabresi who spoke on the promise and peril of “Law and …” disciplines, such as Law and Economics, Law and Philosophy, and Law and History. A transcript of Judge Calabresi’s Lecture is published in this[...]

Introduction In his compelling new book, Invisible Atrocities, Professor Randle DeFalco explores the function of the aesthetics of violence in international law. In particular, he questions international law’s preference for sanctioning spectacular demonstrations of violence rather than more banal, bureaucratic actions that cause massive scales of suffering and misery. The book resonated with us because […]

People routinely refer to copyright and trademark as “soft IP” to distinguish these practices from another area of intellectual property: patent. But the term reflects implicit biases against copyright and trademark doctrine and practitioners. “Soft IP” implies that patent law alone is hard, even though patents are no more physically, metaphorically, or intellectually hard than copyrights and trademarks. Despite stereotypes to the contrary,[...]

In the context of section 10(b) securities fraud class actions, conceptualizing corporate intent is both an unnatural and a necessary exercise. Circuit courts apply a variety of different approaches to analyze the question of corporate scienter, but they typically start with agency law and impute the intentions of corporate employees to the corporation itself.

Recognizing the fraud-deterrence purpose of these class actions suggests that[...]