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A Negotiated Instrument: Proposing a Safer Contract for Consumers (And Not Just a Smarter One)

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 Law Institute (“ALI”) under

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Less Prison Time Matters: A Roadmap to Reducing the Discriminatory Impact of the Sentencing System Against African Americans and Indigenous Australians

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%

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Social Distancing as a Privilege: Assessing the Impact of Structural Disparities on the COVID-19 Crisis in the Black Community

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 of color.

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The Last Call for Civil Rights: Toward Economic Equality

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 that

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Deficit Frame Dangers

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 for

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Against Discourse: Why Eliminating Racial Disparities Requires Radical Politics, Not More Discussion

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-theorized:

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Immigration and Racial Justice: Enforcing the Borders of Blackness

Black immigrants are invisible at the intersection of their race and immigration status. Until recently, conversations on border security, unlawful immigration, and national security obscured racially motivated laws seeking to halt the blackening and browning of America. This Article engages with the impact of immigration enforcement at the intersection of

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Insuring the "Uninsurable": Business Interruption Insurance Coverage & COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted virtually every facet of life in the United States, including the insurance industry. In particular, the number of business interruption insurance coverage lawsuits has continued to climb since March 2020, as insurers are denying coverage for pandemic-related losses and policyholders are seeking indemnification. Courts across

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Information Privacy in an Age of Invisible Shopper Tracking: Who Will Pay the Price for Stores of the Future?

Explosive growth in technology has brought a unique opportunity to the doors of brick-and-mortar retail—a nearly $3.38 trillion industry struggling to regain relevance among modern, digitally enabled shoppers. Specifically, in-store analytics, or shopper tracking technologies, are allowing these retailers to better compete with online stores by tapping into

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Prohibiting Cashless Retailers and Protecting the Impoverished

A growing number of customer-facing businesses have opted to implement cashless policies, declining to accept cash for payment and limiting consumers’ options on how they can pay for goods and services. Proponents for cashless policies cite the efficiencies gained by removing cash from a business and concerns about theft as

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Professional Gamers are Today’s Professional Athletes

Recall the adversities faced by many in the entertainment industry. Freddie Mercury tried to join several bands before forming Queen. Judy Garland signed with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer at age thirteen after performing with her sisters throughout her childhood. Babe Ruth signed his first professional baseball contract with the minor-league Baltimore Orioles. Those

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The IRS’s Voluntary Disclosure Program: Need for Codification

For more than a century, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has had a voluntary disclosure program in place. Its purpose is to coax into tax compliance those wayward taxpayers who have committed criminal acts or have been remiss in fulfilling their civic tax-filing obligations. Historically, the voluntary disclosure program has

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