What happens when Congress suspends the writ of habeas corpus? Everyone agrees that suspending habeas makes that particular—and particularly important—judicial remedy unavailable to those the government detains. But does suspension also affect the underlying legality of the detention? That is, in addition to making the habeas remedy unavailable, does suspension convert an otherwise unlawful detention into a lawful one? This Article answers no. Drawing on previously unexamined historical evidence, the first half of the Article shows that treating suspension of the writ as legalizing detention is at odds with the dominant historical understanding in both England and the United States. In the second half of the Article, I examine a set of broader issues that my account of suspension raises but that the current literature almost entirely overlooks.

This Essay proposes a novel solution for “squaring the eminent domain circle” when large-scale, for-profit development projects require the assembly of land from numerous private property owners. Such “anticommons” situations may justify government intervention through eminent domain, yet they often leave landowners undercompensated. This may skew the incentives for initiating land development projects and lead to considerable injustice. Although the taking component of eminent domain may need to remain an involuntary nonmarket transaction, we propose a market-based mechanism for the compensation component in the form of a Special-Purpose Development Corporation (SPDC). An SPDC would acquire unified ownership of the land and the development project, and would offer condemnees a choice between receiving pre-project “fair market value” compensation or pro rata shares in the SPDC. This would make it more likely that compensation is closely linked to the true economic value of the land and, consequently, that land assembly projects are both more just and genuinely social welfare maximizing.

The Fair Housing Act serves as the primary federal statute prohibiting housing discrimination on the basis of race. The legislators who passed the Act in 1968 were motivated in part by desires to quell urban unrest, and to provide middle-class African Americans with the freedom to live within majority- white suburban neighborhoods. The Act, through its ban on racial discrimination, is supposed to help create integrated metropolitan communities. Forty years after the Fair Housing Act’s enactment, both housing discrimination and segregation within the suburbs remain prevalent. This Note seeks to provide understanding as to why there is a disconnect between the Fair Housing Act’s goals and its subsequent results. Through an examination of the Act’s legislative history and judicial interpretation, this Note argues that the federal statute serves as only a prelude to additional policies that should help provide equality to underdeveloped communities.

With passage of the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2003, Congress created a civil right of action for human trafficking victims, codified under 18 U.S.C. § 1595 (section 1595), that allows victims to seek civil relief against their traffickers in a U.S. district court for “damages and reasonable attorneys fees.” Yet, as this Note’s empirical research shows, trafficking victims have filed very few lawsuits under section 1595 in the four years since its creation. This stands in stark contrast to the estimated thousands of victims who are trafficked into and within the United States each year. This Note demonstrates the underutilization of section 1595 through an empirical search for and study of civil trafficking filings in U.S. district courts under this provision and illustrates three key findings on the number and composition of trafficking victims filing section 1595 claims.