Do legal concepts alter how we understand the past and present? The jurisprudence of race suggests that they do. For several decades, federal courts...

The Work of the American Law Institute in Historical Context

Kenneth S. Abraham

G. Edward White

This chapter examines the intellectual and social contexts in which the American Law Institute (ALI) has operated and how they have influenced the...

"Charlottesville" as Legal History

Risa Goluboff

offers a preliminary legal history of the white supremacist and anti-Semitic violence that took place in my hometown of Charlottesville, Virginia on...

Why Can’t We Take Secession Seriously?

Cynthia L. Nicoletti

Sandy Levinson has always taken secession arguments seriously. This is, in my eyes, one of his great virtues. There are very few scholars who would be...

Restatement of the Law Third, Torts: Remedies | Preliminary Draft No. 3

Douglas Laycock

Richard L. Hasen

American Law Institute

This project is part of ALI’s ongoing revision of the Restatement Second of Torts. The Restatement Second recognized compensatory damages, injunctions...

Remand Without Vacatur and the Ab Initio Invalidity of Unlawful Regulations in Administrative Law

John C. Harrison

An important administrative law doctrine developed by the lower federal courts, called remand without vacatur, rests on a mistaken premise. Courts...

'Our Experiences Make Us Who We Are': Lessons from Thomas Ruffin and Dirk Hartog

Jessica Lowe

It was 1804, and Thomas Ruffin, future Chief Justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court, was having doubts about slavery. Ruffin was a young student...

Restatement of the Law Third, Torts: Remedies | Council Draft No. 2

Douglas Laycock

Richard L. Hasen

American Law Institute

At its meeting on January 19 and 20, 2023 the Council approved Council Draft No. 2, containing §§ 5, 11, and 12 of Topic 1, General Rules for...

Covid, Contracts, and Colleges

John K. Setear

This Article examines the legal issues underlying hundreds of lawsuits, claiming unjust enrichment or breach of contract, brought by students who paid...

How an Old Tort Became New: The Case of Offensive Battery

G. Edward White

Kenneth S. Abraham

This paper, prepared for the 2023 Clifford Symposium on “New Torts” at DePaul Law School, addresses the tort of offensive battery. This is an ancient...

Immunity Rules

John C. Harrison

Analysis based on Hohfeld’s analytical system shows that liability rules, as defined by Guido Calabresi and A. Douglas Melamed, are a false category...

Hohfeld on Legal Language

Frederick Schauer

Wesley Newcomb Hohfeld is well-known for maintaining that various terms in law – “rights,” most prominently – confusingly designate a number of quite...

Co Authoring in Legal Academia

G. Mitu Gulati

Co authoring saved me. Literally. But for the fact that my senior colleagues at UCLA did not care whether I ever wrote anything sole authored, I don't...

A Modern Poor Debtor's Oath

Rich Hynes

Nathaniel Pattison

Bankruptcy offers a fresh start that frees individuals from crushing debt burdens. Many insolvent Americans are, however, simply too poor to afford...

Administrative Stays: Power and Procedure

Rachel Bayefsky

Federal courts are often asked to issue various forms of expedited relief, including stays pending appeal. This Article explores a little examined...

Alexander Hamilton, the Nondelegation Doctrine, and the Creation of the United States

Aditya Bamzai

In the period immediately preceding the Constitution’s adoption, New Yorkers engaged in a spirited debate over whether a proposed delegation from the...