You live in Mississippi, work an hourly, minimum wage job, have no savings, and have young children. You are also seven weeks pregnant and want to have an abortion. Technically, you can go to an abortion clinic. But even though you have Medicaid, it won’t cover any of the procedure’s costs because Mississippi generally follows […]
The Long Road to Hyatt III: What Happened to Full Faith and Credit?
In Franchise Tax Board v. Hyatt (Hyatt III), the Supreme Court overruled forty-year-old precedent that allowed a citizen to sue a state in another state’s courts.[1] The Court’s 5-4 decision creates another barrier for plaintiffs who seek to hold states accountable. Hyatt III expands the doctrine of sovereign immunity to provide states additional protection against […]
Health, Law, And Ethnicity: The Disability Administrative Law Judge And Health Disparities For Disadvantaged Populations
Social determinants play into who gets to die prematurely while others get to have healthy productive lives—these are loosely called health disparities. Health disparities are typically understood socially, economically, and politically, but rarely analyzed within the legal system. The Social Security Administration (SSA)—the federal program for providing Americans with disabilities benefits and resources—recorded that in […]
Looking to Hybrid Species for the Future of Coral Reefs
Although corals can hybridize and adapt to the threat of climate change, the existing legal framework in the United States is insufficient to ensure their protection. This regulatory gap leaves hybrid corals exposed to local and regional stressors. But legal protections, like the corals themselves, can adapt and evolve. If we value coral reefs, we should modify the legal framework that protects corals and related marine ecosystems to encompass naturally occurring resiliency tools such as hybrid corals. […]
Making the Grade: Rethinking the U.S. Food Retail Inspection and Rating Regulatory System
The FDA’s oversight of food retail has not kept pace with modern legislation’s move toward standardized guidelines across the food industry. Instead, the FDA’s feeble attempt at a command-and-control model has crumbled into a system that is de facto deregulated and lacks uniformity. […]
M&A After Eagle Force: An Economic Analysis of Sandbagging Default Rules
Unlike the debate on the ethics of sandbagging, the economic consequence of a default rule is an empirical question with a right and wrong answer. This Note argues that the only other scholarly article on the issue got it wrong. […]
Fleeing for Their Lives: Domestic Violence Asylum and Matter of A-B-
This Note argues that it is a mistake to classify domestic violence as a primarily “private” crime given its widespread and gendered nature. Further, in some cases, the infliction of domestic violence is ignored—if not condoned—by state actors, casting doubt upon Attorney General Jeff Sessions’s claim in Matter of A-B-that such violence does not involve […]
California County Oversight of Use Policies For Surveillance Technology
California Senate Bill 1186 (SB 1186), proposed in 2018, would have implemented surveillance transparency, accountability, and oversight measures over the California Highway Patrol, the California Department of Justice, and every California police department, sheriff’s office, district attorney’s office, and school district and state university public safety department. Had it been enacted, SB 1186 would have […]
The Disproportionate Effect of Mutual Restraining Orders on Same-Sex Domestic Violence Victims
This Note will discuss how the erasure of LGBT victims from the domestic violence narrative has perpetuated the overuse of dual arrest and mutual restraining orders in domestic violence cases with same-sex couples despite the minimal use of these legal tools in the general population. Both the social narrative of domestic violence as well as […]
The Muslim Ban Cases: A Lost Opportunity for the Court and a Lesson for the Future
On January 27, 2017, newly inaugurated President Donald Trump signed an Executive Order that banned individuals from certain Muslim-majority countries from entry into the United States. The district and circuit courts’ subsequent refusals to sanction the Muslim Bans offered hope to those who recognized the bans as part of a legacy of racist and Islamophobic […]