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Alicia Jackson, Racial Literacy, Book Bans, and The Miseducation of Critical Race Theory, Md. L. Rev. (2026)Clicking on the button will copy the full recommended citation.
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Anthony Palermo, Data Breaches, Causation, and Constitutional Standing, 21 FIU L. Rev. (2026)Clicking on the button will copy the full recommended citation.
This Article examines the causation requirement of Article III standing in modern data breach litigation. It argues that federal courts have systematically diluted constitutional limits on judicial power by presuming traceability where none exists. While data breaches are ubiquitous and alarming, the Article contends that the mere occurrence of a breach--and even an injury--should not itself establish a justiciable case or controversy. Drawing on foundational separation-of-powers principles, the Article situates the standing doctrine as an essential mechanism of judicial self-restraint--one that prevents courts from reflexively adjudicating societal fears untethered from any fair attribution to the defendant before the court.
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Royal C. Gardner, Wetlands Regulation in the United States, 10 Sarovar 15 (2026)Clicking on the button will copy the full recommended citation.
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Rebecca C. Morgan, Failing Aging: Congress, the Social Contract, and “Saving” Social Security and Medicare, 17 Journal of Aging, Law, and Policy (2026)Clicking on the button will copy the full recommended citation.
Social Security and Medicare are part of the retirement security social contract the government has with the American people, but without action from Congress, Trustees of Social Security and Medicare predict shortfalls within the next decade. This Essay begins with a look at the social contract generally, then as applied to Social Security and Medicare. Focusing on Social Security, the Essay explores the reasons for the creation of Social Security and its foundational importance to Americans of all ages, the economy, and social policy. The Essay examines the promises made by various U.S. presidents to the American people, arguing that those promises create an obligation to the American people and are not just political posturing. After examining the addition of Medicare to the retirement security social policy, the Essay considers the forces contributing to the coming shortfalls, including how prior administrations had responded, and argues that when Congress makes changes to the programs, Congress must be guided by the purposes and principles of the programs and the social contract between the government and the people.
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Anne E. Mullins, Asymmetric Legitimacy, Fla. L. Rev. (2026)Clicking on the button will copy the full recommended citation.
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Anthony Palermo, Data Breaches and Article III, 78 Fla. L. Rev. (2026)Clicking on the button will copy the full recommended citation.
Cyberattacks, hacks, and data leaks dominate news headlines and federal court dockets. Due to the proliferation of data breaches in the modern digital economy, an entire industry dedicated to protecting our electronic identities has emerged.
The law has not caught up with these realities. Constitutional standing requires a plaintiff to demonstrate an injury, actual or imminent, caused by the defendant. Despite their growing recognition of the significance of electronic personal information, courts struggle to evaluate standing in data breach cases. Federal appellate courts have shifted positions and adopted conflicting approaches. Afraid of costly litigation and uncertainty stemming from the unsettled state of the law--coupled with the potential exposure to catastrophic damages awards--companies ranging from small businesses to Fortune 500 corporations look to settle lawsuits filed by individuals whose information may have been accessed during a data breach, even when these individuals cannot identify any resulting injury.
This Article considers the circuit split dividing federal courts regarding their power to hear and resolve claims resulting from data breaches. It suggests that the mere existence of a breach fails to present the constitutionally required injury-in-fact to establish that a claim or controversy exists, and that courts should refuse to hear cases that cannot demonstrate a concrete and particular harm. By raising the threshold for judicial inquiry, courts can be spared thousands of frivolous lawsuits--thereby conserving their time and resources and enabling them to provide speedier justice to parties who can actually demonstrate harm.
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Victoria Litman, Rethinking the Religious Purpose Test After Catholic Charities Bureau: The Sincerity-Then-Standards Framework, 31 Roger Willliams U. L. Rev. 68 (2026)Clicking on the button will copy the full recommended citation.
In Catholic Charities Bureau v. Wisconsin Labor & Industry Review Commission, the Supreme Court unanimously struck down Wisconsin's test for religious exemptions from unemployment compensation, holding that conditioning exemptions on proselytization or service to co-religionists constitutes denominational discrimination. While the decision correctly identifies what states cannot do, it leaves unresolved what constitutional alternatives remain. This Article proposes the Sincerity-Then-Standards framework: courts should first presume the sincerity of an organization's religious self-identification absent evidence of fraud, then apply neutral, conduct-based standards focused on what the organization does rather than why. Drawing on analogies from the church-status presumption under I.R.C. § 508(c)(1)(A) and the Unrelated Business Income Tax, the framework avoids theological entanglement while offering a model for conduct-based regulation that may extend beyond the employment tax context.
