Race in Contract Law
Modern contract law is rife with ideas about race and slavery and cases involving African Americans, but that presence is very hard to see. This Article recovers a hidden history of race in contract law, from its formative era in the 1870s, through the Realist critiques of the early 1900s to the diverse intellectual movements of the 1970s and 80s. Moving beyond recent accounts of “erasure,” and complementing Critical Race Theorists’ insights about law’s role in constructing, naturalizing, and justifying racial inequality, the Article offers a historically rich account of when, where, and why legal professionals have highlighted race in contract law.
Disenfranchisement, Democracy, and Incarceration: A Legislative End to Felony Disenfranchisement in United States Prisons
“I believe that everyone, and I mean everyone, deserves their right to vote.” Antonio Lancaster, voting for the first time in the November 2020 election, has been incarcerated since 2003 following an armed robbery conviction. At age nineteen, he lost his right to vote before he was ever able to use it. Then, Lancaster became one the first Washington D.C. residents to cast an absentee ballot while incarcerated following the July 2020 passage of emergency criminal justice reform legislation. This legislation ended the practice of felony disenfranchisement—the practice of barring an individual who has been convicted of a felony from casting a vote in political elections — in the District of Columbia. Because D.C. has no federal prison, residents convicted of felonies are sent to federal prisons across the country. Lancaster, currently serving his sentence in a Kansas prison, noted that fellow inmates are jealous of his reinstated right to vote: “When we talk about voting, they’re like, ‘You don’t know how lucky you are.’”
The Peace Powers: How to End a War
The Constitution seems silent about who may end a war and how they may do so.
There is no “declare peace” clause, and scholarship has long neglected this matter. Yet
given two “Forever Wars,” considerable fatigue with both, and numerous demands to
end them, the question of how to end hostilities is exceptionally salient. We conduct an
overdue dissection and reveal that the Constitution charts many paths to peace.
To Catch a Snooping Spouse: Reevaluating the Roots of the Spousal Wiretap Exception in the Digital Age
Marriage is, and continues to be, a reactive institution. Although the
origins of marriage date back over 6000 years, the marital relationship is
continuously shaped by widely held social, economic, and legal views regarding
the rights available to those party to the union. As these views change over time,
the way partners interact with one another privately and publicly also changes.
Unknown Unknowns: Why We Need More Information About How the Government Stifles the Right to Receive Information from Foreigners Online
December 1, 2022• Comment
The First Amendment right to receive information ensures that where speakers are free to speak, listeners receive their speech. In theory,...
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