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Category: Issue 5

Article

Where is Statutory Law?

Jesse M. Cross

Associate Professor, University of South Carolina School of Law.

Textualism has become the ascendant method of statutory interpretation on the Court, and it is rapidly reshaping the entire judiciary. Yet we still do not understand the “text” in textualism. This is part of a broader failure in legislative studies: we lack a basic understanding of the texts that comprise our statutory law. As this…

Sep 2023

Article

Building Better Species: Assisted Evolution, Genetic Engineering, and the Endangered Species Act

John A. Erwin

Assistant Professor at Florida International University College of Law.

On December 10, 2020, Elizabeth Ann, a black-footed ferret, was born. This was a momentous occasion, as it was the first time a native species listed under the Endangered Species Act (“ESA”) had been cloned. This is the first major attempt to use biotechnology to aid in the conservation of an endangered species, but it…

Sep 2023

Article

Vigilante Federalism

Jon D. Michaels & David L. Noll

Professor of Law, UCLA School of law & Associate Dean for Faculty Research and Development and Professor of Law, Rutgers Law School.

In battles over abortion, religion, sexuality, gender, and race, state legislatures are mass producing a new weapon. From Texas’s S.B. 8 to book bans and a flurry of bills empowering parents to sue schools that acknowledge LGBTQ+ identities or implement anti-racist curricula, state legislatures are enacting laws that call on private parties—and sometimes only private…

Sep 2023

Note

A Site to Save a Life: The Case for Lobbying Congress to Restrict the Department of Justice from Targeting Supervised Drug Consumption Sites

Trevor Thompson

J.D., Cornell Law School 2022; B.A. Columbia University, 2018.

This Note will begin with an overview of fentanyl’s role in exacerbating the opioid crisis that has now claimed over a million American lives. It will then offer a partial explanation for why the crisis has gotten worse over the past few years: the Food and Drug Administration’s (“FDA”) refusal to initiate a prescription to…

Sep 2023