Search

Background The 2022 Supreme Court ruling in Dobbs v Jackson Women's Health Organization nullified the constitutional right to abortion, which led to effective bans in at least 14 US states and placed obstetrics and gynecology (OB/GYN) residents in dilemmas where they may have to withhold care, potentially causing moral distress—a health care workforce phenomenon less understood among resident physicians. Objective To identify and explore moral distress experienced by OB/GYN residents due to care restrictions post-Dobbs. Methods In 2023, we invited OB/GYN residents, identified by their program directors, training in states with restricted abortion access, to participate in one-on-one, semi-structured interviews via Zoom about their experiences caring for patients post-Dobbs. We used thematic analysis to analyze interview data. Results Twenty-one residents described their experiences of moral distress due to restrictions. We report on 3 themes in their accounts related to moral distress (and 4 subthemes): (1) challenges to their physician identity (inability to do the job, internalized distress, and reconsidering career choices); (2) participating in care that exacerbates inequities (and erodes patient trust); and (3) determination to advocate for and provide abortion care in the future. Conclusions OB/GYN residents grappled with moral distress and identified challenges from abortion restrictions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Disagreements persist regarding the neural basis of syntactic processing, which has been linked both to inferior frontal and posterior temporal regions of the brain. One focal point of the debate concerns the role of inferior frontal areas in receptive syntactic ability, which is mostly assessed using sentence comprehension involving complex syntactic structures, a task that is potentially confounded with working memory. Syntactic acceptability judgments may provide a better measure of receptive syntax by reducing the need to use high working memory load and complex sentences and by enabling assessment of various types of syntactic violations. We therefore tested the perception of grammatical violations by people with poststroke aphasia (n = 25), along with matched controls (n = 16), using English sentences involving errors in word order, agreement, or subcategorization. Lesion data were also collected. Control participants performed near ceiling in accuracy with higher discriminability of agreement and subcategorization violations than word order; aphasia participants were less able to discriminate violations, but, on average, paralleled control participants discriminability of types of violations. Lesion-symptom mapping showed a correlation between discriminability and posterior temporal regions, but not inferior frontal regions. We argue that these results diverge from models holding that frontal areas are amodal core regions in syntactic structure building and favor models that posit a core hierarchical system in posterior temporal regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to its intrinsic complexity and the principle of collective solidarity that governs it, solid organ transplantation (SOT) seems to have been spared from the increase in litigation related to medical activity. Litigation relating to solid organ transplantation that took place in the 29 units of the Assistance Publique-Hôpitaux de Paris and was the subject of a judicial decision between 2015 and 2022 was studied. A total of 52 cases of SOT were recorded, all in adults, representing 1.1% of all cases and increasing from 0.71% to 1.5% over 7 years. The organs transplanted were 25 kidneys (48%), 19 livers (37%), 5 hearts (9%) and 3 lungs (6%). For kidney transplants, 11 complaints (44%) were related to living donor procedures and 6 to donors. The main causes of complaints were early post-operative complications in 31 cases (60%) and late complications in 13 cases (25%). The verdicts were in favour of the institution in 41 cases (79%). Solid organ transplants are increasingly the subject of litigation. Although the medical institution was not held liable in almost 80% of cases, this study makes a strong case for patients, living donors and their relatives to be better informed about SOT. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a series of decisions—Free Enterprise Fund v. Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, Seila Law v. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and Collins v. Yellen—the Supreme Court struck down for-cause removal restrictions over agency heads. These rulings fault structural elements of the respective agency—double-layer protections or single directorships—for violating separation of powers because they insulate the agency from presidential review and oversight. But while the Court increasingly relies on agency structures to adjudicate constitutionality, separation of powers scholarship has focused on the division of powers into legislative, executive, and judicial functions. This Article supplies the missing account of separation of structures, and in the process defends the legitimacy of the administrative state against its critics. It argues that an emphasis on an agency’s institutional structure in adjudicating constitutionality is deeply rooted in constitutional design and the Founders’ reception of ancient Greek and Roman political philosophy. By introducing the link between institutional design and the Constitution, separation of structures sketches a doctrinal terrain of how judicial adjudications of agency structure could proceed beyond the formalist approach latent in the Court’s recent decisions. By shifting the doctrinal focus from the nature of political functions to the design of accountability mechanisms in governance structures, this Article provides strong support for the constitutionality of congressional delegation of legislative powers to agencies. This more capacious understanding of structural separation of powers accords with constitutional design and better accommodates the dynamic needs of modern regulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When the Supreme Court declined definitively to block Texas’s S.B. 8, which effectively eliminated pre-enforcement federal remedies for what was then a plainly unconstitutional restriction on abortion rights, a prominent criticism was that the majority would have never tolerated the similar treatment of preferred legal protections—like gun rights. This refrain reemerged when California enacted a copycat regime for firearms regulation. This theme sounds in the deep-rooted idea that judge-made law should adhere to generality and neutrality values requiring doctrines