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Ashley Krenelka Chase, Reimagining and Reconciling Antitrust and Access to Justice in the Political Economy, 21 FIU L. Rev. (2026)Clicking on the button will copy the full recommended citation.
The intersection of antitrust law and access to justice is most noticeable where concentrated control over legal information systems has created barriers that undermine both competitive markets and equitable access to the judicial system. While antitrust law traditionally focuses on market efficiency and consumer welfare, this narrow economic framework fails to address how information monopolies in the legal sector systematically exclude marginalized communities from accessing justice.
The tension between data-driven innovation and market concentration is particularly acute in the legal sector, where the accumulation and control of legal information directly impacts democratic participation and the rule of law. Current antitrust enforcement, constrained by the consumer welfare standard, rarely extends beyond basic economic analysis to consider broader social justice implications. This limitation represents a fundamental mismatch between antitrust theory and the realities of information-dependent democracy.
Through a political economy lens, this article demonstrates that barriers to legal information access are not market accidents but the predictable result of institutional arrangements that treat antitrust as a neutral, efficiency-maximizing toolbox while masking its distributive choices. The narrow focus on economic competition limits interventions that could foster innovative legal service models and expand access to justice for underserved communities.
Reconciling traditional antitrust goals with access to justice requires acknowledging the ideological tensions inherent in treating legal information as a commodity. Only by expanding antitrust analysis beyond consumer welfare to encompass broader democratic values can policymakers address the systematic exclusion of marginalized groups from legal representation and court access. This expanded framework would recognize that competition in legal information markets is not merely about efficiency but about preserving the foundational promise of "equal justice under law."
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Ashley Krenelka Chase, Rewriting Wright-Reed: The Case for a Statutory Right to Internet Access for Incarcerated Individuals, 48 Cardozo L. Rev. (2026)Clicking on the button will copy the full recommended citation.
Existing constitutional doctrine on prisoners' rights to information and access to courts is increasingly undermined by the migration of legal, educational, and civic life to digital platforms that prisoners cannot reach. Against the backdrop of the Wright-Reed litigation over exploitative prison phone rates and the subsequent 2022 Martha Wright-Reed Just and Reasonable Communications Act, this Article traces how deregulation, exclusive dealing, and revenue-sharing commissions created a carceral communications market that systematically overcharges incarcerated people and their families, and how recent FCC efforts to cap rates have been weakened by waivers and deference to sheriffs and corrections officials.
This regime of "digital punishment" now extends beyond telephony to near-total internet exclusion, enforced both through formal bans and through harsh disciplinary responses to unauthorized digital access, despite growing evidence that digital literacy, online education, and sustained family contact reduce recidivism and facilitate reentry. Drawing on comparative examples from Europe and international human rights instruments, this Article argues that secure, monitored internet access in prisons is administratively feasible, consistent with legitimate security concerns, and increasingly recognized as integral to human dignity and equal participation in contemporary society. The next evolution of prisoners’ communication rights should come through federal legislation: an amendment to the Martha Wright-Reed Act that recognizes internet access as a protected communications service, mandates just and reasonable pricing subject to FCC rate regulation, and requires correctional systems to provide meaningful, monitored internet access—particularly for legal research, education, and family communication—so that incarcerated people are not permanently consigned to digital exile.
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Ashley Krenelka Chase, Synthetic Grievances: AI-Generated Bar Complaints and the Chilling of Criminal Defense, 103 Denv. L. Rev. Forum 1 (2026)Clicking on the button will copy the full recommended citation.
Generative artificial intelligence has created a new category of "synthetic grievances": AI-generated bar complaints against criminal defense attorneys that are cheap to produce, difficult to screen, and often detached from governing law or case facts. By allowing dissatisfied defendants, family members, or jailhouse intermediaries to draft polished, citation-heavy disciplinary filings with a simple prompt, generative tools dramatically lower the cost of triggering formal regulatory processes that were built for sparse, human-authored complaints. The essay situates synthetic grievances within existing structures of attorney regulation and the distinct vulnerabilities of criminal defense practice, showing how AI-amplified bar complaints will predictably concentrate on public and appointed defenders who already shoulder disproportionate grievance volume and work under severe resource constraints. It contends that the resulting threat of reputational harm, licensure risk, and investigative burden will chill zealous advocacy by encouraging defensive lawyering, overdocumentation, and risk-averse strategic choices at odds with client-centered representation. In response, the essay proposes a suite of reforms, including mandatory disclosure and human verification of AI use in complaints, AI-assisted triage and hallucination detection at intake, and calibrated sanctions for repeat or bad faith filers, urging bar regulators to treat AI-generated complaints not as a legal-technology curiosity but as a frontline regulatory challenge for preserving robust criminal defense in an automated era.