For decades, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has allowed synthetic food dyes to remain in the American food supply, despite evidence linking them to cancer and behavioral issues in children. These additives offer no nutritional value yet remain common in everyday products. This essay scrutinizes the FDA’s failure to enforce its own legal obligations, particularly its continued approval of synthetic dyes, which were later found to be harmful to human health. Harmful dyes have been kept on the market due to weak oversight, outdated science, and industry lobbying. In 2025, the FDA finally announced a plan to phase out several synthetic dyes, prompting a two-year transition to natural alternatives. Although a major change, this policy shift is long overdue. This essay evaluates the FDA’s efforts to ban synthetic dyes as merely reactive, not preventative. Thus, such measures will remain insufficient to rectify decades of administrative failure that have endangered millions of American lives, unless accompanied by a broader reevaluation of other harmful food additives. The essay concludes that meaningful reform requires statutory amendment, independent safety assessment, insulation of regulatory agencies from private-sector influence, and a renewed commitment to safeguarding the health and well-being of all Americans.
App-based rideshare platforms’ rapid expansion has transformed gig work from a temporary, flexible labor model into a sustained form of employment that serves as the primary source of income for millions of workers. Despite this evolution, leaders in the rideshare industry continue to classify drivers as independent contractors, thereby avoiding statutory obligations related to minimum wage, overtime, unemployment insurance, workers’ compensation, and healthcare benefits. This Comment argues that as platform-based labor becomes more permanent and economically dependent, the continued reliance on independent contractor classification becomes increasingly inconsistent with the governing legal standards designed to distinguish employees from independent contractors. This Comment draws on the Fair Labor Standards Act’s economic reality test and comparative state-level approaches to examine how worker classification operates in practice and how app-based intermediaries have structured their business models to preserve independent contractor status. It contends that the industry’s emphasis on flexibility obscures the significant control and economic dependence inherent in the rideshare relationship, and critiques proposals for a third “independent worker” category as likely to dilute existing labor protections rather than resolve perceived doctrinal ambiguity. Ultimately, this Comment concludes that the existing legal framework, if properly applied, is sufficient to address platform-based labor relationships. Accurate worker classification—grounded in economic reality rather than contractual labels—is essential to preserving labor protections in an increasingly technology-mediated workforce.
This article traces the historical development of the “arising out of” and “relate to” nexus requirements, examines the evolution of state long- arm statutes following International Shoe Co., and analyzes the origins and judicial interpretation of C.P.L.R. § 302(a). It argues that New York’s statutory scheme no longer fully reflects the constitutional scope of specific jurisdiction as articulated by the Supreme Court. The article concludes by proposing a legislative amendment to C.P.L.R. 302(a) to add the phrase “relate to,” thereby aligning New York’s long-arm statute with Due Process and better effectuating the statute’s underlying purpose of affording New York residents access to their courts.
This note examines California's Protecting Our Kids from Social Media Addiction Act (SB 976), signed into law in September 2024, which prohibits personalized algorithmic feeds on minors' accounts without pa- rental consent and restricts platform notifications during school hours and nighttime. Drawing on the Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association and related federal litigation, this note argues that SB 976 is unconstitutional under the First Amendment. Specifically, SB 976 is underinclusive because it fails to meaning- fully reduce minors' screen time, exempts comparable addictive plat- forms, and permits the very algorithmic feeds it deems harmful upon parental consent.
