Stanford University Journal

Covert policing necessarily involves deception, which in turn often leads to participation in activity that appears to be criminal. In undercover operations, the police have introduced drugs into prison, undertaken assignments from Latin American drug cartels to launder money, established fencing businesses that paid cash for stolen goods and for… Read More »

Owning a stun gun or Taser is a crime in seven states and several cities. Carrying irritant sprays, such as pepper spray or Mace, is probably illegal in several jurisdictions. Even possessing irritant sprays at home is illegal in Massachusetts if you’re not a citizen.
Yet in most of these… Read More »

Preventing police misconduct often requires changing the department in which it arises, but police departments have proved largely resistant to legal efforts to reform them. A promising federal law, 42 U.S.C. § 14141, permits the Justice Department to sue police departments that are engaged in a “pattern or practice” of… Read More »

Corporate law academics have long sought to fully understand the process of state corporate lawmaking. For decades the debate was premised upon strong, ongoing state-to-state competition, with sharp disagreement on the directionality of that competition. In this decade, however, a powerful revisionist perspective has emerged that states do not compete,… Read More »

In the heat of the 2008 election season—following the new tradition of the 2000 and 2004 elections—candidates, political parties, and others filed new lawsuits practically every day over election law issues. In mid-September 2008, two Ohio controversies garnered national attention. In one case, Republicans filed suit to block first-time Ohio… Read More »

This Article is about consistency in adjudication. I explore why consistency matters, what its determinants are, and whether it can be substantially achieved at a price that is worth paying.
This Article is also about the United States asylum adjudication system. Asylum challenges the national conscience in distinctive ways. It… Read More »

For many decades in United States tax policy debate, fundamental tax reform was identified primarily with adopting a comprehensive income tax base.  In the last ten or so years, it has increasingly come to denote instead replacing the income tax with a consumption tax.  This shift has been as unmistakable… Read More »

How does one determine whether a particular rule is jurisdictional or not? Over the last few years, the Court has focused on this question, most recently in a decision holding that the six-year statute of limitations in the Tucker Act is a quasi-jurisdictional bar to suit.
The Court is right to… Read More »

In accord with traditions celebrating the generalist judge, the federal judiciary has consistently resisted proposals for specialized courts. Outward support for specialization, if it exists at all, is confined to narrow exceptions such as bankruptcy and tax.
The romantic image of the generalist, however, is not without its costs. The… Read More »

The presence of an estimated 11.5 million undocumented immigrants in the United States, of which an estimated 7.2 million are working, has become a flashpoint in the emerging national debate about immigration. With undocumented immigrants participating in the workforce in such numbers, disputes between employers and employees regarding the employment… Read More »