Volume 47, Issue 1

The time to reform Minnesota’s criminal sexual conduct (“CSC”) laws is now. Conceptions of sex, rape, and consent have evolved from paternalistic ideals and given way to modern reforms and an ever-expanding understanding of sexual relationships. One need only watch cringeworthy interactions of sex symbols of earlier decades to understand how drastic this shift has…

This article builds on the many calls for teaching business acumen and transactional skills in law school with a timely insight: the shift to remote legal education creates opportunities to do so, in particular by incorporating practice problems and mini-simulations in doctrinal courses. Weaving together the literature on emerging best practices in online legal education,…

Under the First Amendment, “[t]he method for protecting freedom of worship and freedom of conscience in religious matters is quite the reverse” of that used to protect general freedom of speech. Unlike with speech, the government generally does not participate in religious dialogue or debate, as “the Framers deemed religious establishment antithetical to the freedom…

When I was asked to write an article on the restrictions that some states sought to impose on abortion access during the Covid-19 pandemic, my initial thought was that the topic would probably be stale before I finished writing the piece. The worry was misplaced. On the one hand, all the restrictions put in place…

A Black female attorney recalls being told as an associate that she was being put on a case because they “need a Black face.” A White male partner told a Latina associate, “you might not be the right person to argue before the Minnesota Supreme Court.” A Black female associate recalls being the only woman…

In this article, I argue that to combat the over-delegation of power to military tribunals, some limiting principles must exist to prevent prejudiced and unwarranted second-chance prosecutions. The United States’ criminal justice system purports to embrace sturdy protections against double jeopardy, meaning no person shall be tried twice for the same offense. Yet, this ideal…

The faster we deport undocumented immigrants, the safer our country will be. This belief has become a foundational tenant of the Trump administration’s immigration regime and its increased use of the expedited removal program. Expedited removal was originally introduced in 1996 as an amendment to the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), granting the executive branch…

The killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officers in May 2020 put the issue of police reform back into the national discussion and made Minnesota, at least during a brief window of time, confront its past on issues of racism and police abuse. The video showing Mr. Floyd pleading for his life while a…

Once only thought possible in the realm of science fiction, today, scientists are able to edit genes in human embryos using a technique that employs a Clustered, Regularly Interspaced, Short Palindromic Repeat (CRISPR) and a CRISPR associated protein (Cas)—typically Cas-9. For ease, this comment will refer to the CRISPR system, inclusive of the Cas protein,…

There are over 570 federally-recognized Tribal Nations in the United States and more than 330 tribal courts serving as the judicial branch of those nations. Yet, there is little mention of the existence of tribal courts in most mainstream civil procedure courses taught in the over 200 law schools in the United States. To gain…

We hold that when public employees make statements pursuant to their official duties, the employees are not speaking as citizens for First Amendment purposes, and the Constitution does not insulate them from discipline. – Justice Anthony Kennedy in Garcetti v. Ceballos. The American people are the only ones who lose if government employees are silenced,…

Baby Tinslee Lewis was born in late February 2019 with a rare heart defect and was placed on extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, a machine that fulfilled the functions of her heart and lungs. By the time she was ten months old, Cook Children’s Medical Center in Fort Worth, Texas, stated that her condition required long-term life-sustaining…