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The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) prohibits schools from providing financial aid to student-athletes beyond the costs of attending school and forbids student-athletes to receive compensation related to their athletic ability from third parties. This comment argues courts have failed to properly scrutinize this rule and it should be rejected because such compensation restrictions...

The inheritance system is beset by formalism. Probate courts reject wills on technicalities and refuse to correct obvious drafting mistakes by testators. These doctrines lead to donative errors, or outcomes that are not in line with the decedent’s donative intent. This article argues that formalistic wills doctrines should be reformed because they harm those who attempt to engage in estate...

In private mergers and acquisitions deals, parties enter into non-binding preliminary agreements, such as term sheets and letters of intent. These agreements are not contracts—rather, they are signposts for when enough momentum has accumulated that a deal is likely to go forward. Using interviews with deal lawyers, this article provides a rich and layered account of how sophisticated parties use...

This article presents the first comprehensive treatment of the basic and officially “open” question whether Section 1 of the Thirteenth Amendment directly bans the badges and incidents of slavery. Members of the Thirty-Ninth Congress agreed that Section 1 banned at least some of the badges and incidents; they parted company over which ones. The article argues for embracing the Republican broad...

This comment identifies the ways in which female lawyers continue to face discrimination even after they make partner and highlights a serious gap in current antidiscrimination law that perpetuates discrimination against female partners: Courts have interpreted Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to protect employees but not partners. The comment offers a solution that would bring female...

In Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. v. Dukes, the U.S. Supreme Court made clear that class certification requires evidentiary proof of prerequisites required by Rule 23 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. Yet the Court has not clarified whether the evidence offered must be admissible. This Comment addresses the split of lower courts on the issue and argues that the Federal Rules of Evidence need not...

Unlike in other digital arenas in which American companies are global leaders, the United States lags in consumer financial technology. The article argues that this effect can largely be attributed to the institutional design of federal regulators. Competition authority—including antitrust and the extension of business licenses—is spread across at least five agencies, none of which has the...

The U.S. Supreme Court has based requirements of standing and party adverseness on the “case-or-controversy” language of Article III and the history of judicial practice in England, but neither text nor history can bear the weight of justification. New research reveals that the term “case” extends more broadly to encompass what Roman and civilian jurists referred to as noncontentious jurisdiction...

Is the United States at risk of democratic backsliding? And would the Constitution prevent such decay? To many, the 2016 election campaign and the conduct of President Donald Trump may be the immediate catalyst for these questions. But structural changes to the socio-economic environment and geopolitical shifts are what make the question a truly pressing one. This article develops a taxonomy of...

In recent years, the use of economic sanctions—statutory fines, surcharges, administrative fees, and restitution—has exploded in courts across the country. Economic sanctions are imposed for violations as minor as jaywalking and as serious as homicide. Inability to pay the sanctions often leads to perpetual debt. This article posits that the Eighth Amendment’s Excessive Fines Clause may help...

This Article offers a defense of outsider, legal-political intervention and community triage in inner-city anti-poverty campaigns under circumstances of widespread urban social disorganization, public and private sector neglect, and nonprofit resource scarcity. In mounting this defense, the Article revisits the roles of lawyers, nonprofit legal services organizations, and university-housed law...

As immigration reform initiatives driven by established advocacy organizations in Washington, D.C., were successively defeated in the late mid to late 2000s, movement-centered organizations and newly created formations of undocumented youth mobilized against the federal-local immigration enforcement regime of the Bush and Obama administrations. Drawing on media, scholarly, and first person...

This Article explains how a particular area of Fourth Amendment law—stop-and-frisk jurisprudence—facilitates police violence against African Americans. The Article challenges the standard account of Terry v. Ohio— the case that constitutionalized stop-and-frisk—and argues that, in addition to eroding the probable cause standard on which Fourth Amendment law has historically rested, the...

In one of the most striking developments in American legal scholarship over the past quarter century, social movements have become central to the study of law. Why has this happened? To answer the question, this article provides an original account of progressive legal theory that reveals how the rise of social movements is a current response to an age-old problem: harnessing law as a force for...