to derive justification from controlling a meaningful class of cases ascertained by objective legal criteria. This Article is about consistency, and inconsistency, in judicial decision-making—and more specifically, about the extent to which federal courts should provide similar opportunities to obtain relief for wrongs to discrete constitutional rights. The Article explores how a commitment to generality and neutrality values can translate into a paradigm promoting transsubstantivity (meaning consistent applicability across separate substantive concerns) for constitutional remedies (meaning rules for implementing and preventing or punishing the violation of constitutional rights)—and how the Supreme Court has deviated from this paradigm. Supported by an array of examples, the Article proposes a novel framework turning on the notion that remedial inconsistency can be transparent, translucent, or opaque given the clarity of doctrinal inconsistency. Prophylactic remedial doctrines (like the Miranda-warning mandate and First Amendment overbreadth) are transparently inconsistent, for instance, because they apply differently to discrete rights on their faces. And indeterminate remedial standards (like the political question doctrine for justiciability and the “plan of the Convention” doctrine for state sovereign immunity) are opaquely inconsistent because discerning their variable character requires inductive analysis of actual applications. After these descriptive claims, the Article proceeds to a normative examination of how this framework could help improve judicial approaches to constitutional remedies—while recognizing that non-transsubstantive doctrines are desirable in many circumstances. Courts, for example, should work to make doctrines of opaque and translucent inconsistency more transparent so that appropriate institutional actors can more easily assess, affirm, alter, or abandon them. And judges should consider the risk of introducing unnecessary elements of opaque inconsistency before relying on overdeterminative reasoning to reach otherwise established results. Among additional contributions, by providing innovative tools for centering remedial consistency as an important—but not absolute—aspect of constitutional law, this Article offers a potential step toward decreasing perceptions of the Supreme Court’s work as pervasively political, thereby reinforcing its legitimacy at this time of widespread skepticism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure have issues--148 issues to be exact. Although the Rules use the term "issue" throughout their text, they do not use it in the same way each time. In some circumstances, the meaning of "issue" is made clear by surrounding context, minimizing any interpretive difficulty. But sometimes context does not clarify the term's meaning, creating interpretive challenges. This Article argues that the ambiguous term "issue" found in Federal Rules of Civil Procedure 50 and 52 is best read to mean a "dispute of fact." This reading best comports with judicial interpretations of Rules 50 and 52, best fits their history and purpose, and best connects them with conceptually related rules of civil procedure. In order to eliminate the ambiguity of the term "issue"--and avoid future interpretive difficulties--Rules 50 and 52 should be amended to clarify their meaning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For decades, legal academics have complained about a conflict between history and the doctrine of Article III standing. First in Spokeo, Inc. v. Robins (2016) and then notably in TransUnion LLC v. Ramirez (2021), Justice Clarence Thomas presented a halfway resolution. Justice Thomas grounded Article III standing in a historical distinction between private and public rights. Suits for violations of private rights would require no showing of concrete injury in fact. Suits for violations of public rights would require the injury in fact showing of special damage, a term borrowed from the public nuisance tort. This Article questions the Thomas retention of injury in fact for public rights. Part I explains Justice Thomas's nuanced approach to Article III standing. Part II investigates old English and early American materials on special damage to flesh out the meaning of Justice Thomas's requirement for public rights standing. The upshot is a lack of historical consensus on the content of the special damage standard. The materials do not align on a precise standard, making it difficult, either as a matter of 1788 original meaning or later liquidation, to operationalize Justice Thomas's special damage requirement. Part III argues that there are good reasons to doubt that the requirement of special damage is constitutionally relevant to the original meaning of Article III. The Framers did not discuss special damage in connection to Article III. Most of the relevant cases are from state courts, which are not bound by Article III. The traditional rationale for the special damage requirement does not have constitutional significance. And it seems implausible that the Constitution incorporated a legal doctrine in such flux without textual indication. The Article concludes with a critique of the current Supreme Court's lack of concern for originalism in standing doctrine. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In June 2022, the Supreme Court held in Vega v. Tekoh that a failure to read a suspect their Miranda rights before questioning them does not provide a basis for a claim under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. Experts predict that this decision will disproportionately affect youth, who are more psychologically vulnerable to coercive interrogation tactics. However, no scholars have yet proposed any ways to mitigate this impact. This Note explores potential changes to Fifth Amendment doctrine that would safeguard youths' ability to obtain a remedy following a Fifth Amendment violation. It explains that while the voluntariness test gives many youths hope of securing a remedy for a Miranda violation, the current voluntariness doctrine will not protect all youth whose un-Mirandized statements are admitted in court. Furthermore, while protecting youths' Miranda rights is necessary, Miranda alone is not sufficient to uphold youths' rights because youth struggle to understand Miranda warnings and waive Miranda at very high rates. In light of these issues, this Note proposes three changes to Fifth Amendment doctrine. First, courts should adopt a rule that statements made by youth in custody without a parent, guardian, or lawyer present are per se involuntary. Additionally, courts should hold that un-Mirandized statements by youths in custody are