The U.S. acquired its first overseas territory—the island of Navassa, near Haiti—by conceptualizing it as property, rather than a piece of sovereign territory. The story of Navassa shows how the concept of property is central to the law of the territories—and, perhaps, a useful tool going forward.
This Article calls on the Supreme Court to overrule—rather than repurpose—the Insular Cases, and it points to constitutional doctrines beyond their reach that can preserve cultural practices without spawning a crisis of political illegitimacy in the unincorporated territories.
The Article questions the wisdom of urging judicial overthrow of the Insular Cases without a rubric for the many doctrinal universes that might emerge from such an intervention. Ill-considered judicial intervention will pose a grave threat to procedurally legitimate self-determination and to path-dependent interests with roots in that troubled framework.
Centering on the wide-ranging implications of the Supreme Court’s decision in Rice v. Cayetano, this Article argues that the Court’s race jurisprudence threatens Indigenous self-determination and land rights in the territories. It concludes by offering several strategies that litigants can use to protect Indigenous rights within the existing doctrinal landscape.
With the emergence of mass arbitration, companies that once promoted arbitration now seek to block employees from arbitrating claims. This Essay argues that employees have a right to mass arbitrate their claims because mass arbitration is a concerted activity protected by the National Labor Relations Act.
The Yale Law Journal is thrilled to present a Special Issue on the Law of the Territories, which explores unresolved controversies and debates concerning the U.S. territories. In the pages that follow, our authors examine the complex and often-fraught relationship between the U.S. government and its territories. Their pieces discuss
The Ending Forced Arbitration of Sexual Assault and Sexual Harassment Act was supposed to eliminate forced arbitration of cases involving sexual misconduct. This Essay explains why the Act fails to do so. In addition, it outlines what lawmakers and courts can do to fix this problem.
The Article traces modern separation-of-powers jurisprudence to the Court’s reaction to Reconstruction. Converting Lost Cause dogma into the language of constitutional law, the Court sparked a counterrevolution that obscures, and eclipses, a more normatively compelling conception—one that locates in representative institutions authority to constitute the separation of powers by statute.
In The Collapse of Constitutional Remedies, Aziz Huq contends federal courts exacerbate societal inequities by overzealously enforcing constitutional limits on government regulation while neglecting individual-rights violations. Though some of Huq’s criticisms are spot-on, others are overstated, and his confessed “redistributive goals” —exalting certain constitutional protections over others—imperil rule-of-law principles.
Many states claim to own their water. How to understand such claims is a perennially muddied question which the Supreme Court recently failed to clarify. This Note demonstrates why states can have literal ownership of their water, and why a contrary conclusion could imperil groundwater management in the climate-changed future.
This Collection surveys the novel tax implications of the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA). These Essays analyze ARPA through the lens of fiscal impoverishment, race, unemployment insurance, and state and local responses to economic crises. Each Essay proposes changes to our tax system based on the lessons learned from ARPA.
This Collection examines how inequality manifests on social media platforms and in the digital public sphere. Essays analyze how race, gender, and other facets of identity shape people’s experience of and access to the digital public sphere and explore the harms minority groups suffer in these spaces. Several Essays chart
This Collection explores the impact of exogenous shocks on corporate restructurings and bankruptcies. These Essays analyze trends in restructuring practices and policy making, and they carefully consider the relationship between market forces and the Bankruptcy Code in achieving efficient restructuring outcomes that benefit a variety of stakeholders.