This Article chronicles my experimental adoption of Problem-Based Learning (PBL) in first-year Contracts. After three decades of conventional teaching, I observed that Gen Z students struggled to transition from undergraduate memorization strategies to law school-level analytical reasoning, prompting my desire to engage in a fundamental pedagogical change. Drawing on successful PBL implementations in medical and mathematics education, I restructured my Contracts course around collaborative problem-solving in small groups, transforming my role from lecturer to facilitator. Students worked through authentic legal scenarios at whiteboards, developing rule-based reasoning through active engagement rather than passive reception. This article first details my reasons for adopting PBL in my 1L classroom. It then offers the reader a detailed explanation of how I adopted the program for my classroom. Finally, it provides the reader with a fair assessment of both the positives and negatives of my experience teaching exclusively through the PBL method. I argue that pure PBL, despite its demands on faculty and initial student resistance, better serves contemporary legal education's core mission in light of the kinds of students learning today. The methodology aligns with both the MacCrate Report's call for practice-oriented learning and the NextGen Bar's emphasis on analytical application over memorization. My candid assessment offers fellow legal educators both inspiration and cautionary guidance for implementing PBL, while ultimately advocating resistance to "evaluations fetishism" when student preferences conflict with demonstrably superior pedagogical approaches for developing practice-ready lawyers
This article considers whether United States v. Booker, the 2005 Supreme Court decision that replaced the then-mandatory federal sentencing guidelines system with an advisory scheme, had any enduring impact on sentencing outcomes. Commemorating Booker’s recent twentieth anniversary requires a balancing act: at once, recognizing the decision’s watershed impact while avoiding claims of lasting change where little exists. The criminal defense community hailed the ruling as a kind of liberation from the guidelines’ dispassionate rigidity. Today, while most lawyers and defendants would still prefer the current system, a legitimate question exists about Booker’s actual effect on federal sentencing. I propose that the benefits to criminal defendants have been meaningful, if modest, for reasons that encompass much of the sentencing process—including persistent race-based disparities in sentencing and the overarching severity of the federal criminal justice system.
Congress has undertaken some of its broadest reforms of military courts-martial in decades. The creation of the Special Trial Counsels (STCs) intentionally removes nearly all courts-martial powers from military commanders for “covered offenses,” some of the most serious prosecutions. Many commentators have expressed concern that this change untethers the courts-martial system from its historical anchor of discipline within the military—an anchor that the Supreme Court has used to grant exceptional deference to Congress for its legislation pursuant to the Make Rules Clause. However, the constitutionality of the STCs and the deference federal courts grant Congress in this realm should not be considered in jeopardy. STCs are akin to many prior Congressional exceptions to the command-centric disciplinary model. And under Ortiz v. United States, the Supreme Court’s most recent courts-martial case, STCs are neatly within the courts-martial’s supporting aims of discipline and justice.
In Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, the Supreme Court abandoned the Lemon test and replaced it with a framework grounded in historical practices and understandings. Yet lower courts have struggled to operationalize that standard, and some have continued to rely on Stone v. Graham, a brief 1980 per curiam opinion rooted entirely in Lemon, as controlling precedent. This Article argues that Stone cannot survive Kennedy’s wholesale repudiation of Lemon and its progeny. Using the Fifth Circuit’s decision in Roake v. Brumley, which struck down Louisiana’s Ten Commandments display law on the basis of Stone, as a case study, the Article identifies the doctrinal errors that follow from that misapplication and proposes a workable two-step framework: courts first assess whether the challenged practice implicates any founding-era hallmarks of religious establishment; if none are present, the practice is presumptively constitutional, with the presumption tested against relevant historical analogues.
Talk is learning’s secret weapon. Yet, talk is chronically undervalued as a learning tool. Dialogic talk, a rigorous, student-centered discursive approach, extends classroom dialogue beyond information exchange to stimulate critical thinking. Talk bolsters thought, generates ideas, expands knowledge, and crystalizes concepts to solidify understanding. Talk powers classroom dialogue through questions, discussion, argument, and interthinking, facilitating the exchange of ideas and information leading to deep learning. Law school classrooms are paradoxically immersed in talk yet simultaneously anti-dialogic spaces. Despite the Socratic method’s reliance on dialogue, talk in law school is teacher-controlled and interrogative, muting student voices through hierarchical power dynamics. This Article advocates for the transformative potential of dialogic talk in legal education. Drawing on empirical research, this Article proposes that rigorous discursive pedagogy, centered on dialogic talk, supports law students’ cognitive development, reading comprehension, critical analysis, and engagement. Dialogic spaces leverage academic rigor while creating collective, reciprocal learning communities where students can express their viewpoints, critique others, and develop their legal reasoning. Dialogic talk is a powerful learning tool that enhances learning outcomes while simultaneously strengthening critical thinking, analytical skills, and academic rigor central to legal education. Building on calls for reform for more inclusive law school spaces, this Article advocates for dialogic talk as a transformative approach to legal instruction. This Article discusses how small, intentional steps increase dialogic talk in law classrooms by including more student voices, incorporating more opportunities for students to think through or talk through questions before responding, and asking more open-ended questions that reveal student thinking.
