Issue Archives

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...

The Roberts Court transformed the debate over presidential removal with two conflicting cases. In Trump v. Slaughter, the Court overruled Humphrey’s Executor and embraced a maximalist unitary executive. It rejected the “quasi-judicial” and “quasi-legislative” categories from Humphrey’s that were the foundation for independent regulatory commissions. But in Trump v. Cook, the Court preserved removal...

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...

Federal jurisdictional doctrines have served as instruments of racial subjugation, territorial dispossession, and sanctioned violence. Yet this pattern is absent from how Federal Courts doctrine is taught. Leading casebooks exclude cases like the Chinese Exclusion Case, Lone Wolf v. Hitchcock, and Giles v. Harris from the political question canon. Reconstruction-era cases are taught without the Lost Cause narratives that...

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...