The majority of carceral sentences in the United States include the possibility of discretionary release on parole. Most such sentences, however, are unconstitutionally vague. Their unconstitutionality has gone unnoticed because contemporary scholarship and litigation about vague laws have focused on the U.S. Constitution in lieu of state constitutions. This Article unearths historic state court decisions holding that sentences that end through the discretionary judgment of a parole board are “void for uncertainty.” Although state void for uncertainty doctrines share some similarity with the federal vagueness doctrine, they are far more demanding as applied to criminal punishment. By urging revival of the void for uncertainty doctrine, this Article outlines a novel path for state constitutional litigation and proposes how state legislatures can reform parole statutes to put them on sound constitutional footing.

Responses to the new Oversight Board created by Facebook (now Meta) have run the gamut from enthusiastic to overtly suspicious. Many observers are highly skeptical of the Board’s ability to hold Meta accountable or to protect the company’s users. Much of this skepticism is based on a misplaced analogy between the Board and domestic courts. We argue, in contrast, that the core challenges and opportunities that the Oversight Board faces are similar to those confronted by international human rights tribunals. Analyzing the Oversight Board as a de facto human rights tribunal sheds light on the strengths and weaknesses of its structure, decision-making, and potential future trajectory. Seen from this perspective, key design features that commentators have criticized are, in fact, strengths the Board is already using to expand its authority, develop human rights norms, and influence efforts to regulate social media platforms.
This Article is the first to examine the human rights origins of the Oversight Board, the similarities between the new body and international human rights tribunals, and how the Board is using human rights standards to pressure Meta to improve its content moderation policies and to inform ongoing efforts to regulate social media companies. We complement this analysis with a range of recommendations for the Board to become even more effective, as well as explore potential risks and challenges, including backlash, whitewashing, and negative spillover. Although a sanguine vision of the Board’s future is by no means assured, when viewed in light of the experience of international human rights tribunals, we conclude that the Board has the potential to serve as a meaningful check on Meta and to significantly advance the promotion and protection of human rights online.

For twenty-five years, state legislative efforts to legalize, tax, and regulate sports wagering were forestalled by a federal law that disallowed new states from legalizing sports wagering. This freeze on new state-sponsored sports wagering ended abruptly on May 14, 2018, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Murphy v. National Collegiate Athletic Ass’n that the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act violated the U.S. Constitution by impermissibly commandeering the states.
Since the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Murphy, there has been a rapid proliferation of legalized and regulated sports wagering throughout much of the United States. At present, thirty-five states allow for some form of legalized and regulated sports wagering, with most of these states allowing for sports wagering not only in the brick-and-mortar format but also online and on mobile applications.
This rapid proliferation of sports wagering, however, has not always gone perfectly. At present, some states enforce strict limits on the number of companies that are eligible to obtain sports wagering licenses. Other states have implemented hefty taxation schemes that have made it difficult for any licensed operator to turn a profit. Meanwhile, still other states have focused primarily on maximizing tax revenues while doing little, if anything, to protect the interests of consumers, including problem gamblers.
This Article provides an expert-level analysis of the emergent market for regulated sports wagering—examining the evolution of sports wagering before legalization, the Murphy decision, and the market for sports wagering since Murphy. The Article then proceeds to elucidate some of the high-profile failures of the present market for sports wagering and examines ways of ameliorating many of these failures.

This Article carefully untangles a complex web of confidentiality and privilege laws that are implicated by the collection, use, disclosure, and sale of reproductive health data post-Dobbs. After describing both common and anticipated fact patterns involving reproductive health information, this Article applies health information confidentiality laws, including the federal HIPAA Privacy Rule, state hospital licensing laws, state medical practice acts, state medical record privacy acts, state consumer data protection laws, recently introduced data protection legislation, and evidentiary privilege laws, to these fact patterns.

This Article considers the need for a similar Pregnancy Advance Directive to safeguard the interests of a pregnant patient who faces life-threatening circumstances but has lost decisional capacity.
Part I of this Article provides a general introduction to the various types of advance directives available in the United States, including their goals and limitations. Part II provides a detailed overview of pregnancy restrictions, including comparisons of the substantive restrictions, procedural issues, and rationales for restricting the application of advance directives during pregnancy. Part III offers a critical analysis of both the scholarship addressing pregnancy restrictions and the litigation seeking to challenge the restrictions, demonstrating that the existing legal framework has not been satisfactory in resolving the issues—a situation that will only be exacerbated by the Supreme Court’s recent decision to overrule Roe v. Wade.
Part IV offers an alternative. Taking a cue from those who advocate for the creation of special advance directives for early-stage Alzheimer’s patients, it is time to consider the creation of a Pregnancy Advance Directive: a targeted medical form addressing a patient’s wishes in the case of decisional incapacity during pregnancy, which could be completed only after the patient has become pregnant. Although it would not answer those critics who prioritize the interests of the fetus above all, it would address the concerns of those who fear prior directives may no longer reflect the new circumstances of pregnancy. It would also have the salutary effect of encouraging physicians to discuss these issues with their pregnant patients, leading to deeper consideration of the concerns and establishing a more detailed record in the event such a difficult decision must be made.

In Bluman v. FEC, the court held that foreign nationals could be prohibited from making even independent expenditures because such expenditures risked inappropriately influencing the choices made by American voters. The result in Bluman is correct, but the court’s reasoning is wrong. Foreign financing bans are constitutional not because foreign speech may “inappropriately” influence voters, but for the same reason all successful restrictions on political speech are constitutional: because of the risk they pose to the appearance or actuality of corrupting the conduct of public officials. The sense of indebtedness or ingratiation independent expenditures can induce in elected officials may be a contextually appropriate part of responsive self-government when done by domestic actors but has no place in the interactions between elected officials and foreign financiers and is well within the power of Congress to prevent.

The chances of winning an appeal in federal court are slim. One reason for that is an array of rules of appellate review that “stack the deck” in favor of the appellee and the lower court’s judgment. One such rule of review is “right for any reason,” the rule that an appellee may defend a lower court’s judgment on any grounds supported by the record—even grounds that the lower court rejected or ignored. The judgment may be right, even if the reasons are wrong. In 1924, the Supreme Court described the rule as “settled”—and felt no need to cite authority to support it—because the Court and other appellate courts had been applying the rule for nearly a century already, and commentators recognized the rule as a common feature of appellate review. This Article explains how “right for any reason” mitigates the strict technicality of writ-of-error analysis and promotes judicial economy by avoiding needless remand and relitigation where the outcome of a case is certain. Useful as this rule of review is in promoting judicial economy, however, it sometimes conflicts with other fundamental aspects of appellate review—including the principle that an appellate court is a court of review, not first view, and the principle of party presentation. To minimize such conflicts (because they cannot be avoided entirely), this Article argues that federal appellate courts should apply “right for any reason” as a discretionary, not a mandatory, rule of review; should not apply the rule when the appellee waived the alternative ground for affirmance; should raise alternative grounds sua sponte only in exceptional circumstances; and ordinarily should not consider alternative grounds that were not raised in the lower court in the first instance.