In recent decades, the U.S. labor market has shifted to more contingent work or work disguised as entrepreneurship. These attenuated relations between worker and firm reflect the “fissuring” of work. Some firms now go beyond fissuring work: they treat the workers themselves as consumers by offering them services and credit products. And when firms expand employment contracts to extend services and credit products to workers, workers are entitled to consumer law protections ..read more

For more than a century, the United States has sought to restrict Tribal governments’ powers over criminal law. Tribes are increasingly embracing Indigenous-based restorative justice models, which have regenerated Tribal jurisdiction and enhanced the well-being of Tribal members ..read more

Past efforts by the Advisory Committee on Civil Rules to substantially reform Rule 23 have been met with such controversy that more recently, the Advisory Committee has elected to pursue more modest reforms. The new criteria have been widely understood as introducing modest changes and have even been argued by some to have done nothing more than codify existing circuit practice. However, two circuits have sharply diverged in their interpretation of what the new Rule 23(e)(2) requires, calling into question whether the changes are so self-evidently modest and dashing the goal of unifying circui ..read more

Like all U.S. jurisdictions, California’s criminal legal system is largely administered via plea bargains. Although courts characterize plea bargains as fair and necessary, these characterizations do not enjoy strong empirical support. This Note concludes that plea bargaining practices likely violate California’s unconstitutional conditions doctrine and urges state actors to implement reforms ..read more

Almost all national constitutions contain one or more ways to disqualify specific individuals from political office. Indeed, the U.S. Constitution incorporates at least four overlapping pathways toward disqualification. This power of disqualifying specific individuals or groups stands at the heart of the complex project of maintaining democratic rule ..read more

In the past ten years, lower federal courts have quietly but regularly abstained from hearing federal claims challenging state court procedures, citing concerns of comity and federalism. Federal courts have dismissed a broad range of substantive challenges tasked to them by Congress, including those under the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Indian Child Welfare Act ..read more

It is virtually a tenet of modern federal jurisdiction that judges, at least when they are acting as judges, are inappropriate defendants in civil suits. Yet on rare but salient occasions, state judges might be the sole or primary party responsible for violating the constitutional rights of citizens, for instance by imposing excessive bail or by opening their courtrooms to oppressive private suits like those under Texas’s Senate Bill 8 bounty regime ..read more

In June of 2022, the Supreme Court reversed two hundred years of precedent in Oklahoma v. Castro-Huerta, holding in a 5-4 opinion that states have concurrent criminal jurisdiction over crimes committed by non-Indians against Indians in Indian country ..read more

Space debris is an undeniable threat to the future use of orbital space around Earth. Most experts agree that we are reaching the point of maximum capacity in many parts of space and the threat of future collisions is growing more severe. However, little is being done to address the issue ..read more

As patients become more sophisticated in managing their own health, they often turn to tracking apps to record and manage their health. Menstruation apps often track menstrual cycles, sexual activity, mood changes, and more ..read more