per se involuntary. Finally, courts should allow youths to bring a lawsuit under § 1983 for the admission of an un-Mirandized statement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Covariation judgment underlies a diversity of psychological theories and influences various everyday decisions. Information about covariation can be learned from either a summary description of frequencies (i.e., contingency tables) or trial‐by‐trial experience (i.e., sampling individual instances). Two studies were conducted to investigate the impact of information learning mode (i.e., description vs. self‐truncated sampling) on covariation judgment and related decision. In each trial under the description condition, participants were presented with a contingency table with explicit cell frequencies, whereas in each trial under the self‐truncated sampling condition, participants were allowed to determine when to stop sampling instances and thus the actual sample size. To eliminate sampling error, an other‐yoked (i.e., between‐subject) design was used in this research so that cell frequencies shown in a trial under the description condition were matched with those experienced in a trial under the self‐truncated sampling condition. Experiment 1 showed that the self‐truncated sampling condition led to more moderate covariation judgments than the description condition (i.e., a description–experience gap). Experiment 2 demonstrated further that the same gap extended to covariation‐related decisions in terms of relative contingent preference (RCP). Regressive frequency estimation under self‐truncated sampling appeared to underlie the consistent gaps found in the two studies, whereas the impact of regressive diagnosticity (i.e., the same sample of instances was viewed as less diagnostic under description than under self‐truncated sampling) or simultaneous overestimation and underweighting of rare instances under experience was not supported by the observed data. Future research might examine alternative accounts of the observed gaps, such as the impacts of belief updating and stopping rule under self‐truncated sampling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the 2023 case 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis, the United States Supreme Court was asked to decide whether a Colorado web designer could post a notice informing consumers of her unwillingness--based on her devout Christian beliefs--to design wedding websites for same-sex couples. The Court ultimately ruled for the web designer, holding that Colorado could not use its antidiscrimination laws to prevent the web designer from exercising her First Amendment right to free speech. Written prior to the Court's decision, this Article explores the background of the case, analyzes each party's arguments, and recommends that the Court set aside its biased attitude toward to the advancement of Christianity and rule that Colorado's anti-discrimination laws forbid the unjust treatment of LGBTQ+ individuals in the name of religion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With textualism's ascendancy, courts increasingly invoke the canon to assume "ordinary meaning" unless the context indicates otherwise and the rule to enforce "plain meaning" regardless of extratextual considerations. Yet the relationship between ordinary meaning and plain meaning can become confused in practice. Courts use the terms interchangeably, and they conflate them doctrinally. Ordinary meaning and plain meaning are distinct. Ordinary meaning is what the text would convey to a reasonable English user in the context of everyday communication. Plain meaning refers to a judgment that whatever the text conveys in context is clear from the text. Thus, a term's ordinary meaning is also its plain meaning only when it is clear from how the term is used in the statute that its context is ordinary, as opposed to technical. Courts conflate the two, however, when they assume ordinary meaning under the ordinary meaning canon and then conclude that they are therefore bound to enforce that meaning under the plain meaning rule. As a result, they end interpretation prematurely, excluding extratextual aids that might well show that the ordinary meaning assumption should give way. This Article is the first to investigate the relationship between ordinary meaning and plain meaning. It clarifies their differences, identifies the ways in which they are conflated, and evaluates when they should converge. For textualists, greater clarity on this score illuminates when and how to bring ordinary meaning and plain meaning together in a principled manner. For methodological pluralists, understanding the gap between ordinary meaning and plain meaning opens opportunities to argue beyond the text in our increasingly textualist world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Neurological evidence is increasingly used in criminal cases to argue that a defendant is less responsible for their behaviour, is not competent to stand trial or should receive a reduced punishment for the crime. Unfortunately, neurologists are rarely involved in such cases despite having the expertise to help to inform these decisions in court. In this Perspective, we advocate for the development of 'forensic neurology', a subspecialty of neurology focused on using neurological clinical and scientific expertise to address legal questions for the criminal justice system. We review literature suggesting that the incidence of criminal behaviour is higher in people with certain neurological disorders than the general public and that undiagnosed neurological abnormalities are common in people who commit crimes. We discuss the need for forensic neurologists in criminal cases to provide an opinion on what neurological diagnoses are present, the resulting symptoms and ultimately whether the symptoms affect legal determinations such as criminal responsibility or competency. In this Perspective, the authors discuss the need for neurologists to assist in court cases involving criminal behaviour that was potentially influenced by a neurological disorder. The authors review evidence linking neurological disorders with criminal activity, and advocate for the development of forensic neurology as a subspecialty of the field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the nonviolent nature of human rights adjudication, arguing that courts can succeed without coercion by inspiring voluntary compliance through moral conviction. It examines the limitations of human rights courts in enforcing their judgments, explores different scholarly perspectives on international law's effectiveness, and proposes the concept of adjudication as world building.

