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Volume 77, Issue 4


Article

Presidential Control and Administrative Capacity

by  Nicholas R. Bednar

Presidential control is the power to direct administrative capacity toward the President’s own policy objectives. Accordingly, presidential power vis-à-vis administrative policymaking has two necessary components: control and capacity. First, the President must have the ability to set the agency’s policymaking agenda and direct the day-to-day activities of its leadership and career employees. Second, the agency…

Article

Beyond the Perpetrator Perspective on Golden Ghettos: Defending Fair Housing Revisionism with Critical Eyes

by  Melvin J. Kelley IV

Most fair housing advocates maintain that integration is a core aim of the federal Fair Housing Act of 1968 (FHA). They contend that to achieve that integration, affordable housing must be sited in predominantly white, affluent areas. These advocates often cite legislative sponsors such as Senator Edmund Muskie, who declared that the aim of the…

Article

The Curious Case of the Missing Canons

by  Susan Yorke

One of the primary roles of judges is to interpret legal texts. These texts generally fall into three categories: statutes/constitutions (public law), contracts (private law), and judicial opinions (precedent/common law). For the first two of these textual buckets, judges have developed and often rely on interpretive canons in distilling legal meaning from the text. But…

Note

Fairness and Finality: Why Amendments to Appealed Habeas Petitions Fall Outside of AEDPA Gatekeeping

by  Jacqueline Ivey Lewittes

Rooted in equitable principles, the writ of habeas corpus permits an incarcerated individual to collaterally attack their sentence or conviction. Every person who is incarcerated under a state or federal conviction is entitled to at least one full opportunity to obtain federal habeas review. However, amidst concerns of the abuse of the writ, Congress and…

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Recent Online Essays

The Coming Assault on Categorical Gun Prohibitions

Introduction Lower courts are grappling with challenges to what were, until recently, settled Second Amendment laws—most notably, the federal laws prohibiting felons and those involuntarily committed from purchasing or possessing firearms. These categorical prohibitions are two of the most prominent so-called “federal prohibitors.” People who fall into one or more of the prohibited categories may…

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California, an Island?

Lincoln L. Davies and Stephanie Lenhart warn that the energy future of the Western United States will be determined by the choices California makes over the next two years. Davies and Lenhart urge California to move towards a regional western electricity market to improve energy efficiency, reliability, and sustainability, and to avoid isolating California’s electricity market.

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The Pardon Power and Federal Sentence-Reduction Motions: A Response to Yost and Flowers

In his response to Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost and former Ohio Solicitor General Benjamin Flowers, Jaden Lessnick argues that the federal sentence-reduction statute (18 U.S.C. § 3582(c)(1)(A)) is not preempted by the presidential pardon power. Lessnick contends that the statute does not offend the traditional separation-of-powers principle, and preemption is not justified under the unitary executive theory.

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Alternative Action After SFFA

Prof. Kim Forde-Mazrui of the University of Virginia responds to Sonja Starr’s print Article, The Magnet School Wars and the Future of Colorblindness. Forde-Mazrui argues that even if courts adopt the “ends-colorblindness” framework described by Starr, “alternative action” policies meant to promote diversity may still be constitutionally permissible.

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The Making of the A2J Crisis

Access to justice has become a defining legal and political issue. In this Essay, Nora Freeman Engstrom and David Freeman Engstrom work to identify the cause of the Access to Justice Crisis.

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