Environmental injustice (the siting of polluting facilities) in unincorporated communities of color is not merely a result of bad actors but a foreseeable consequence produced and perpetuated by fragmented legal frameworks that delegate authority to local decisionmakers without accountability, especially in the absence of meaningful democratic representation or judicial review. The result is that county commissioners are incentivized to pursue...
Note
Religious and parental rights are ascendant in public schools following the Supreme Court’s decision Mahmoud v. Taylor and its interim docket order Mirabelli v. Bonta. Mahmoud focused on free exercise opt-out claims as they relate to the curricular content taught in public schools, and Mirabelli expanded that rule to reach the gender transition non-disclosure policies adopted by some of those schools. This Note considers...
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...
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...
This Note argues that the allocations of power within the federal Constitution’s separation-of-powers framework hinder effective governance of environmental issues. The true problem is more than the sum of its parts: Several key failings of domestic environmental law result not from the shortcomings of any given statutory scheme but from the relationship between such statutory schemes, the boundary-defying and factually messy nature of environmental...
Food is a powerful drug. Big companies have pumped meals full of addictive substances that keep people hooked on unhealthy foods at the expense of their health. Modern scientific research has demonstrated that hyper-palatable foods have the same neurological effects as other addictive substances. Given that unbridled consumption of food can have serious health effects, food addiction is a dangerous illness. Despite these deleterious impacts, the...
Medicare Advantage insurers hold vast power over access to care for Medicare beneficiaries enrolled in their plans. Among other things, these insurers make the all-important determination as to whether care is “medically necessary” and thus warrants coverage under Medicare. Recently, these insurers have turned to artificial intelligence to help with these determinations. This trend has yielded concerning results, exacerbating both inaccuracy...
In 1901, the Supreme Court held that the United States could control territorial land possessions indefinitely, without plans to eventually grant statehood. Over the next twenty-one years, the Court handed down what are infamously known as the Insular Cases: a series of decisions that reaffirmed the distinctions between “incorporated territories”—those destined for statehood—and “unincorporated territories,” the fates of which...
This Note presents the first empirical study of the implications of the repeal of Civil Rights Law section 50-a (50-a), which made public New York Police Department (NYPD) personnel records, including disciplinary investigations. These data demonstrate the limited potential of transparency reforms, which are lauded as an important step toward increasing police accountability but do little to impact the actual behavior of police officers. Using...