A deluge is coming. The Supreme Court's two most recent personal jurisdiction cases--Ford Motor Co. v. Montana Eighth Judicial District and Mallory v. Norfolk Southern Railroad--have thrown this area of law into even more flux than before. Because of these cases' heavy emphasis on the fact-intensive nature of personal jurisdiction law, plaintiffs facing down motions to dismiss based on Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(2) are going to start asking an obvious question: If the Supreme Court thinks facts are so important to personal jurisdiction, then should I try to get access to more facts? The result will be more requests to conduct jurisdictional discovery, and more courts having to figure out how to decide those requests. Despite the occasional aspersions cast upon it, jurisdictional discovery's newfound relevance is to be applauded. When used wisely, the practice can be more than just a useful tool for uncovering facts. It can also further hone the law of personal jurisdiction, rendering the doctrine more attune to the interests of all the parties involved. All that is needed is more guidance on how to use that tool. This Article provides such guidance. Examining hundreds of orders that decided jurisdictional discovery requests, this Article uncovers a coherent set of rationales that courts have tacitly relied upon when rendering these decisions. These rationales provide a principled and practical framework for deciding jurisdictional discovery requests, one that courts can use both to bring additional coherence to the practice and to field what is likely to be the flood of discovery requests to come. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The results of a survey of 1,071 adults in the United States reveal that most consumers do not pay attention to, let alone understand, arbitration clauses in their everyday lives. The vast majority of survey respondents (over 97%) report having opened an account with a company that requires disputes to be submitted to binding arbitration (e.g., Netflix, Hulu, Cash App, a phone or cable company), yet most are unaware that they have, in fact, agreed to mandatory arbitration (also known as "forced arbitration"). Indeed, over 99% of respondents who think they have never entered into an arbitration agreement likely have done so. Over 92% of respondents report that they have never based a decision to use a product or service on whether the terms and conditions contain an arbitration agreement. When prompted, they largely endorse the following reasons: they were unaware of the arbitration clause, they did not read the terms and conditions, and they thought they had no choice but to agree to mandatory arbitration. Moreover, many respondents presume that if a dispute arises, they will still be able to access the public courts, notwithstanding that they agreed to the terms and conditions. Consumers are largely unaware of opportunities to opt out of mandatory arbitration. They generally do not pay attention to or retain information about the steps required to opt out successfully (e.g., contacting the company within a specified time period). Generally, consumers are unaware that companies like Cash App and Venmo (mobile payment systems utilized by nearly 60% of respondents) allow customers to opt out of mandatory arbitration if they act within a limited time period. Among the minority of respondents (21%) who stated that they had been given an opportunity to opt out, vanishingly few could name any of the steps required to opt out successfully. When presented with a run-of-the-mill contract, of the type consumers routinely encounter, most respondents did not take notice of the arbitration clause. Less than 5% of respondents could recall that the contract they were shown had said anything at all about arbitration. Furthermore, most consumers misperceive the consequences of signing a predispute arbitration agreement. Most mistakenly believe that, after agreeing to terms and conditions mandating binding arbitration, they can still choose to settle their dispute in court, have a jury decide their case, join a class action, and appeal a decision made based on a legal error. For instance, less than 5% of respondents correctly reported that they could neither appeal an erroneous decision to another arbitrator (or set of arbitrators) nor start all over again in court. Less than 1% of respondents correctly understood the full significance of the arbitration agreement, as indicated by their responses to questions about whether they retained the rights to sue, have a jury decide their case, access the public courts, and appeal a decision based on a legal error. In summary, consumers are generally unaware of arbitration clauses, and they tend to hold mistaken beliefs about how arbitration agreements affect consumers' procedural rights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Decision-making requires processing of sensory information, comparing the gathered evidence to make a judgment, and performing the action to communicate it. How neuronal representations transform during this cascade of representations remains a matter of debate. Here, we studied the succession of neuronal representations in the primate prefrontal cortex (PFC). We trained monkeys to judge whether a pair of sequentially presented displays had the same number of items. We used a combination of single neuron and population-level analyses and discovered a sequential transformation of represented information with trial progression. While numerical values were initially represented with high precision and in conjunction with detailed information such as order, the decision was encoded in a low-dimensional subspace of neural activity. This decision encoding was invariant to both retrospective numerical values and prospective motor plans, representing only the binary judgment of "same number" versus "different number," thus facilitating the generalization of decisions to novel number pairs. We conclude that this transformation of neuronal codes within the prefrontal cortex supports cognitive flexibility and generalizability of decisions to new conditions. Decision-making needs evaluation of options, deliberation and action-planning. This study shows that neurons in the primate prefrontal cortex sequentially delineate these processes to separable components of number values, abstract decision and motor planning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Quantitative research into the effectiveness of the UN human rights treaty bodies (UNTBs) in eliciting remedial responses from states is impeded by a lack of usable data on how states respond to their decisions. The new Treaty Body Views Dataset (TBVD) aims to fill this gap. It comprises details on all published decisions in individual complaints cases issued by the UNTBs between 1979 and 2019 and matches these with information on their state of compliance. The TBVD can be used for research on the activities of the treaty bodies, the nature of the decisions themselves, or state behavior following a decision. An empirical application illustrates how the TBVD can advance knowledge about the factors that correlate with compliance with adverse UNTB decisions. Results show that the likelihood of implementation hinges critically on decision-level characteristics, and reveal differences and similarities between compliance with UNTB decisions and regional human rights court judgments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the concept of "ordered liberty" in U.S. constitutional law and its role in shaping important constitutional questions. It focuses on the dissenting opinion in the Bridges v. California case, which marked a period of increased reliance on the "ordered liberty" test by the U.S. Supreme Court. The article argues that "ordered liberty" remains under-theorized and calls for a renewed study of its meaning. It discusses the concept of "ordered liberty" as used by the Supreme Court in various cases, particularly in relation to free speech and press. The article also highlights the challenges and complexities of applying the concept in due process cases. [Extracted from the article]

