Introduction In a world in which police understand themselves to be a bulwark against crime, having a good handle on crime data is critical. According to the best data available, crime has been steadily trending downward for the last few decades. There has been a national decline in crime, and the decline in New York […]
Vol. 117
What a difference a decade makes. In 2006, 45% of Americans were worried a great deal about crime. By 2016, the number had jumped to 53%, the highest level since 9/11, which was the last time a majority of Americans had expressed that view. This increase in the level of fear buoyed Donald Trump to […]
In the fall of 1982, I was planning a month-long trip to Italy with a friend. Debby Greenberg had organized a conference on comparative affirmative action at the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center that summer, and Jack and Debby traveled around Italy while there. Jack invited me and my “spousal analog”—a coinage of his own that […]
For centuries, the duty of loyalty has been the hallowed centerpiece of fiduciary obligation, widely considered one of the few “mandatory” rules of corporate law. That view, however, is no longer true. Beginning in 2000, Delaware dramatically departed from tradition by granting incorporated entities a statutory right to waive a crucial part of the duty of loyalty: the corporate opportunities doctrine. Other states have since followed Delaware’s...
Almost every state has experimented with charter schools to improve education outcomes for high-needs students. Charter schools operate with more autonomy and flexibility than traditional public schools, but at the expense of democratic accountability mechanisms. While this model has produced positive results, some charter schools deny access to or underenroll students with disabilities. The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act entitles...
The number of refugees worldwide has expanded dramatically in the first decades of the twenty-first century, with tens of millions of people forced to seek shelter outside their countries of origin. Currently, the most critical form of protection that people in this vulnerable position are guaranteed is the duty of non-refoulement. This duty ensures that countries to which refugees flee cannot return them to places where their lives may be endangered....
Introduction On September 7, 2016, four of the nation’s newspapers of record weighed in on the connected crises in crime and policing. The New York Times revealed the tensions between the Mayor’s office in Chicago and several community and professional groups over a plan to overhaul Chicago’s police disciplinary board—a plan developed in the wake […]
In 1886, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., then a Professor at Harvard Law School, gave a talk to the students of Harvard College, which included a much-quoted line: “I say—and I say no longer with any doubt—that a man may live greatly in the law . . . . [H]e may wreak himself upon life, may drink the bitter cup […]
Introduction In their edifying and ambitious recent article Just Relationships, Professors Hanoch Dagan and Avihay Dorfman suggest that everyone before them has erred in their account of the distinction between public law and private law. Classic liberal scholars—a category meant to cover Thomas Hobbes and William Blackstone through the nineteenth century to Richard Epstein, Ernest […]
This Essay examines the roles that federal administrative agencies have begun to play in response to the rise of private arbitration, particularly in the consumer and employment contexts. Such agency actions have included enforcement strategies designed to mimic the effects of private litigation when such litigation may not be possible due to the presence of arbitration agreements. And, in some cases, they have involved regulatory responses, including...