Issue Archives

The law of redistricting is built on the assumption that tradeoffs among line-drawing criteria are pervasive. This view helps explain crucial elements of partisan gerrymandering, racial vote dilution, and racial gerrymandering doctrine. This Article is the first to rigorously analyze the existence and extent of redistricting tradeoffs. The Article relies on ensembles of billions of district maps generated randomly by cutting-edge computer algorithms....

Doctrines of preemption exist to determine the correct balance between state and federal power. But despite the delicate nature of this task, courts have sometimes overlooked the plain language of the preemption provisions at play in the field of nuclear safety. Instead, brooding federal interests have loomed large. The idiosyncrasies of the field of nuclear safety may merit a cautious approach to applying state tort law, but the Eighth Circuit’s...

There is a gap in mootness doctrine that allows defendants to strategically “moot” their way out of class litigation. Before a class is certified, a defendant can resolve the named plaintiff’s individual claim and then argue there is nothing left to litigate. This tactic, often referred to as “picking off” or “buying off” the plaintiff, can kill a class action before it begins, leaving systemic misconduct unchallenged and the broader...

Since the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the landscape of abortion access in the United States has been plagued by uncertainty and growing inequality across geographic, racial, and socioeconomic lines. As many states have passed new laws drastically restricting abortion access, reproductive rights litigators have increasingly turned to state courts and constitutions as vehicles...

The principle that federal courts exist to provide remedies rather than to vindicate abstract interests is firmly rooted in American jurisprudence and continues to animate doctrines of federal court jurisdiction. But remedies are elusive. Even executing on a money judgment, which is simple enough in principle, has been complicated by technologies that allow judgment debtors to conceal their assets quickly and effectively.

This Note argues...

The Columbia Law Review’s Karl Llewellyn Lecture series celebrates pioneers in the law who have innovated and challenged legal theory. The third annual Lecture was delivered by Cahill Gordon & Reindel LLP Senior Counsel and distinguished First Amendment litigator Floyd Abrams on February 12, 2026. A transcript of Mr. Abrams’s Lecture is published in this Issue.

The full text of this Lecture...

The over $250 billion video game industry, the largest entertainment industry in the world, has rapidly developed unregulated monetary systems. Gaming companies issue what this Article terms “gaming money”—points earned in play, gift cards, and platform-stored balances—and increasingly enable conversion of these instruments into bank deposits at scale. Although they adopt many of the features of “money,” they evade existing regulatory...

International organizations frequently use democratic transitional agreements as the primary framework for restoring peace after intrastate conflict. These postconflict peacebuilding efforts often result in transitional peace agreements that include a version of interim governance, typically with some power-sharing component, that aims to end armed conflict and usher in democratic elections after a set period. By examining Sudan’s 2022 Political...

The conventional view of the Sixth Amendment right to counsel for indigent defendants is that its enforcement depends on the political branches to implement the right by appropriating the money to enforce it. But that’s not how enforcement of the modern version of the right started. For more than twenty-five years, between 1938, when Johnson v. Zerbst established a right to appointed counsel for federal defendants, and 1964, when Congress began...

The harmful effects of climate change have already arrived in cities and states across America, with disasters increasing markedly in recent years along with more gradual environmental changes like sea-level rise and drought. To protect populations and natural resources, significant funding will be necessary for preventative measures as well as disaster response.

At present, it is states and ordinary taxpayers who must shoulder the enormous...