This Article provides the results of an empirical study assessing the impact of panel composition in patent cases at the Federal Circuit. The dataset includes 2675 three-judge panel-level final written decisions and Rule 36 summary affirmances issued by the Federal Circuit between January 1, 2014 and May 31, 2021. The study informs the longstanding debate concerning whether the Federal Circuit is succeeding as a court with nationwide jurisdiction in patent cases and provides insight into judicial decisionmaking more broadly. And several results show that many of the worst fears that commentators have about the Federal Circuit appear overstated or untrue. For example, the results show that, in the aggregate, patent-related ideology plays a role in voting and decisionmaking at the Federal Circuit--that is, some judges are more likely to vote in a pro-patentee direction than others. This patent ideology is not explained by political affiliation, nor is it significantly explained by the judges' prior patent-related experience. The former observation undercuts the assumption made by scholars that if political affiliation does not predict voting in an area of law, then that area of law must either be clear and binding, or there must be a near-consensus about the appropriate principles. The results also indicate that decisionmaking at the Federal Circuit is influenced by panel effects, which refer to changes in judges' voting patterns based on the preferences of the other judges on the panel. The study exemplifies how prevalent panel effects can be in an area of law, considering they persist in patent cases at the Federal Circuit despite several reasons to believe panel effects may not exist. This study also compares decisionmaking in precedential, nonprecedential, and summarily affirmed cases and finds that voting and decisionmaking is most influenced by patent ideology in precedential cases. Prior studies of judicial decisionmaking in other circuits typically focus exclusively on precedential cases, and thus must be interpreted in view of that limitation. Furthermore, according to the results, judges do not appear to use summary affirmances as a tool to systematically bury cases opposing their patent ideology. To the contrary, decisionmaking in summarily affirmed cases is largely, if not entirely, independent of patent ideology. And judges are not more likely to summarily affirm cases coming out against their patent ideology, when considered as a fraction of the total number of opportunities to issue a summary affirmance. The results also show that judges tend to write a disproportionate share of opinions favoring their patent ideology. As a result, there is greater risk than previously recognized that the law will develop to reflect the idiosyncratic preferences of a few judges and that opinions will be written ideologically. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Childfree adults are the most common type of non-parent in the United States and are distinguished by their lack of desire to have children. Although there are many reasons one may choose not to have children, recent restrictions on reproductive health care may also contribute to this decision. For example, the United States Supreme Court's decision in Dobbs v. Jackson eliminated a long-standing constitutional protection for abortion access, which reduced patients' medical autonomy and increased the risks of pregnancy and childbirth, and therefore may have led adults to decide not to have children. In this study, we use representative data on Michigan adults immediately before and after the Dobbs decision to examine changes in the prevalence of childfree adults in this population. We find that 21% of Michigan adults were childfree before the Dobbs decision, but this number rose to nearly 26% after the decision. Controlling for demographic characteristics, a Michigan adult was 32.8% more likely to be childfree after the Dobbs decision than before. We conclude that when access to safe reproductive health care is uncertain or unavailable, adults that do not already have children may decide that they do not want children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This document contains case notes from the Franchise Law Journal, covering various franchise-related legal cases from April 2023 to June 2023. The cases discussed include JTH Tax, LLC v. Agnant, where a former tax-preparation franchisee successfully defeated the franchisor's motion for a preliminary injunction to enforce a non-compete agreement. Another case, Hyundai Subaru of Nashville, Inc. v. Hyundai Motor America, Inc., involved a car dealership defeating the manufacturer's motion to dismiss on claims including violation of the Automobile Dealer's Day in Court Act. In Lunt v. Frost Shades Franchising, LLC, a franchisee sued the franchisor for fraudulent misrepresentation and sought restitution and rescission of agreements. The court ruled on motions to compel arbitration and for a preliminary injunction, finding that the franchisor had a duty to disclose certain information and that the franchisee had suffered irreparable harm due to a non-compete provision. The court issued an injunction against enforcing the non-compete provision but denied the request to enjoin interference with the franchisee's competing business. In Cookie Dough Bliss Franchising, LLC v. Feed Your Soul Minnesota, LLC, the court denied the franchisor's request for a preliminary injunction to prevent the former franchisee from operating a competing business. The court found that the franchise agreement had been terminated by mutual agreement and that the franchisor was not entitled to injunctive relief. The court also determined that the non-compete provision was likely un [Extracted from the article]

The Supreme Court's watershed decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, overturning fifty years of precedent protecting abortion rights, has led to chaos in both the legal and public health landscapes. With Roe v. Wade eliminated, reproductive rights and justice advocates urgently need new frameworks to help regain access to comprehensive reproductive health care in the long term. Recently, a number of legal scholars have argued in favor of medicalizing civil rights--adopting the framework of health justice to talk about civil rights issues. Scholars argue that the health justice framework could be used to advance civil rights in the realms of race discrimination in policing, fair housing, and poverty rights, by framing these concerns as public health issues. This Article is the first to extend the health justice framework to abortion. The health justice framework offers a new form of medicalization that could advance more equitable access to reproductive health care. Medicalization has a complicated history in the legal regulation of abortion. Although scholars do not all agree on a definition of the concept, "medicalization" is typically defined as the framing of a phenomenon as medical in nature and properly within the jurisdiction of medical experts in terms of decision-making authority. Feminist scholars have often viewed medicalization suspiciously, especially in the context of reproduction, since medicalization has tended to correspond with physician control over women's bodies. In the last few decades of intense debate over abortion, the focus has been on abortion as a constitutional right, but the notion of abortion as a medical concern has been lost since Roe, in part due to feminist arguments against medicalizing abortion rights. In the decades since Roe, abortion has been siloed from healthcare in the law and segregated from mainstream medicine. This Article pushes back against feminist legal scholars' critiques of the medicalization of abortion rights. It argues that, unlike the medicalization of the past, the health justice framework depends less on the sole professional authority of physicians and more on concerns about the social determinants of health and health equity at the population level. The health justice approach accommodates medicalized framings by focusing on public health outcomes of abortion restrictions, while also aiming for reducing health disparities through structural reforms and redistribution of resources rather than physician-controlled medical interventions. The health justice framework thus links together both medicalized (health-focused) and demedicalized (equality-focused) framings of abortion in a way that could advance reproductive health equity. Re-medicalizing abortion through a health justice lens provides strategic benefits in political and social climates hostile to abortion, especially in a post-Dobbs world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the future of the nondelegation doctrine in the U.S. as the Supreme Court increasingly curtail the authority of government agencies. Other topics include the court's majority opinion in Little Sisters of the Poor Saints Peter and Paul Home v. Pennsylvania questioning the agencies' authority regarding the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) and the Health Resources and Services Administration's (HRSA) Preventative Care Guidelines.

