Category: Issue 4

Article

Cop Tracing

Jonathan Abel, Associate Professor, University of California, Hastings College of the Law

What happens to an officer’s old cases when that officer is exposed as corrupt? Often, the answer is nothing. This Article calls for “cop tracing”: an effort to identify and investigate the past cases handled by dishonest cops. The Article first describes the existing action and inaction with respect to such tracing. Next, it examines…

Aug 2022

Article

Voter Data, Democratic Inequality, and the Risk of Political Violence

Bertrall L. Ross II, Justice Thurgood Marshall Distinguished Professor of Law, University of Virginia & Douglas M. Spencer, Associate Professor of Law, University of Colorado, Boulder

Campaigns’ increasing reliance on data-driven canvassing has coincided with a disquieting trend in American politics: a stark gap in voter turnout between the rich and poor. Turnout among the poor has remained low in modern elections despite legal changes that have dramatically decreased the cost of voting. In this Article, we present evidence that the…

Aug 2022

Article

Free Exercise Partisanship

Zalman Rothschild, Nonresident fellow at the Stanford Constitutional Law Center; Nonresident fellow at the University of Lucerne; Adjunct Professor of Law at New York University School of Law. J.D., magna cum laude, Harvard Law School; Ph.D., New York University; M.A., Yeshiva University.

This Article presents new data demonstrating that, in contrast to earlier periods, recent judicial decision-making in free exercise cases tracks political affiliation to a significant degree. The trend toward increased free exercise partisanship is starkly manifested by free exercise cases borne out of the COVID-19 pandemic: a survey of federal court decisions pertaining to free…

Aug 2022

Note

Eating High on the Humanely Raised Hog: State Bans on Selling Food Produced Using Cruel Animal Farming Methods Do Not Violate The Dormant Commerce Clause

Emma Horne, Cornell Law School, J.D. 2021.

Most states’ laws minimally protect farmed animal welfare. However, a growing minority of states have enacted food-related sales bans that are designed to improve the lives of farmed animals nationwide. These sales bans are passed by states as a means to eliminate inhumane confinement of farmed animals. For example, California has enacted Proposition 12, which…

Aug 2022

Note

Insanity Step Zero: A Modern Application of M’Naghten’s Question Four Test

Michael G. Mills, J.D., Cornell Law School, 2021; B.A., Siena College, 2018.

Defendants suffering from delusion currently are subject to inequitable treatment in our criminal justice system. They can genuinely believe, due to a delusion, that a person right in front of them has a gun and is about to kill them. Acting in what they believe is self-defense, they can draw a gun and kill their…

Aug 2022