Baude on Beyond Tit-For-Tat

William Baude (University of Chicago Law School) has posted The Jerome Hall Lecture: Beyond Tit-For-Tat on SSRN. Here is the abstract: Constitutional law is about setting the rules of the game, naturally posing the question of what incentive parties have to obey these rules over time and what they should do if the other side does not. The “tit-for-tat” strategy, popularized from various game theoretic accounts, provides a powerful story of how targeted retaliation can promote long-term rule-following.

legaltheoryblog.com

Braver & Somin on the State Constitutional Case Against Exclusionary Zoning

Joshua Braver (University of Wisconsin Law School) and Ilya Somin (George Mason University – Antonin Scalia Law School) have posted The State Constitutional Case Against Exclusionary Zoning o…

legaltheoryblog.com

Lerner et al. on Chinese Sputnik Moments

Josh Lerner (Harvard Business School), Namrata Narain (Harvard University), Dimitris Papanikolaou (Kellogg School of Management), Amit Seru (Stanford University), and Zunda Winston Xu (Stanford Graduate School of Business) have posted Chinese Sputnik Moments? on SSRN. Here is the abstract: China’s technological progress in recent decades has been viewed with admiration, alarm, and (in some cases) doubt. To better understand the Chinese innovation ecosystem, we compile a dataset of almost 14 million domestic Chinese patent publications.

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Braver & Somin on the State Constitutional Case Against Exclusionary Zoning

Joshua Braver (University of Wisconsin Law School) and Ilya Somin (George Mason University - Antonin Scalia Law School) have posted The State Constitutional Case Against Exclusionary Zoning on SSRN. Here is the abstract: Exclusionary zoning is the biggest cause of the housing crisis besetting many parts of the United States. This Article shows how state constitutions can be used to combat it through two complementary paths: litigation under existing constitutional provisions and constitutional amendment.

legaltheoryblog.com

Capitalism (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

The case can be made that a more contested concept than capitalism does not exist. There is no agreement upon how or whether to define it. Many would identify capitalism with an economic system where…

buff.ly

Gottesman on Immigration Federalism and the Promise of State Constitutions

Joanne Gottesman (Rutgers Law School) has posted Immigration Federalism and the Promise of State Constitutions on SSRN. Here is the abstract: This Article explores state constitutions’ promises and pitfalls for immigrant rights advocacy. This is a particularly urgent endeavor, given the anti-immigrant measures of President Trump’s second term and a U.S. Supreme Court that is willing to reverse longstanding precedent. Even cases like Plyler v.

legaltheoryblog.com

A Timely Reminder that Power Moves Even in the Mundane - Property

K-Sue Park, Property and Sovereignty in America: A History of Title Registries & Jurisdictional Power, 133 Yale L.J. 1487 (2024).Lisa OwensIn K-Sue Park’s Property and Sovereignty in America: A…

property.jotwell.com

Suttle on Why a Large Language Model Cannot Explain Itself

Oisin Suttle (Maynooth University) has posted Why a Large Language Model cannot Explain itself: Explanation, Justification and Artificial Intelligence in Judicial and Administrative Decision-making on SSRN. Here is the abstract: Judges and administrative decision-makers are expected to explain themselves, giving reasons for their decisions. While the emergence of large language models has prompted renewed interest in the use of AI tools in judicial and administrative settings, existing scholarship identifies the ‘black box’ nature of machine learning tools as impeding transparency and reason-giving.

legaltheoryblog.com

Hammond on Welfare Litigation, State Courts, and Social Citizenship

Andrew Hammond (Indiana University Maurer School of Law) has posted Welfare Litigation, State Courts, and Social Citizenship on SSRN. Here is the abstract: For half a century, federal courts have stood at the center of welfare rights enforcement. That era is ending. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act’s historic cuts to Medicaid and SNAP will generate an avalanche of benefit terminations, work requirement sanctions, and overpayment actions from state agencies.

legaltheoryblog.com

Bhaduri & Dhonchak on Antitrust as Antidiscrimination

Anik Bhaduri (University of Oxford) and Anupriya Dhonchak (Faculty of Law, University of Oxford) have posted Antitrust as Antidiscrimination: Competition Law Remedies Against Gender Wage Discrimination on SSRN. Here is the abstract: In recent years, competition authorities across the world have departed from their historical reluctance to engage with labour markets and are increasingly focusing on limiting the ability of employers to exploit workers in their pursuit of profits.

legaltheoryblog.com

Di Gennaro Splendore & Sanchez on Democracy, Data, and Development

Luca Di Gennaro Splendore (University of Malta, Faculty of Banking and Finance) and Sevastian Sanchez (Columbia University, School of International & Public Affairs) have posted Untangling the Relationship Between Democracy, Data, and Development: A Dynamic Two-Stage Analysis of the Sustainable Development Goals on SSRN. Here is the abstract: As democratic institutions weaken globally, this paper investigates whether year-to-year fluctuations in democracy levels correspond to similar deviations in statistical capacity—a country’s ability to produce reliable statistics for policymaking.