The article discusses issues regarding the six-week abortion ban implemented in Ohio, particularly its effects on African American women in Cincinnati and its relevance on reproductive justice across the U.S. Other topics include how the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling striking down Roe v. Wade accelerated the implementation of the ban and the abortion laws enacted by states like the Gestational Age Act in Mississippi.

The article discusses the court case Burnett v. Smith in which the Iowa Supreme Court declined to recognize an independent clause of action for money damages under its constitution and overruled a related case. It describes the details of the case filed by garbage truck driver Cory Burnett against Iowa Department of Transportation officer Philip Smith. It examines the court's observation that the Iowa judiciary of the mid-19th century did not recognize direct constitutional claims for damages.

The article discusses the court case Alpine Securities Corp. v. Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) wherein the D.C. Circuit granted an injunction order stating that the broker-dealer could succeed in applying the private nondelegation doctrine on the merits of its constitutional challenge to the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority's structure. It describes the injunction filed by Alpine in response to an expedited enforcement proceeding scheduled by FINRA to expel Alpine.

The article discusses the court case Range v. Attorney General in which the Third Circuit held that there were no historical analogues to stripping a nonviolent offender of his Second Amendment rights. It describes the case filed by Brian Range alleging that his Second Amendment rights were violated when he was banned from owning firearms after his conviction for making a false statement to obtain food stamp assistance. It examines the application of the history-and-tradition test in the case.

The article discusses the court case Hopkins v. Hosemann in which the Fifth Circuit held that permanent disenfranchisement of people convicted of a felony, who are often incarcerated, violates the Cruel and Unusual Punishment Clause of the Eight Amendment. It explains two provisions of the Mississippi Constitution at issue in the case that were crafted in 1890 to subjugate the enfranchised Black population. It describes the consolidated class actions filed to challenge such provisions.

In Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, Justice Alito justified the decision to overrule Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey with an appeal to democracy. He insisted that it was “time to heed the Constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives.” This invocation of democracy had undeniable rhetorical power: it allowed the Dobbs majority to lay waste to decades’ worth of precedent, while rebutting charges of judicial imperialism and purporting to restore the people’s voices. This Article interrogates Dobbs’s claim to vindicate principles of democracy, examining both the intellectual pedigree of this claim and its substantive vision of democracy. In grounding its decision in democracy, the Dobbs majority relied on a well-worn but dubious narrative: that Roe, and later Casey, disrupted ongoing democratic deliberation on the abortion issue, wresting this contested question from the people and imposing the Court’s own will. The majority insisted that this critique had always attended Roe. However, in tracing the provenance of the democratic deliberation argument, this Article finds more complicated intellectual origins. In fact, the argument did not surface in Roe’s immediate aftermath, but rather emerged years later. And it did so not organically, but through a series of interconnected legal, movement, and political efforts designed to undermine and ultimately topple Roe and Casey. The product of these efforts, the Dobbs majority’s claim that democracy demanded overruling Roe and Casey, was deployed to overcome the force of stare decisis in Dobbs — and may ultimately reshape the scope and substance of the Court’s stare decisis analysis in future cases. Having identified the intellectual origins of the democratic deliberation argument and its contemporary consequences, this Article examines the contours of the Dobbs majority’s vision of democratic deliberation. We show that although Dobbs trafficked in the rhetoric of democracy, its conception of democracy was both internally inconsistent and extraordinarily limited, even myopic. The opinion misapprehended the processes and institutions that are constitutive of democracy, focusing on state legislatures while overlooking a range of other federal, state, and local constitutional actors. As troublingly, it reflected a distorted understanding of political power and representation — one that makes political power reducible to voting, entirely overlooking metrics like representation in electoral office and in the ecosystem of campaign finance. The opinion was also willfully blind to the antidemocratic implications of its “history and tradition” interpretive method, which binds the recognition of constitutional rights to a past in which very few Americans were meaningful participants in the production of law and legal meaning. The deficits of the Dobbs majority’s conception of democracy appear even more pronounced when considered alongside the Court’s recent and active interventions to distort and disrupt the functioning of the electoral process. Indeed, Dobbs purported to “return” the abortion question to the people and to democratic deliberation at the precise moment when the Court’s own actions have ensured that the extant system is unlikely either to produce genuine deliberation or to yield widely desired outcomes. Ultimately, a close examination of the Dobbs majority’s invocation of democracy suggests that the majority may have employed the values and vernacular of democracy as a means to a different end. As we explain, the majority’s embrace of democracy and democratic deliberation allowed it to shield its actions from claims of judicial activism and overreach. More profoundly, and perhaps paradoxically, the opinion may lay the groundwork for the eventual vindication and protection of particular minority interests — those of the fetus. With this in mind, the Dobbs majority’s settlement of the abortion question is unlikely to be a lasting one. Indeed, aspects of the opinion suggest that this settlement is merely a way station en route to a more permanent resolution — the recognition of fetal personhood and the total abolition of legal abortion in the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic has stretched us into the vast unknowns, emotionally, logically, politically, and legally. Relying on their police power, governments inched into the darkness of the powers' fullest extent, leaving many to wonder whether the exercise of this power was constitutional. This Article examines the extent of the police power that both the federal and state governments have, and how Jacobson v. Massachusetts1 was the "silver bullet" for governments across the United States. Further, this Article provides an overview of police power, and the status of COVID-19 mandates. This Article additionally examines quarantine case law and provides an analysis of Jacobson. Finally, this Article discusses Jacobson's efficacy and future. While the rationale of Jacobson has in some instances been limited, its reasoning has in other ways been expanded, as seen in its application with respect to rationalizing COVID-19 mandates in the interest of protecting the public's welfare. