School quality and resources vary dramatically across school district boundary lines. Students who live mere miles apart have access to disparate educational opportunities based on which side of a school district boundary line their home is located. Owing in large part to metropolitan fragmentation, most school districts and the larger localities in which they are situated are segregated by race...
The Dark Side of the First Amendment
Each year, the UCLA School of Law hosts the Melville B. Nimmer Memorial Lecture. Since 1986, the lecture series has served as a forum for leading scholars in the fields of copyright and First Amendment law. In recent years, the lecture has been presented by many distinguished scholars. The UCLA Law Review has published these lectures and proudly continues that tradition by publishing an Article...
Misdiagnosing the Impact of Neuroimages in the Courtroom
Neuroimages and, more generally, neuroscience evidence are increasingly used in the courtroom in hope of mitigating punishment in criminal cases. Many legal commentators express concern because they fear that the prejudicial effect of such evidence significantly outweighs its probative value. In light of earlier empirical studies, this concern is predominantly directed toward the visual impact of...
Under the (Territorial) Sea: Reforming U.S. Mining Law for Earth’s Final Frontier
As mineral prices continue to rise and high-quality terrestrial supplies dwindle, hardrock mining will soon spread to the one place on this planet it currently does not occur: underwater. The United States has regulations permitting the issuance of offshore mineral leases, but these regulations rest on questionable authority from 1953 and are already obsolete even though they have never been used...
Cracking the Cable Conundrum: Government Regulation of A La Carte Models in the Cable Industry
This Article examines the practice of cable bundling, a term describing how cable providers offer channels in "packages" of channels rather than allowing consumers to buy channels individually. These cable bundles have been criticized by politicians, academics, and the public alike, many of whom believe cable bundling simultaneously increases the price of cable and forces consumers to pay for...
Immigration Detention as Punishment
Courts and commentators have long assumed, without significant analysis, that immigration detention is a form of civil confinement merely because the immigration proceedings of which it is part are deemed civil. This Article challenges that deeply held assumption. It harnesses the U.S. Supreme Court’s instruction that detention’s civil or penal character turns on legislative intent and...
Parole Denial Habeas Corpus Petitions: Why the California Supreme Court Needs to Provide More Clarity on the Scope of Judicial Review
The California Penal Code makes clear that parole is supposed to be the norm, not the exception, for inmates sentenced to life in prison. But these inmates, convicted for murder, rape, and kidnapping and commonly known as lifers, never had greater than a 7 percent estimated likelihood of release from 1991 to 2010. California is unique in that if the Board of Parole Hearings (BPH) approves parole...
Insider Trading as Private Corruption
Deep confusion reigns over federal insider trading law, even over the essential elements of an insider trading violation. On the one hand, this uncertainty seems to have encouraged the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and some lower courts to push the boundaries well beyond the limits previously established by the U.S. Supreme Court. On the other hand, influential academics continue to...