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Campos & Bradt on the Ordinary and Extraordinary in Mass Tort Litigation

Sergio J. Campos (Boston College Law School) and Andrew Bradt (University of California, Berkeley) have posted The Ordinary and Extraordinary in Mass Tort Litigation (Cornell Law Review, Vol. 110, pp. 1823-1854) on SSRN. Here is the abstract: Mass torts have inspired a number of innovative procedural approaches. They include creative uses of class actions, multidistrict litigation (“MDL”) and, more recently, the bankruptcy system.

legaltheoryblog.com

Rothschild on Administrative Law & Scientific Knowledge

Rachel Rothschild (University of Michigan Law School) has posted A New Administrative Law for the Production of Scientific Knowledge (Forthcoming, Building Democratic Capacity: Essays on Administrative Law’s Futures, Cambridge University Press) on SSRN. Here is the abstract: Federal support for scientific research has paid enormous dividends to Americans from the mid-20th century to today. Investments in science have led to rapid advances in knowledge that have improved living standards, public health, and national security.

legaltheoryblog.com

MacGuidwin on Mootness Doctrine at the Founding

Scott MacGuidwin (Stanford Constitutional Law Center) has posted Mootness Doctrine at the Founding (NYU Journal of Law and Liberty (forthcoming 2026)) on SSRN. Here is the abstract: Modern mootness doctrine lacks a strong originalist foundation. The traditional narrative describes mootness as part and parcel of the prohibition on “advisory opinions.” At the Founding and for generations before and after, the prohibition on advisory opinions targeted a narrower evil: prejudging disputes in ways that could bind judges’ hands in later, concrete cases.

legaltheoryblog.com

Rangel-Medina & Symes on Blood, Soil, & Race

Evelyn Rangel-Medina and Hilary Symes (both Temple University Beasley School of Law) have posted Blood, Soil, and Race: The Perils of Shredding the Fourteenth Amendment on SSRN. Here is the abstract: At the center of a generationally defining battle lies the Fourteenth Amendment, which played a key role in ending slavery, ostensibly repudiating systems of inherited legal status. Slavery was partly sustained by the doctrine of partus sequitur ventrem, which used maternal lineage as the primary mechanism for denying citizenship to Black people for over three centuries.

legaltheoryblog.com

Mukherjee on Emergency Powers as Precedent

Debdeep Mukherjee (Harvard University - Harvard Law School) has posted Emergency Powers As Precedent: The Ratchet Thesis Revisited on SSRN. Here is the abstract: The claim that emergency powers, once granted, are never fully surrendered has become a fixed point in constitutional theory, invoked as readily as it is left untested. Posner and Vermeule argue that the ratchet thesis fails because it identifies no mechanism explaining why some emergency powers persist while others recede.

legaltheoryblog.com

Dickinson on Stopword Removal & Legal Text-as-Data

Gregory M. Dickinson (University of Nebraska at Lincoln - College of Law) has posted Stop Removing Stopwords: How an Inherited Preprocessing Default Distorts Legal Text-as-Data on SSRN. Here is the abstract: Empirical legal scholarship increasingly treats judicial text as data, and much of it still runs on sparse, interpretable pipelines—TF-IDF features and linear classifiers—because the textual feature is often the object of study, not merely a means to a prediction.

legaltheoryblog.com

Meers on AI Slop in the Administrative State

Jed Meers (University of York) has posted ‘Chucking Their Stuff into ChatGPT and Hitting Send’: AI Slop in the Administrative State on SSRN. Here is the abstract: Most research on AI in the administrative state focuses on its use by officials. This paper addresses a comparatively neglected issue: the impact of the use of AI tools by the public themselves. Drawing on a qualitative survey with over 500 UK civil servants, it argues that AI use by the public is increasingly disrupting the front-line of the administrative state.