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As many are aware, the Fourth Amendment protects the people against unreasonable searches and seizures. A warrant is necessary for said activities. While there are a few exceptions to the warrant requirement, the Supreme Court recently held that the community caretaking exception does not extend to the home. Extending this exception to the home would allow police officers to enter and engage in functions that are unrelated to the investigation of a crime. Essentially, this exception would allow police to aid individuals and prevent serious, dangerous situations to protect the community. This Note discusses why the Supreme Court erred in its decision to deny the extension of the community caretaking exception to the home. Further, it argues how denying the extension of this exception to the home could prevent police from being able to intervene and help individuals in need in situations that do not rise to the criteria of an "emergency" which would fall under the exigent circumstances exception. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the past several years, Alaska has faced many challenges in its public education system. These challenges gave rise to an intense political debate, significant new legislation, and a protracted battle over the future of funding for public education. Governor Mike Dunleavy and the state legislature publicly clashed over the implementation of H.B. 287, a 2018 state law designed to provide financial stability to ailing schools and curtail teacher layoffs. In 2022, the Supreme Court of Alaska resolved the dispute in favor of the governor and found a contentious piece of state legislation unconstitutional under the states "Dedicated Funds Clause." This Note examines the Court's decision in State v. Alaska Legislative Council, considers the underlying constitutional issues in the case, and explores the implications of the ruling. In particular, this Note argues that the Court incorrectly decided the case on multiple grounds— misinterpreting the plain text of the relevant constitutional provisions, the framers’ intent, and the court’s own precedent in a decision that will exacerbate existing troubles with public education in the state. The proper interpretation of the Dedicated Funds Clause matters for legislators, government agencies, teachers, parents, and children in Alaska going forward. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the development of the dual motivation defense, focusing on the U.S. Supreme court case, Flowers v. Mississippi. It discusses the development of discrimination doctrine in the U.S. Supreme Court and the treatment of dual motivation in other areas of the law. It provides examples of court decisions wherein whether to apply the footnote matters.

Since Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization overturned Roe v. Wade, many scholars have expressed concern over how the Dobbs decision may impact other privacy interests that previously have been recognized as protected rights under the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause. The substantive due process right associated with a parent's right to the care, control, and custody of their child, however, is situated differently in comparison to those rights presumably displaced by the Dobbs opinion. A parent's right, unlike other rights recognized under the substantive due process doctrine, is objectively deeply rooted in our nation's history and tradition, and is considered fundamental to the American concept of ordered liberty. This Note argues that even after Dobbs, parents continue to possess the right to the care, control, and custody of their child under the Fourteenth Amendment which includes the right to direct their child's medical care. Thus, statutes that criminalize the prescription of GnRH analogue therapy to minors unconstitutionally infringe on that right. GnRH analogue treatment is commonly referred to as "puberty blockers." The statutes criminalizing puberty blockers are not grounded in reliable science. Given that gender-affirming care solely affects the health of the individual receiving the care, the state lacks any compelling or important governmental interest that would justify such intrusion on this fundamental parental right. Further, the statutes are not narrowly tailored because they allow for GnRH analogue therapy to be prescribed to children in other medical contexts. Accordingly, the statutes criminalizing the prescription of puberty blockers to minors are unconstitutional under the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause. This Note analyzes the anti-transgender agenda that conservative lawmakers are pursuing from an anti-government perspective. After analyzing the medical science supporting the statutes, it becomes clear that the relied upon data is unreliable and that arguments in support of the statutes are pretextual. Conservative lawmakers are enacting anti-transgender legislation under the guise of "protecting" adolescents, but denying adolescents gender-affirming care is only harming them. To combat the statutes that criminalize gender-affirming care, with an emphasis on puberty blockers, this Note offers litigation strategies based in principles of constitutional law. This Note is a step towards protecting transgender, non-binary, and gender nonconforming youth from anti-transgender legislation and ensuring access to gender-affirming care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This Article argues that recent United States Supreme Court decisions invalidating agency policymaking rely on a normatively unattractive and empirically