RSS 1.0Welcome to the Yale Law School Legal Scholarship Repository. This repository provides open, global access to the scholarship of Yale Law School faculty and jornals, as well as a selection of unique collections.
Communities in Yale Law School Open Scholarship Repository
Select a community to browse its collections.
Recently Added
-
The NBA’s “One-and-Done” Rule: Procompetitive Justifications and Anticompetitive EffectsIn 2005, the National Basketball Association (NBA) implemented a rule prohibiting players from entering the League directly after high school. To be eligible to join the NBA, players need to meet two conditions: (1) at least one year must have elapsed since they graduated high school, and (2) they must be 19 years old or must turn 19 the year they enter.1 This rule,2 often termed the “One-and-Done” Rule, was first enacted in advance of the 2006 NBA draft. The most talented high school athletes tend to compete in National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) basketball until they are eligible to play professionally, although a few alternative options do exist. To fully understand the anticompetitive and procompetitive effects of the One-and-Done Rule, this Article will examine the justifications and consequences of the rule under a fullrule- of-reason approach that courts may take if the legality of the rule were to be litigated.3 The following analysis demonstrates that, on balance, the rule has salient anticompetitive effects on the market for talented young basketball players, and may violate antitrust laws.
-
The Second Amendment on Board: Public and Private Historical Traditions of Firearm RegulationIn New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen, the Supreme Court reaffirmed that laws prohibiting the carrying of firearms in sensitive places were presumptively constitutional. Since Bruen, several states and the District of Columbia have defended their sensitive-place laws by analogizing to historical statutes regulating firearms in other places, like schools and government buildings. Many judges, scholars, and litigants appear to have assumed that only statutes can count as evidence of the nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation. This Note is the first expansive account since Bruen to challenge this assumption. It argues that courts should consider sources of analogical precedent outside of formal lawmaking when applying the Court’s Second Amendment jurisprudence. Taking public transportation as a case study, the Note surveys rules and regulations promulgated by railroad corporations in the nineteenth century and argues that these sources reveal an historical tradition of regulating firearm carriage on public transportation. Bruen expressly permits courts to engage in more nuanced analogical reasoning when dealing with unprecedented concerns or dramatic changes. One such change is the shift in state capacity that has placed sites that were previously privately or quasi-publicly operated before the twentieth century under public control in the twenty-first century. As in the case of schools, which the Court has already deemed sensitive, a substantial portion of the nation’s transportation infrastructure in the nineteenth century was not entirely publicly owned and operated. This case study instructs that courts and litigants can best honor Bruen’s history-based test by considering all of the nation’s history of firearm regulation.
-
Statutory StructureOne of the least controversial tools of statutory interpretation the Supreme Court employs is also one of its least examined: the use of a statute’s “structure.” For decades—but particularly under Chief Justice Roberts—the Court has determined the meaning of ambiguous statutory provisions through reference to the “structure,” “scheme,” or “plan” of a statute. Despite its ubiquity in the Court’s opinions, however, structural argument in statutory interpretation has gone largely unexamined by scholars. This Note attempts to fill that gap. Through an analysis of recent case law, this Note categorizes the types of structural argument employed by the Court in its statutory-interpretation cases and the various assumptions needed to motivate such arguments. This fine-grained mapping permits a closer normative evaluation of structural argument and, in particular, of its compatibility with different methodologies of statutory interpretation. All dominant methods for reading statutes have good reason—on their own terms—to employ some types of structural argument, which demonstrates its cross-methodological appeal. But purposive reasoning best embodies the assumptions of coherence and rational design that undergird structuralism. The sway of this type of argument over a hypertextualist Supreme Court thus suggests the enduring need for purposive reasoning, particularly as the traditional tools of purposivism—such as legislative history—have been largely abandoned.
-
Brief for Respondents, Tyler v. Hennepin County, MinnesotaQUESTIONS PRESENTED 1. Whether selling a tax-forfeited property to satisfy a tax debt and keeping the surplus value violates the Fifth Amendment’s Takings Clause in the absence of any state-created property right to that surplus value. 2. Whether a tax forfeiture of a property worth more than needed to satisfy its tax debt, plus interest, penalties, and costs, is a “fine” within the meaning of the Eighth Amendment.
-
SUBMISSION FOR THE JOSEPH A. CHUBB COMPETITION PRIZEThis writing sample is an assignment I submitted to Yale’s Supreme Court Advocacy Clinic. I was asked to review the certiorari petition and corresponding files in State of Oklahoma v. Robert Eric Wadkins, and then to draft a mock “cert pool memo.” The case addressed what requirements a criminal defendant must satisfy to qualify as an “Indian” for purposes of federal criminal law. I recommended the “Court” deny the petition. The assignment did not require formal Bluebook citations, but I have added them for purposes of this submission.