legaltheoryblog.com

Szigeti on Arendt, Rightlessness, & the Right to Have Rights

Péter D. Szigeti (University of Turku) has posted Hannah Arendt’s Doppelgängers: The Creation of Rightlessness and the Right to Have (Private) Rights on SSRN. Here is the abstract: After decades of thinking about how to expand the protections of human rights to all of humanity, today the opposite is taking place: the creation of rightlessness is back in vogue. The undocumented—illegal immigrants, stateless persons and refugees—are in the vanguard for dispossessing and deporting large numbers of residents; others may follow later.

legaltheoryblog.com

Roberts on the Implied Freedom and the First Amendment

Jemimah Roberts (Macquarie Law School) has posted The Implied Freedom and the First Amendment: Revisiting Use of United States Free Speech Doctrine After Babet, Ravbar, and Farmer on SSRN. Here is the abstract: In 2025, the High Court handed down three significant decisions on the implied freedom of political communication: Babet v Commonwealth; Palmer v Commonwealth, Ravbar v Commonwealth, and Farmer v Minister for Home Affairs.

legaltheoryblog.com

Al-Rawi & Fann on the “Why” Inquiry After Bruen

Jordan Al-Rawi (USC Gould School of Law) and Hutchinson Fann (J.D. Stanford Law School) have posted Reading Laws, Not Minds: The “Why” Inquiry After Bruen (Wash. U. L. Rev. Online Vol. 104 (forthcoming 2026)) on SSRN. Here is the abstract: This Essay identifies a tension at the center of the Supreme Court’s post-Bruen Second Amendment doctrine. In other areas of the law, the Court rejects legislative history and subjective legislative intent, insisting that judges “read words, not minds.” But under Bruen’s second step, courts must ask “why” historical firearm regulations burdened the right to keep and bear arms.

legaltheoryblog.com

Bronsther on Direct Sanctions for Autonomous AI

Jacob Bronsther (Michigan State University - College of Law) has posted When the Cheapest Cost Avoider Is the Machine: Direct Sanctions for Autonomous AI on SSRN. Here is the abstract: The scholarship on artificial intelligence and legal liability assumes that the cheapest cost avoider is always a human being: a designer, deployer, or user. This Article identifies the conditions under which that premise fails.

legaltheoryblog.com

Boone on the Pregnancy Draft

Meghan Boone (Wake Forest University - School of Law) has posted The Pregnancy Draft (SMU Law Review, Vol. 79, 2026) on SSRN. Here is the abstract: By severely limiting or outright banning abortion, states are requiring pregnant people to perform reproductive labor in the service of the state’s own interests. Unwilling pregnant people are compelled, through the force of law, to continue their pregnancies—to perform a task that is difficult, dangerous, and fundamentally alters their life’s course.

legaltheoryblog.com

A court trapped in amber

Type to search articles, cases, and authors.

scotusblog.com

Siegel on History, Memory, and Originalism

Reva B. Siegel (Yale Law School) has posted History or Memory?: Claims on the Past in Constitutional Argument Over Originalism, Civil War/Reconstruction, and MAGA (36 Yale Journal of Law and Humanities 479 (2026)) on SSRN. Here is the abstract: Why distinguish between history and memory in constitutional law? It helps clarify the authority of the past in constitutional argument. When we ask “what happened?” in arguments over the Constitution, we are often answering the question “what are we to do?” Our concerns are normative as well as positive.

legaltheoryblog.com

10 lateral moves announced in 2025-26 that made law professors take notice

Based on my in-box and conversations with others, these were 10 moves that transpired this past year that were thought to be the biggest hiring coups: *Alejandro Camacho (environmental law, natural…

leiterreports.com

Chévere Lugo on Human Dignity & State Constitutions

Carlos Chévere Lugo (St. Mary’s University - School of Law) has posted Human Dignity Beyond Due Process: State Constitutions as Laboratories of Human Worth on SSRN. Here is the abstract: Human dignity, though absent from the text of the United States Constitution, has become a recurring theme in the jurisprudence of state constitutions. While the federal Supreme Court has invoked the concept of dignity rhetorically, offering little doctrinal grounding, state constitutions have increasingly incorporated dignity provisions as explicit or implicit sources of substantive rights.

legaltheoryblog.com

Wall on the Critical Legal Praxis of Costas Douzinas

Illan Rua Wall (University of Galway - School of Law) has posted ‘The Critical (Legal) Praxis of Costas Douzinas’ on SSRN. Here is the abstract: Douzinas’ work is made up of shards of critique that lacerate structures of power, legal orders, political regimes and economic apparatuses. Piecing these shards together does not give us a complete theory, but this chapter argues that it does contain a singular critical praxis.

legaltheoryblog.com