The United States implements much of its social policy through its income tax laws. The Code is rife with tax expenditures for education, housing, community economic development, retirement savings, and health care to name a few. But the IRS is not an agency with expertise in any of these areas
This Article describes the regular use of lying during plea bargaining by criminal justice stakeholders and the paradox it presents for those who care about creating a fairer criminal legal system. The paradox is this: lying at plea bargaining allows defendants the opportunity to negotiate fair resolutions to their cases
Confederate monuments have been a point of contention in America for decades, but a series of events since 2015 have stoked the most recent movement calling for their removal. In 2015, Dylann Roof murdered Black churchgoers at a historically Black church in Charleston, South Carolina. Because Roof was seemingly motivated
In 2016, the Supreme Court altered the landscape of the False Claims Act by recognizing implied certification as a viable theory of liability. Before the Court decided Universal Health Services, Inc. v. United States ex rel. Escobar, courts disagreed over the scope and legitimacy of the theory, arguing that it
Lawyers’ ethical duty of confidentiality is a fundamental aspect of the attorney-client relationship. It is also an extraordinarily broad duty; indeed, it is broader than the attorney-client privilege. So extensive a duty of confidentiality is necessary to encourage clients to trust their lawyers and to be candid with
There are few civil procedure laws broadly authorizing trial courts in the United States to consider presuit requests seeking protection from discovery sanctions or spoliation claims in later civil actions. There should be more laws on presuit protective orders addressing information maintenance, preservation, and production.
New presuit protective order laws
In this Article, I propose a new standard for determining what constitutes assent, as a matter of contract formation, within the domain of electronic consumer contracting. The threshold test should reject the “take-it-or-leave-it” arrangement dominant in the marketplace and reified by recent proposals before the American
Gig work—the selling or renting of labor, effort, skills, and time outside of traditional employment—is a long-standing feature of the U.S. economy. Today, millions of “online gig workers” sell goods and services, or rent rooms, houses, vehicles, and other assets using app-online and app-based
The criminal justice system discriminates against African Americans. There are a number of stages of the criminal justice process. Sentencing is the sharp end of the system because this is where the community acts in its most coercive manner by intentionally inflecting hardships on offenders. African Americans comprise approximately 40%
This Essay integrates Professor Claire Jean Kim’s racial triangulation framework, Professor Derrick Bell’s interest-convergence theory, and W.E.B. Du Bois’s notion of double-consciousness, all to examine the racial positioning of Asian Americans and the dilemmas we face as a result. To do so, this
There is a harsh reality for people living with the COVID-19 restrictions in the same city. Though the virus has been called an equal opportunity threat, the truth is that it has had a deadly, disproportionate impact on Black and Brown people. The COVID-19 pandemic has crushed communities
Over six decades have passed since the civil rights movement began in the mid-1950s, but American society has not yet fully realized the promise of the civil rights movement, which at its core embodies the protection and promotion of equity and dignity of all people. Despite the historic improvements
Civil rights advocates have long viewed litigation as an essential, if insufficient, catalyst of social change. In part, it is. But in critical respects that remain underexplored in legal scholarship, civil rights litigation can hinder short- and long-term projects of racial justice. Specifically, certain civil rights doctrines reward plaintiffs
Racial disparity discourse is one of the main modalities through which we discuss and experience race and racism in the United States today—in discussions with colleagues and friends, in scholarly work, on cable news, on social media, and in lecture halls. Despite its ubiquity, racial disparity discourse is under-