States, particularly infringing upon the rights of the LGBTQIA+ community. Certain states have sought to introduce “drag ban” laws under the guise of protecting children from viewing obscene content. These laws, in effect, are harmful to people, children especially, and have a chilling effect on expression, leaving critical harm in their wake. Laws such as these cast a wide net of regulation, opening up otherwise innocent citizens to criminal and civil liability. The theater industry is particularly affected by these regulations, even if lawmakers do not acknowledge this potential harm. This article will focus on three laws seeking to regulate drag performance. Next, this article will address how these laws implicate the first amendment and infringe upon expressive conduct by chilling speech. Then, this article will discuss the economic structure of the theater industry to provide context to elucidate the potential economic and social harms that will likely result from this nature of legislation. Further, this article will explain those social and fiscal harms resulting from the legislation. Finally, this article will argue that these laws will not overcome a constitutional challenge on the basis of overbreadth and vagueness and must be struck down.
Article 92 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice criminalizes defiance of lawful orders issued by superior military and civilian officials in a service member’s chain of command, while Rule for Court-Martial (R.C.M.) 916(d) provides procedural guidance for the assertion that a service member was acting pursuant to lawful orders as a criminal defense. These provisions are integral to maintaining good order and discipline within the military ranks and ensuring consistent and reliable implementation of operational and policy initiatives across the Department of Defense. The duty to obey lawful orders is closely circumscribed in the context of the military chain of command but may contain additional ambiguity when the order’s originator is a senior civilian official, such as the Secretary of Defense or the President of the United States. In an era of rapidly-reconstituting political norms, recent senior civilian directives to the military have frequently departed from established processes as the institution is used to facilitate social policy decisions absent the formal executive or legislative guidance or judicial mandate that have historically accompanied such shifts as applied to the Department of Defense. This Article explores the regulatory and punitive environments in which these orders are issued, as well as the obedience paradigm that governs compliance with executive directives by service members at all levels of the military chain of command. It specifically examines implications for the Article 92/ R.C.M. 916(d) “obedience paradigm” in light of the Supreme Court’s July 2024 ruling in Trump v. United States, an unprecedentedly broad grant of executive immunity for official presidential acts. The Article subsequently details several seminal moments in the history of the military’s role as a forum for the enactment of controversial, often highly-partisan, policies in the areas of race, gender, and sexual orientation, as well as their catalysts – both populist and judicial – to provide context for analysis of a potential reevaluation of Article 92/ R.C.M. 916(d). Finally, it investigates whether alteration of the contemporary framework governing compliance with lawful orders is warranted, given the shifting contemporary normative dimensions of military policy guidance issued by senior civilian officials in the Department of Defense, and proposes some reforms to the existing paradigm to ensure the maintenance of good order and discipline within the military ecosystem and the preservation of Constitutional values and ethical policymaking writ large.
This essay examines the unique challenges faced by bisexual individuals in the legal system and explores how storytelling can serve as an effective tool to combat bisexual erasure and stereotyping in jurisprudence. Despite comprising the largest demographic within the LGBTQ community, bisexual individuals are significantly underrepresented in legal discourse and case law. This essay identifies three primary challenges affecting bisexual legal recognition: erasure (the denial of bisexuality as an orientation), stereotyping (harmful assumptions about bisexual individuals), and interest divergence (conflicting priorities with both heterosexual and homosexual communities). Through detailed case analysis, this essay will demonstrate how these challenges have resulted in adverse legal outcomes for bisexual individuals, particularly in immigration and family law contexts. This essay argues that storytelling, as a fundamental human communication tool, can humanize bisexual experiences for judges and juries by highlighting the normalcy of bisexual existence rather than emphasizing differences. By incorporating storytelling into litigation strategies, advocates can help build a more inclusive and accurate jurisprudence that acknowledges the complexity and legitimacy of bisexual identity.
Small cannabis companies in state-regulated markets have driven extraordinary job creation and economic growth, but now face extinction as consolidation looms. Government intervention can build a future populated with prosperous small business growth engines, while failure to act will magnify economic disparity. This Article proposes state-backed loan guarantees, funded by municipal "cannabonds," as a novel solution to guide the industry toward a healthier and more diverse economic landscape. This approach offers constitutionally resilient strategies to express explicit preference for local stakeholders and inverts traditional risk metrics to leverage historic institutional lending bias as a force for positive change. In doing so, it offers a pathway to vitality in both the cannabis and finance sectors and advances a more inclusive vision of American enterprise.
