Although the whistleblower programs (WBPs) created by Dodd-Frank have received universal acclaim, little is known about how they actually work. In 2021, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) received an average of forty-nine whistleblower tips every workday. Success depends on sifting through this avalanche of tips to determine which ones to investigate. To date, however, the tip-sifting process has been entirely shrouded in secrecy. This Article breaks new ground. It offers a rare look inside the WBPs administered by both the SEC and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), shining a bright light on the critical role played by private whistleblower attorneys in the tip-sifting process. Using a new dataset comprised of information I obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, I find (among other things) that tipsters represented by lawyers appear to significantly outperform unrepresented ones, repeat-player lawyers appear to outperform first-timers, and lawyers who used to work at the SEC appear to outperform just about everybody. The upshot is that the SEC and CFTC have effectively privatized the tip-sifting function at the core of the WBPs. Private lawyers have earned hundreds of millions of dollars in fees from these programs, with a disproportionate share going to a concentrated group of well-connected, repeat players. Unlike traditional plaintiff-side securities attorneys and attorneys who represent clients seeking government payments in many other contexts, private whistleblower lawyers operate free from virtually all public accountability, transparency, or regulation. I highlight significant efficiency and accountability deficits imposed by this private outsourcing program and propose reforms to realign these private actors with the public interest.

Rate-regulated public utilities own and operate one-third of U.S generators and nearly all the transmission and distribution system. These firms receive special regulatory treatment because they are protected from competition and subject to rate caps. In the past decade, they also have been at the center of high-profile corporate scandals. They have bribed regulators to secure subsidies for coal-fired generators and nuclear reactors. They have caused wildfires and coal-ash spills that resulted in hundreds of deaths and billions of dollars in liability. Their failure to maintain reliable electric service has contributed to catastrophic blackouts. Perhaps most consequentially, they have emerged as powerful opponents of state and federal climate action. This Article describes the unique corporate governance challenges public utilities face and argues that these governance challenges contribute to the pervasive inefficiencies and the frequency of corporate misconduct that characterize utility industries. American corporate law provides special protections to shareholders, such as the right to elect corporate boards and the requirement that directors and managers owe fiduciary duties to shareholders. The economic justification for these protections is that shareholders are the residual claimants of corporations: because they receive any value a corporation generates beyond what it owes to its fixed claimants, they have the appropriate incentives to pursue value-enhancing investments.

To open bank accounts, new customers provide personal information and make a deposit. Within a few minutes (or perhaps a few days), new customers get access to payment services. For many years, the process financial institutions used to open accounts at Federal Reserve Banks was similar. Eligible banks filled out a one-page form and within a week received an account allowing them access to the Federal Reserve’s payment systems. Recently, however, Federal Reserve Banks have spent years considering account requests from novel banks. This Article examines the Federal Reserve’s process for evaluating requests for accounts. Using interviews, court documents, and other sources, it analyzes recent account requests from a cannabis credit union, a narrow bank, a public bank, a cryptocurrency custody bank, and a trust company. These requests reveal a lack of transparency and consistency. Most district Federal Reserve Banks do not explain how institutions should apply for accounts. It is not clear who decides whether to open the account. While the Federal Reserve Banks all evaluate risk associated with accounts and payments, the twelve Reserve Banks may not have the same risk tolerances. Decisions may be inconsistent. Even getting a decision can take years. Unfortunately, the Federal Reserve’s recently adopted guidelines, which consist primarily of a risk identification framework, do not fix these problems.

When it comes to the sex trade, some principles of feminist legal theory have done grave damage to those on the ground. While intended to uplift, these principles have instead created more violence, discrimination, and gender-based hierarchies. Two main areas where feminist legal theory has failed to appreciate the lived realities of sex workers are its reliance on the criminal legal system and its limited view of who counts as a woman. While I wish to explore the relationship between theory and practice, I reject the idea that these are two separate spheres that should interact. This view posits that the interaction between theory and practice is a choice, but it is not. Sex work has inspired theories on how to understand and address certain issues related to transactional sex. The creation of theories and their implementation impacts people in the sex trades. This interaction is a constant reinforcing loop, but only theorists can choose to ignore it. While we should continually re-envision what lessons from the ground feminist legal theory can learn from, the exchange between theory and practice must begin with repair, and it must recognize the effect that feminist legal theory has already had on people who trade sex. This work must begin to repair the incredible damage done to sex workers as a result of the implementation of these theories.

