It is time for Congress to end its fifty-year experiment in post hoc federal court enforcement of constitutional criminal procedure. By clinging to ineffectual federal habeas review of state criminal cases, Congress is pouring tax dollars down the drain and overlooking a more effective way to enforce the Constitution: helping… Read More »
This Editorial summarizes my forthcoming Note, 85 N.Y.U. L. REV. (forthcoming June 2010), in which I assert that our current regulatory structure is suboptimal in its regulation of the systemic risk created by the failure of large, interconnected “nonbank” financial institutions (in general, a nonbank financial institution is any institution that… Read More »
Judges have the often unenviable task of having to answer very difficult legal questions. Some apprehension toward this task is understandable, so how might a judge duck the task of writing a new doctrinal test to resolve the hard question and similar claims in the future? Aside from using familiar… Read More »
It is bedrock policy that the government can treat citizens and noncitizens differently. Virtually no one believes that noncitizens should have the right to vote or to run for office. Many noncitizens—including tourists, business people, and the spouses of certain visa holders—do not even have the right to work or… Read More »
Congress enacted the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 (PSLRA) to reduce plaintiffs’ lawyers’ influence in securities class actions. The PSLRA’s presumption that the class member with the largest financial interest would be named lead plaintiff was meant to ensure that the class, not a law firm, would be… Read More »
Whether patients should be able to contract out of the malpractice system has been a hotly debated subject in law and economics and health law literature. Advocates of patient choice argue that if the cost of having the option to bring a malpractice suit truly outweighs the benefit to a… Read More »
Defenders of sex and race inequality often contend that women and people of color are better off with fewer rights and opportunities. This claim straddles substantive debates that are rarely considered together, linking such seemingly disparate disputes as the struggles over race-based affirmative action, antiabortion laws, and marital rape exemptions.… Read More »
Under the Articles of Confederation, state legislatures often formally instructed their federal representatives on particular votes, continuing a practice common in England and the American colonies. This occurred, to some later scholars’ dismay, even after James Madison argued that the Senate was designed to provide “a due sense of national… Read More »
During their first year of law school, students are taught some eternal verities. One of them is that America’s federal system consists of fifty states, each governed only by its own law and not by the law of any other state. Overlying this state law tapestry is a system of… Read More »
Is it constitutional for a state to issue a “Say Yes to Jesus” automobile license plate? May it refuse to issue an “Aryan Nation” license plate? May it deny a “pro-choice” license plate when it has allowed a “pro-life” one? Under current free speech jurisprudence, the answer depends on whether… Read More »