Missing Decisions
Significant numbers of federal appellate decisions are missing from Westlaw and Lexis. Bloomberg Law has similar, and similarly incomplete, coverage. Across most of the circuits, at least twenty-five percent or more of the courts’ self-reported merits terminations, which predominately include unpublished decisions, never make their way to these databases.
Since at least 2007, when a rule change permitted citation to unpublished decisions from the federal appellate courts, scholars widely have assumed that commercial databases for legal research capture nearly all—if not, in fact, all—federal appellate merits decisions whether designated for publication in the Federal Reporter or not. Although scholars have long considered how publication practices shape access to court decisions—especially at the district court level—this is the first work to analyze and document widespread shortcomings of commercial database access to unpublished federal appellate decisions.
The Radical-Incremental Change Debate, Racial Justice, and the Political Economy of Teachers’ Choice
Radical or incremental change? In this profound moment of racial reckoning, that is the fundamental question that divides those within the growing movement for racial justice. It is also a question at the crux of several essays in this important trans-journal symposium.
Race, Reckoning, Reform, and the Limits of the Law of Democracy
It is a moment of racial reckoning. It is not the first, it will not be the last, and it assures no restitution. But it is, nonetheless, a moment. As befits such moments, assorted conversations are occurring about the significance of race in American life and how to meaningfully improve Black lives. These conversations—debates might be the more accurate noun—have inspired calls for recompense and broad structural reforms. The Black Lives Matter movement, for example, advocates for reparations, police defunding, education reform, and a restructured political economy.
T-Tip Negotiations Round Two: An Opportunity to Redirect the Trajectory of International Investment Law
June 11, 2021• Comment
Over 2,500 international investment agreements govern trillions of dollars in foreign direct investment that crisscrosses the globe. Nonetheless, the international investment law regime formed by those agreements faces a legitimacy crisis. Critics argue that international investment treaties’ dispute-resolution mechanisms favor foreign investors and that their substantive obligations undermine countries’ sovereignty. As the world’s largest exporters and recipients of foreign direct investment, the European Union and United States hold the keys to reform. Until now, however, they have differed on solutions. A well-designed investment chapter in a free trade agreement between the European Union and United States could simultaneously resolve those differences and redirect the trajectory of international investment law.