This special issue fittingly concludes with mediations from a diverse group of advocates and practitioners on what relationship exists—or should exist—between feminist legal theory, on the one hand, and the practice of legal advocacy, on the other. Focusing on how feminist prerogatives guide how movements make use of, or eschew, the law, the writers whose advocacy is showcased in this section explore how and to what degree feminist legal theory has taken up the actual practice of law and advocacy as a site for intervention or the advancement of gender justice. Conversely, these four practitioners—two attorneys, one sex work policy advocate, one self-identified “non-attorney legal advocate,” and none of them law professors— also reflect on their own experiences of feminist lawyering and advocacy, considering to what degree their own praxis reflects, engages, or refuses the myriad insights and political priorities emphasized in feminist legal theory, as a body of thought. Across the three pieces, there are multiple points of convergence and divergence, but where these writers and advocates agree is around the fact that process, in movement lawyering work, is every bit as important as product. In other words, as authors BeKura Shabazz and Lisa Sangoi write, the question of “how social change is achieved is just as important as the social change that is achieved.”

What if every gendered legal issue was not burdened by over 200 years of patriarchal and racist precedent? How would feminists craft legal practices and structures in a way that would be grounded by a clear understanding of the harms of oppression and subjugation? These questions are not just rhetorical; this essay argues that a fresh perspective is possible in the context of an Indigenous feminist jurisprudence. Indigenous feminist legal theory (IFLT) is in its nascent stages as a contemporary academic discipline and praxis. It has largely been elucidated by legal scholars in Canada, including Emily Snyder, Val Napoleon, and John Borrows. Snyder explains that IFLT lies at the intersection of feminist legal theory, Indigenous feminist theory, and Indigenous legal theory.

The northbound train has just arrived at the Old Town train station in Scandic City. The subway conductor is looking for passengers on the platform before preparing for the train’s departure to the next stop. Jasmine and Rebecca hurry past the sliding doors of the well-maintained red train and feel a sense of relief that they caught it. As the ladies run into the train, the conductor shuts the doors and begins to direct the train toward its next destination, into downtown Scandic City. Scandic City is the capital city of Oceania, which is reputed to be a truly egalitarian society. Scandic City’s extensive police force includes “security officers” that handle low-level and quality-of-life offenses, as well as more professionalized “police officers.” This security organization is central to the democratic socialist agenda in Scandic City because the preservation of law and order is critical to the radical left agenda of the egalitarian New Radicals political party. This egalitarian society reflects the feminist vision of the world. The country has a well-developed statecraft for control, which—for the most stigmatized women and people in Oceania—is experienced as pain.

Fifty years ago, in Roe v. Wade, Justice Blackmun set into motion the idea that abortion should be a decision between a woman and her doctor. That idea traveled from the Supreme Court decision to popular discourse; with it, came the notion that when it comes to reproduction, medical experts are a key part of women’s liberation. In Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the court ignored the role of experts and threw the question of who should decide when and how a person has an abortion to the people. In my essay for this symposium issue dedicated to feminist legal praxis, I will argue that contestation around medical and epidemiological evidence will continue to shape the abortion debates despite the Supreme Court’s recent decision. Reproductive rights advocates need to continue to pay close attention to new battles occurring in the register of evidence, medicine, and expertise. Doing so will require reproductive rights advocates to examine purportedly neutral scientific and expert-based justifications in the legal regulation of the practice of medicine and medication more closely. This will create new and necessary avenues for legal advocacy, including challenging when and where legal institutions legitimate misinformation about abortion or limit access to abortion based on science and evidence. In taking on questions of expertise and evidence, abortion rights advocates can learn from the overlapping movement to end racial bias in medicine and medical technology.

History will likely record Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization1 as the most devastating case of the Supreme Court’s 2021 term and perhaps one of the worst Supreme Court decisions of all time. However, the Dobbs decision offers an opportunity to revisit the damaged path to reproductive freedom, dating back to American slavery and bridge pathways forward with better understanding. This Essay offers a reflection on Dobbs, speaking to the origins of reproductive autonomy and justice concerns that preexisted Reconstruction. The Essay argues that by examining the antebellum archive, a different type of slavery and involuntary servitude comes into view, namely the involuntary reproductive servitude imposed on Black girls and women.

At its broadest, “feminist legal thought” describes the effort across generations to secure equality for women through law. The ideas that have emerged from this work can be loosely typed as “equality theories,” and the statutes, constitutional interpretations, and doctrines they inform can be tied together under the heading of “gender law.”