mistaken notion of democratic popular sovereignty. Namely, they rely upon a transmission belt model that runs like this: democracy is vindicated by first translating and aggregating voter preferences through elections. Then, the popular will is transposed by members of Congress into the statute books. Finally, the popular will (now codified), is applied mechanically by administrative agencies who should merely "fill in the details" using their neutral, technical expertise. So long as statutes lay down sufficiently "intelligible principle[s]" that permit their application without significant discretionary remainder, regulation will carry democratic legitimacy because they who will the ends--the people--will the means. Although the transmission belt model comes in procedural, deliberative, and populist varieties, each occludes the inescapable facts of political intermediation and social conflict. No matter how participatory and rational, governance will involve some officials somewhere making decisions that some citizens will dislike. Even after citizen preferences are massaged by public reason or netted out through compromise, it is impossible to speak of a single, identifiable popular will that is capable of translation into legislative codes and regulations. Collectively, voters do not behave in a way that makes them a plausible principle to a government agent. Given these empirical problems, the transmission belt model carries several unsavory undemocratic implications. For example, it can lead to a Schmittian repression of social difference, should a demagogic leader claim to speak with the (fictional) voice of the (fictional) people. It may lead to juristocracy, as judges and technocrats claim unique insight into the substantive contents of public reason. The Article suggests instead that models of democratic political representation serve as better criteria to assess agency legitimacy. Theories of representation recognize and take advantage of the institutional mediation of democratic input. They protect and accommodate social conflict. They recognize, unlike pluralist, deliberative, and transmission belt theories of democracy, that there will always be a gap between ruler and ruled and that there will always be officials making decisions that people may not like. Drawing from theories of political representation within political science and political theory, the Article argues that administrative agencies themselves can serve as democratic representatives because they (1) incorporate citizen presence in their decision-making while (2) preserving the normative priority of the citizen. The Article concludes by offering some modifications to the legal doctrine used by courts to assess the legitimacy of agency action, to interpret agencies' organic statutes, and to shape the presidential removal power. If we demand that administration provide good trustee representation, we will not expect it to mechanically carry out the orders of elected representatives. Rather, we will give them sufficient autonomy to carry out their authorized mandates diligently, loyally, and in good faith. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: In India, states have licensed the manufacture of large numbers of fixed-dose combination (FDC) drugs without the required prior approval of the central regulator. This paper describes two major regulatory initiatives to address the problem, which began in 2007 and 2013, and examines whether they have been sufficient to remove centrally unapproved systemic antibiotic FDCs from the market. Methods: Information was extracted from documents published by the central regulator and the ministry of health, including the National List of Essential Medicines (NLEM), and court judgments, and analysed alongside sales volume data for 2008–2020 using PharmaTrac market dataset. Results: The regulatory initiatives permitted 68 formulations to be given de facto approvals ('No Objection Certificates') outside the statutory regime, banned 46 FDCs and restricted one FDC. Market data show that FDCs as a proportion of total antibiotic sales increased from 32.9 in 2008 to 37.3% in 2020. The total number of antibiotic FDC formulations on the market fell from 574 (2008) to 395 (2020). Formulations with a record of prior central approval increased from 86 (2008) to 94 (2020) and their share of the antibiotic FDC sales increased from 32.0 to 55.3%. In 2020, an additional 23 formulations had been permitted de facto approval, accounting for 10.6% of the antibiotic FDC sales. Even in 2020, most marketed formulations (70.4%, 278/395) were unapproved or banned, and comprised a 15.9% share of the antibiotic FDC sales. The share of NLEM-listed antibiotic FDC sales increased from 21.2 (2008) to 26.7% (2020). Conclusion: The initiatives had limited impact. Regulatory enforcement has been slow and weak, with many unapproved, and even banned, FDCs remaining on the market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The canonical view in linguistics is that the core meaning of ' p or q ' is inclusive disjunction, but that its most common interpretation is exclusive disjunction. Nevertheless, the idea persists that an inclusive interpretation is possible given the proper discourse context. Experimental evidence for this idea comes from studies using truth-value judgment, showing that some participants judge ' p or q ' as true when both p and q are true. We present evidence against the idea that discourse context alone licenses an inclusive interpretation, proposing that it is only the task of truth-value judgment that ostensibly licenses this interpretation. We conducted an experiment using both truth-value judgment and a reply-anticipation task, where participants anticipated an interlocutor's answer to how many of p and q are true, based on their interpretation of ' p or q '. Target utterances appeared in discourse contexts encouraging an inclusive interpretation by making it maximally informative and relevant. Despite this, most participants anticipated that the interlocutor would answer that exactly one of p and q were true. We therefore believe the onus is now on those claiming that discourse context can license an inclusive interpretation to explain why it is conspicuously absent in tasks other than truth-value judgment. • We test contexts designed to encourage an inclusive disjunction reading of 'or' • We find an effect of experimental task on interpretation of 'or' • Context on its own does not license an inclusive disjunction reading • Only responses to truth-value judgment are compatible with inclusive disjunction [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]