This Article offers the first legal history of the Comstock Act from its enactment to its post-Dobbs reinvention. From conflicts over Comstock’s enforcement emerged popular claims on democracy, liberty, and equality in which we can recognize roots of modern free-speech law and the law of sexual and reproductive liberty.
In civil litigation, police most commonly appear as defendants. But police also act as plaintiffs, suing the individuals they police. This Article argues that these plaintiff police claims cause significant democratic harms and should be limited. Compensation and deterrence can be achieved through other, less politically corrosive mechanisms.
The First Amendment is a well-known barrier to sensible technology regulation. While scholars blame the Court’s libertarian turn, we offer another explanation: the Court’s solicitude for religious speakers. Religious-speech cases have given firms a powerful suite of deregulatory tools. This Feature draws the through line from gods to Google.
This Note argues that Indian tribes can best address disenrollment by viewing the problem through the lens of international norms regarding citizenship revocation. In choosing to embrace these norms, tribes can restrict disenrollment in a manner that does not simply invoke tribal sovereignty but instead promotes it.
The Catholic Church has concluded close to two hundred treaties in the last sixty years with nations across the globe. Many of these agreements integrate Church doctrine into state legal systems at the expense of LGBTQ rights. This Note unearths this vast treaty regime—and suggests ways to challenge it.
This Collection examines the relationship between procedure and fairness. The Essays analyze rural criminal defense challenges, administrative rulemaking responsibilities, and the role of technology in improving access to justice. Together, they illuminate how procedural reform and technological integration might enhance fairness and responsiveness across diverse legal contexts.
Professors Ellen Bublick and Jane Bambauer argue that the common law has expanded, and should continue to expand, the civil legal rights of wrongfully injured people, including police. There is value in using civil enforcement to hold both civilians and officers accountable for the unjustified harms that they cause.
This Collection features the winners of the annual Yale Law Journal Student Essay Competition. This year’s topic was “Emerging Issues in Criminal Law.” The three winning Essays explore a range of timely criminal-law matters, including honest services fraud, racial discrimination in jury selection, and habeas corpus.
We live in perilous times, where acrimony and contempt poison our republic. But as others have long recognized—from Washington to Lincoln to current observers—there is an antidote: civic charity. It has helped heal our nation in some of our most difficult times; it can do so again.
This Collection features Essays from the 2023-2024 Yale Law Journal Public Interest Fellows. The Fellows share reflections on their experiences working in public service at Legal Action Chicago and the National Center for Law and Economic Justice.
This Collection critically examines legal issues in the U.S. territories and explores pathways for reform. These four Essays challenge the emerging “Law of the Territories” framework, document the ABA’s discrimination against territorial lawyers, address reproductive and economic injustices rooted in colonialism, and analyze Congress’s historical role in territorial taxation.
This Collection critically examines legal issues in the U.S. territories and explores pathways for reform. These four Essays challenge the emerging “Law of the Territories” framework, document the ABA’s discrimination against territorial lawyers, address reproductive and economic injustices rooted in colonialism, and analyze Congress’s historical role in territorial taxation.
This Collection explores how to better protect workers against the harms of an expanding gig economy and an increasingly automated workplace. It offers three distinct and interconnected perspectives on the legal, regulatory, and policy interventions that could empower workers to navigate the shifting landscape with flexibility, security, and dignity.
In this Exchange, Daniel S. Harawa and Michael R. Ulrich examine the implications of United States v. Rahimi for the future of Second Amendment rights. Together, these pieces reveal how Rahimi exposes deep tensions and inconsistencies within the Roberts Court’s Second Amendment jurisprudence.