Articles Category
Religion as Disobedience
May. 31, 2023—Xiao Wang | 76 Vand. L. Rev. 999 Religion today offers plaintiffs a ready path to disobey laws without consequence. Examples of such disobedience abound. In the past few years alone, courts have enjoined vaccine mandates, invalidated stay-at-home orders, and set aside antidiscrimination laws protecting same-sex couples. During the 2021–2022 Term, plaintiffs relied once again...
Polysemy and the Law
May. 31, 2023—Daniel J. Hemel | 76 Vand. L. Rev. 1067 Polysemy—the existence of multiple related meanings for the same word or phrase—is a frequent phenomenon in legal and lay language. Although polysemy sometimes arises by accident, it also can be strategic: framers of legal rules can advance private and public interests by assigning meanings to terms...
White-Collar Courts
May. 31, 2023—Merritt E. McAlister | 76 Vand. L. Rev. 1155 Article III courts are white-collar courts. They are, scholars have said, “special.” They sit atop the judicial hierarchy, and they are the courts of the one percent. We inculcate that sense of specialness in a variety of ways: federal courts are courts of limited jurisdiction; they...
Reliance Interests in Statutory and Constitutional Interpretation
Apr. 26, 2023—William N. Eskridge Jr. | 76 Vand. L. Rev. 681 People and companies rely on public law when they plan their activities; society relies on legal entitlements when it adapts to new technology, economic conditions, and social groups; legislators, administrators, and judges rely on settled law when they pass, implement, and interpret statutes (respectively). Such...
Evaluating Antitrust Remedies for Platform Monopolies: The Case of Facebook
Apr. 26, 2023—Seth G. Benzell & Felix B. Chang | 76 Vand. L. Rev. 773 This Article advances a framework to assess antitrust remedies and policy interventions for platform monopolies. As prosecutors and regulators barrel forward against digital platforms, soon it will fall upon courts and administrative agencies to devise remedies. We argue that any sensible solution...
Adapting Private Law for Climate Change Adaptation
Apr. 26, 2023—Jim Rossi & J.B. Ruhl | 76 Vand. L. Rev. 827 The private law of torts, property, and contracts will and should play an important role in resolving disputes regarding how private individuals and entities respond to and manage the harms of climate change that cannot be avoided through mitigation (known in climate change policy...
Efficiency and Equity in Regulation
Mar. 28, 2023—Caroline Cecot | 76 Vand. L. Rev. 361 The Biden Administration has signaled an interest in ensuring that regulations appropriately benefit vulnerable and disadvantaged communities. Prior presidential administrations since at least the Reagan Administration have focused on ensuring that regulations are efficient, maximizing the net benefits to society as a whole, without considering who benefits...
Humans in the Loop
Mar. 28, 2023—Rebecca Crootof, Margot E. Kaminski & W. Nicholson Price II | 76 Vand. L. Rev. 429 From lethal drones to cancer diagnostics, humans are increasingly working with complex and artificially intelligent algorithms to make decisions which affect human lives, raising questions about how best to regulate these “human-in-the-loop” systems. We make four contributions to the...
The Limits of Portfolio Primacy
Mar. 28, 2023—Roberto Tallarita | 76 Vand. L. Rev. 511 According to the “portfolio primacy” theory, large asset managers, and in particular large index funds, can and will undertake the role of “climate stewards” and will push corporations to reduce their carbon footprint. This theory is based on the view that index fund portfolios mirror the entire...
Congress’s Anti-Removal Power
Jan. 27, 2023—Aaron L. Nielson & Christopher J. Walker | 76 Vand. L. Rev. 1 Statutory restrictions on presidential removal of agency leadership enable agencies to act independently from the White House. Yet since 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court has held two times that such restrictions are unconstitutional precisely because they prevent the President from controlling policymaking...
Constitutional Limits on the Imposition and Revocation of Probation, Parole, and Supervised Release After Haymond
Jan. 27, 2023—Nancy J. King | 76 Vand. L. Rev. 83 In its Apprendi line of cases, the Supreme Court has held that any fact found at sentencing (other than prior conviction) that aggravates the punishment range otherwise authorized by the conviction is an “element” that must be proved beyond a reasonable doubt to a jury. Whether...
Felony Financial Disenfranchisement
Jan. 27, 2023—Neel U. Sukhatme, Alexander Billy & Gaurav Bagwe | 76 Vand. L. Rev. 143 Individuals with prior felony convictions often must complete all terms of their sentence before they regain voter eligibility. Many jurisdictions include legal-financial obligations (“LFOs”)—fines, fees, and/or restitution stemming from convictions—in the terms of the sentence. Twenty-eight states, governing over 182 million...
Abortion, Pregnancy Loss, & Subjective Fetal Personhood
Nov. 22, 2022—Greer Donley & Jill Wieber Lens | 75 Vand. L. Rev. 1649 Long-standing dogma dictates that recognizing pregnancy loss threatens abortion rights—acknowledging that miscarriage and stillbirth involve the loss of something valuable, the theory goes, creates a slippery slope to fetal personhood. For decades, antiabortion advocates have capitalized on this tension and weaponized the grief...
Regulating Global Stablecoins: A Model-Law Strategy
Nov. 22, 2022—Steven L. Schwarcz | 75 Vand. L. Rev. 1729 Digital currencies have the potential to improve the speed and efficiency of the payment system. The principal challenge is retail: to facilitate day-to-day payments among consumers as an alternative to cash, both domestically and across national borders. Two models of digital currencies are becoming viable: central...
Executive Capture of Agency Decisionmaking
Nov. 22, 2022—Allison M. Whelan | 75 Vand. L. Rev. 1787 The scientific credibility of the administrative state is under siege in the United States, risking distressful public health harms and even deaths. This Article addresses one component of this attack—executive interference in agency scientific decisionmaking. It offers a new conceptual framework, “internal agency capture,” and policy...
Exponential Growth Bias and the Law: Why Do We Save Too Little, Borrow Too Much, and Fail to React on Time to Deadly Pandemics and Climate Change?
Oct. 20, 2022—Doron Teichman & Eyal Zamir | 75 Vand. L. Rev. 1345 Many human decisions, ranging from the taking of loans with compound interest to fighting deadly pandemics, involve phenomena that entail exponential growth. Yet a wide and robust body of empirical studies demonstrates that people systematically underestimate exponential growth. This phenomenon, dubbed the exponential growth...