As the ultimate arbiter of the interpretation of federal law and the U.S. Constitution, the U.S. Supreme Court has a significant impact on businesses and individuals across an increasingly diverse country. Although the vast majority of the Justices who have served on the Court have been white males, recent Presidents have appointed nominees who have brought greater racial and gender diversity to the Court. Despite these efforts, however, not a single U.S. Supreme Court Justice in the past six decades has been born abroad, even though Americans who were born outside the United States constitute nearly a tenth of the U.S. population. One potential explanation for this lack of demographic representation on the Court is public opposition to the nominations of U.S. Supreme Court candidates born outside the United States. Although the prior scholarship has focused on how the race, gender, and partisan leanings of potential U.S. Supreme Court nominees affect U.S. public support for those nominees, the existing literature has not yet examined the extent to which the American public supports U.S. Supreme Court nominees who were born abroad. In this article, we fill a gap in the literature by analyzing whether Americans have consistent national origin-based preferences for U.S. Supreme Court nominees. Through the use of a conjoint experiment in a nationally-representative survey of the U.S. public, we find that the American public prefers that U.S. Supreme Court nominees be born in the United States rather than outside the United States. Additionally, this preference is largely similar across subgroups of the public, including based on respondents' party affiliation, level of knowledge of the U.S. Supreme Court, and gender. Our empirical findings detecting public bias based on national origin shed important light on why certain potential candidates might not be chosen to become the nominee to fill a U.S. Supreme Court vacancy or might simply self-select out of contention. Consequently, our study raises significant questions about the fairness of the judicial selection process and the representativeness of the U.S. Supreme Court in a rapidly diversifying country.
Artificial intelligence has come a long way since the days of the "heartless" tin man of the Wizard of Oz, and the cool, precise autonomy of Kit from Nightrider. We have moved rapidly from mere questions about what life could be like with autonomous machines, to having books, movies, and albums created using machines for part or even all of the process. The Copyright Act, however, has not come as long of a way since the implementation of the most recent version of the Act in 1976. Recently, the federal district court for the District of Columbia held that works created using artificial intelligence required a certain amount of human input for the AI generated output to be copyrightable. The United States Copyright Office, however, has put forward a stance that leaves artists confused and unclear of how much human input is actually required. This note will review the history of copyright protection under U.S. law, and how generative AI fits into that model, before offering solutions of how the Copyright Act could be amended to account for such instances of collaboration between man and machine.
This article asserts that the combination of AI-assisted writing tools and the immediacy of the NextGen Bar compel changes in legal education’s goals, expectations, and delivery methods. Topping off these forces, the ABA is considering increased requirements for additional experiential credits prior to graduation. These challenging mandates provide opportunities for law faculty, who can construct courses that help students learn through integrated experiential credits while promoting and spreading legal knowledge to organizations that lack legal advice. Through the example of a Housing Discrimination course, this article demonstrates a method for constructing a course that is resigned to the presence of ChatGPT while it seeks to hone skills that will be tested on the NextGen Bar, all while improving enforcement of civil rights via the federal Fair Housing Act. Building on emerging scholarship in how LRW professors are meeting the challenge of assessing student writing in the presence of ChatGPT, this article identifies opportunities for faculty to address the need to help students develop the client-focused skills they will need to succeed on the NextGen Bar, while promoting efforts to enforce anti-discrimination laws. This article argues that law faculty should consider ways in which their doctrinal interests can be overlaid upon experiential teaching to benefit organizations that cannot afford a lawyer. A roadmap is provided for faculty to select from the proposed skills NextGen will test to serve as the organizing principle for their course assignments. The article asserts that by integrating essential skills—such as how to interview, communicate with, perform legal research for, and counsel an organizational client—with the substantive law, faculty can enable students to meet the challenges of NextGen. In the provided example, the client is a non-profit fair housing center that serves at the forefront of fair housing enforcement, but relies on lay advocacy to investigate whether discriminatory housing practices have occurred. While their non-law-trained advocates are well-versed in fair housing concepts, their interactions with housing consumers, housing industry groups, and local governments often raise unique or novel questions of law. Connecting student assignments to these organizations serves an additional need by ensuring some of their questions no longer remain unanswered.
