State capture poses a distinctive challenge to democracy in the United States. As well-resourced individuals and interest groups exert ever-increasing influence over public policymaking, the American legal system loses its moorings in majority will and democratic faith. The costs of this process are borne by the poor and working classes. Unlike most public-law scholarship concerned with state capture, this Article surfaces potential remedies in the underutilized tools of state constitutional law. Drawing on state constitutional history and political-economic scholarship, it… Read More

Formerly incarcerated persons face disproportionately challenging barriers to housing upon reentry; criminal records are used as a basis to deny otherwise suitable prospective tenants. In 2017, the City of Seattle passed the “Fair Chance Housing Ordinance,” prohibiting landlords from relying on criminal history when evaluating prospective tenants. In 2023, the Ninth Circuit struck this provision down on the grounds that this complete ban violated Seattle landlords’ constitutionally protected free speech rights. The circuit court held that the ordinance implicated commercial… Read More

This Article examines the role of attorney Kenneth Chesebro in orchestrating the “fake electors plot” following the 2020 U.S. presidential election. It traces Chesebro’s transformation from a Harvard-educated lawyer with Democratic ties to a key architect of Donald Trump’s post-election strategy to derail the transfer of power to Joseph Biden. Part I provides a detailed chronology of Chesebro’s activities between November 2020 and January 2021, revealing how his legal advice evolved from preserving legal rights in Wisconsin to a coordinated… Read More

The tax rules governing investment in the United States offer very favorable treatment to foreign investors: the typical foreign investor pays no U.S. tax on passive investment in the United States. These tax rules have been shaped by the assumption that the United States needs to attract scarce financial capital to fill the gap between domestic saving and investment. But that assumption is wrong; global financial capital is not scarce. Over the past three decades, regressive economic policies abroad have… Read More

The United States is the only industrialized nation lacking a universal paid sick leave law that guarantees employees the right to time off from work to attend to their own or their family’s medical needs. Nonetheless, many states and municipalities have created their own paid sick leave laws to fill in the gap left open by the federal government. Following the passage of three state referendums on paid sick leave laws in the 2024 general election, there are now eighteen… Read More

Bribery of government officials is as old as government itself.[1] Bribery plagued ancient Egypt and Israel.[2] In England, the Star Chamber bribery cases date back to the mid-1550s.[3] Edmund Burke denounced the corrupt influence on Britain’s Parliament of the East India Company and its even greater corruption of local officials in India.[4] After the 1773 Tea Act granted the same East India Company a monopoly on sale of tea in America,[5] colonists in Boston refused to buy it, insisted the… Read More

This Case Note will argue that the judge crucially erred in her decision. The judge’s departure from consumer price points, the antitrust norm, was too dramatic.  Specifically, the decision’s cited findings of increased concentration, history of collusion, and lack of efficiencies were much more correlated to book-reader harm as opposed to that of authors.  Furthermore, this Case Note explores the potential underlying rationale behind choosing to frame this action as protecting authors, evaluating why this approach fell short of its… Read More

After the first Trump administration, there were multiple coordinated efforts to discipline lawyers in highly charged political cases. For example, a California bar court recommended that John Eastman be disbarred. Eastman helped craft the legal argument that then-Vice President Mike Pence had the right to delay or decline to certify the election results, and the disciplinary case concluded that he lied publicly, in his memos to his client and Pence, and to courts. This Article draws on Eastman’s case to… Read More

This Article, along with a prior article, The Supreme Court and the Limits of Human Impartiality, publishedin the Hofstra Law Review,initially developed out of written and spoken testimony about Supreme Court ethics, transparency, and disclosure before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Federal Courts, where Senator Sheldon Whitehouse proposed the Supreme Court Ethics, Recusal, and Transparency Act to impose and enforce a code of ethics for the Supreme Court. Ensuring an Impartial Judiciary: Supreme Court Ethics, Recusal, and Transparency Act of… Read More