CategoryDiscourse

Discourse publishes shorter articles that are timely, interdisciplinary, and novel. Discourse strives to serve as a platform for scholars, ideas, and discussions that have often been overlooked in traditional law review settings. Because we seek to publish pieces that are accessible to legal and non-legal audiences alike, Discourse articles are generally between 3,000 and 10,000 words. Like our print journal, Discourse articles are published on Westlaw, Lexis, and in other legal databases, as well as our own website. Beginning with Volume 68, Discourse began publishing special issues of Law Meets World.

August 31, 2020

From Commodities To Communities: Reimagining Housing After The Pandemic

By Nisha N. Vyas and Matthew Warren
In Discourse, Special Issue: Law Meets World Vol. 68
August 31, 2020
31August

Abstract While COVID-19 is not the root cause of housing insecurity, the pandemic has pulled hundreds of thousands of Californians to the precipice of housing loss.  This Article describes the existing eviction process that values individual property rights over the human right to housing, and describes proposed legislative solutions to prevent evictions en masse before considering urgent long...

August 31, 2020

1200 Dollars And A Mule: COVID-19, The CARES Act, And Reparations For Slavery

By Kaimipono David Wenger
In Discourse, Special Issue: Law Meets World Vol. 68
August 31, 2020

Abstract The COVID-19 pandemic casts into sharp relief a number of questions relating to reparations.  In particular, the COVID-19 crisis highlights the medical vulnerability of the Black community, illustrating the very real physical harm caused by slavery and racism in the United States.  At the same time, government responses to the crisis demonstrate the ability to distribute money to large...

July 28, 2020

Abolishing Racist Policing With the Thirteenth Amendment

By Brandon Hasbrouck
In Discourse
July 28, 2020
28July

This Essay is also forthcoming in our print edition. Abstract Policing in America has always been about controlling the Black body. Indeed, modern policing was birthed and nurtured by white supremacy; its roots are found in slavery. Policing today continues to protect and serve the racial hierarchy blessed by the Constitution itself. But a string of U.S. Supreme Court rulings involving the...

July 22, 2020

Love in the Time of Cholera

By Richard Delgado & Jean Stefancic
In Discourse
July 22, 2020
22July

Abstract A famous novel by Gabriel García Márquez describes a love story among three actors that took place in a city in Colombia during the time of cholera.  The interpersonal dynamics that unfold in this work by a Nobel Prize-winning writer offer insight into events taking place today.  We show how the urge to romanticize emotions during a time of great social stress, as well as the desire to...

July 16, 2020

Jump v. Los Angeles: Removing Platforms Further from Democratic Control?

By Beatriz Botero Arcila
In Discourse
July 16, 2020
16July

Abstract In March 2020, Jump, Uber’s e-scooter subsidiary, sued the Los Angeles Department of Transportation over a rule that requires the company to share real-time location data about its e-scooters with the city government.  Jump argues that the rule operates in practice as a warrantless administrative search.  It also argues that all the data it collects from its users are part of its...

June 23, 2020

How the Law Fails Tenants (And not Just During a Pandemic)

By Sarah Schindler & Kellen Zale
In Discourse
June 23, 2020
23June

Abstract In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, all levels of government are considering how to protect public health by keeping people in their homes, even if they can no longer afford their monthly mortgage or rent payments. The protections that have emerged thus far have been far more protective of homeowners than renters. This essay exposes how the disparity in legal protections for these two...

June 23, 2020

The Folly of Credit as Pandemic Relief

By Pamela Foohey, Dalié Jiménez, & Christopher K. Odinet
In Discourse
June 23, 2020

Abstract Within weeks of the coronavirus pandemic appearing in the United States, the American economy came to a grinding halt. The unprecedented modern health crisis and the collapsing economy forced Congress to make a critical choice about how to help families survive financially. Congress had two basic options. It could enact policies that provided direct and meaningful financial support to...

May 24, 2020

The Shifting Frontiers of Standing: How Litigation over Border Wall Funding is Exposing Standing's Current Doctrinal Fault Lines

By Raymond H. Brescia
In Discourse
May 24, 2020
24May

Abstract When President Trump announced that he was diverting funds from other items in the federal budget to satisfy a campaign promise to build a wall on the U.S.–Mexico border, a range of litigants lined up to challenge this action in the courts, including nonprofit organizations; state governments; the border county of El Paso, Texas; and the U.S. House of Representatives.  At the heart of...

May 19, 2020

Jail Suicide by Design

By David E. Patton & Fredrick E. Vars
In Discourse
May 19, 2020
19May

Abstract Jeffrey Epstein’s death in the federal jail in downtown Manhattan was the result of a conspiracy.  But the conspirators were not the Clintons, President Trump, or Prince Andrew.  Instead, his death, like too many others, was the result of a longtime conspiracy of lawmakers and actors within the criminal legal system itself.  Several features of our legal system seem almost designed to...

May 11, 2020

Misgendering as Misconduct

By Chan Tov McNamarah
In Discourse
May 11, 2020
11May

Abstract As litigation regarding the civil rights of transgender persons blossoms, a curious trend has emerged: In briefs, pleadings, and motions advocating anti-trans positions, attorneys have addressed trans parties with language at odds with their gender.  Through a close review of the language in briefs for three recent Supreme Court cases, this Article exposes the extent to which intentional...

May 1, 2020

What About the Rule of Law?  Deviation From the Principles of Stare Decisis in Abortion Jurisprudence, and an Analysis of June Medical Services L.L.C. v. Russo Oral Arguments

By Bridget Winkler
In Discourse
May 1, 2020
01May

Abstract The right to abortion was established in Roe v. Wade in 1973.  Abortions have nevertheless been systemically inaccessible to vulnerable individuals and communities for generations, and anti-abortion state legislatures and the United States federal judiciary have continued to further obstruct abortion access.  This effort to undercut reproductive rights has taken on a new sense of...

April 27, 2020

Reversal Rates in Capital Cases in Texas, 2000–2020

By David R. Dow & Jeffrey R. Newberry
In Discourse
April 27, 2020
27April

A death row inmate who challenges either his conviction or sentence in postconviction proceedings can be said to succeed if he obtains either a new guilt-phase trial, a new sentencing-phase trial, or a commutation of his death sentence. This Article reports on the success rates of death row inmates in Texas for those who arrived on death row on or after January 1, 2000, up until December 31, 2019...

March 26, 2020

Unmasking Western Science: Challenging the Army Corps of Engineer’s Rejection of the Isle de Jean Charles Tribal Environmental Knowledge under APA Arbitrary and Capricious Review

By Charquia Wright
In Discourse, Indigenous Peoples, Sustainability and Climate Change, Law Meets World
March 26, 2020

Introduction The law masks as natural what is chosen; it obscures the consequences of social selection as inevitable. The result is that the distortions in social relations are immunized from truly effective intervention, because the existing inequities are obscured and rendered nearly invisible. The existing state of affairs is considered neutral and fair, however unequal and unjust it is in...