In August 2021, a months-long struggle between renters and landlords over the Center for Disease Control and Prevention's extended eviction moratorium culminated in one, short per curiam Supreme Court decision. This so-called "shadow docket" ruling rebuffed the CDC's claim that it possessed the authority to promulgate eviction moratoria, striking a blow to renters still suffering from the COVID-19 pandemic. After navigating Alabama Association of Realtors v. Department of Health and Human Services's (2021) procedural history, this article argues that the Court erred in its ruling — both legally and epidemiologically. This article, subsequently, evaluates the sociological implications of the Court's misguided decision and the hasty process by which it came to be. More precisely, assuming the Court's sociological legitimacy inheres in equal and diligent legal procedure, this article reveals the damage that the Court's shadow docket has inflicted on its standing in the American body politic.

In my short article, I delineate how the Supreme Court Justices and media are contributing to a hyper-inflated concern about preserving the court's legitimacy. I then pivot to explaining how this preoccupation has two negative effects: first, it impedes the court's ability to issue rulings on controversial subjects, and, second, it encourages the Justices to vote in accordance with public opinion rather than their jurisprudence. To support the first claim, I point to the “all deliberate speed” test instituted in Brown II and explain how this diluted the original holding. I draw upon historical evidence to reveal that legitimacy and public opinion concerns influenced the Court’s decision. To support the second claim, I point to two instances of vote “switching:” the historic “switch in time that saved the nine” and the recent NFIB case where Chief Justice Roberts reportedly changed his vote to “uphold the legitimacy of his court.” I conclude by pointing out the irony in obsessing over legitimacy at the expense of everything else the court stands for: legally legitimate rulings.

Climate litigators have recently claimed to represent “future generations” in their suit for environmental justice, conflating the language of "intergenerational justice" in policy with that of entitled rights for persons under the law. The (living) lead plaintiff in Juliana v. United States, for example, lists “future generations” in their list of co-plaintiffs represented by climate scientist Dr. James Hansen. Originally conceived to highlight the need for sustainable development that takes into account resource allocation for posterity, “intergenerational justice“ is a useful concept when applied to policy-making. However, it is harmful when evoked by parties for consideration by the judiciary branch. If the Supreme Court were to rule favorably on intergenerational justice, this could open the door for a slippery slope that would permanently alter the definition of personhood in the eyes of the law. A consequence of this could be justices placing the rights of the unborn child over, or at least on the same level as the right of its living mother.

The issue of students’ rights has been central to many Supreme Court cases in the past, with decisions in favor both of students’ freedoms and in schools’ rights to regulate their students. With the recent decision of Mahanoy Area School District v. B.L., where the Supreme Court decided in favor of high school student B.L. 's right to express profane frustration against her school on a private online forum, one important question arises—how will the Supreme Court continue to decide cases involving students’ rights in this age of social media? In these cases, the Supreme Court should deem any and all language made by students outside of the physical and digital school space to be protected in their right to free expression. Otherwise, there is a risk of dangerous overreaches of power on the part of schools.

The structure of Texas's new abortion law, SB 8, makes it vastly different from any previous State challenge to reproductive rights. Its unique drafting targets people who assist in abortions rather than the women who receive them and grants standing to all citizens in an attempt to evade government violation of Roe v Wade. If this law is allowed, the danger it poses extends far beyond abortion rights. It would provide a blueprint for states to avoid infringing constitutionally protected rights by handing enforcement power to private citizens in the absence of damages or personal interest. This article addresses the many troubling aspects of Texas's abortion law that should worry both pro-life and pro-choice supporters, along with anyone who believes in constitutional legitimacy.

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) was designed to protect infant industries from an onslaught of copyright claims by ensuring that digital service providers were not liable for hosting copyrighted material so long as they took down the infringing material. However, the failure of large Internet firms like Amazon and Google to ensure that claims of copyright infringement were made in good faith and the abuse of DMCA take-down notifications has created a system that allows for subject matter traditionally protected from copyright infringement to be removed nonetheless. This is especially harmful because it restricts our ability to create and access the new content and criticize existing content.

The U.S. Supreme Court has held in Our Lady of Guadalupe School v. Morrissey-Berru (2020) that federal employment discrimination laws do not apply to teachers who provide religious instruction in church-run schools. This decision deprives employees of religious institutions of the federal protections against discrimination and accentuates the power imbalance between religious institutions and their employees by extending the definition of "minister." In continuity with existing jurisprudence and in light of the religious clause of the First Amendment, it recognizes the special status of religious institutions and a ministerial exception that prevents the state from interfering in their employment choices.

This article looks at the importance of Internet celebrity Jake Paul’s recent boxing match on the law. It explains how Triller Fight Club II LLC v. The H3 Podcast, a case resulting from the fight, could threaten the work of Internet creators. Triller’s suit threatens a precedent concerning fair use set in Hosseinzadeh v. Klein in 2017. The article explains the United States legal doctrine of fair use and how Hoss v. Klein affected its application. Overall, this article shows why the precedent in Hoss v. Klein should be upheld in the ruling of Triller v. H3 to preserve the security of First Amendment rights in the ever-growing and increasingly influential digital sphere.

The recent debate around the Biden’s administration and other types of vaccine mandates forefronts the question of legality of such mandates. The best legal precedent we must base our understanding of the question is an old U.S. Supreme Court case, Jacobson v. Massachusetts (1905), a ruling that sustained a regulation in Cambridge, Massachusetts mandating the vaccination of all citizens against smallpox. While never overturned explicitly by any Supreme Court Case, the evolution of personal liberty, specifically bodily autonomy, constructed by the Supreme Court’s rulings in several cases since 1905 may prove enough to overturn the case. The Court has come to favor personal liberty over state power more often in the more than a century since Jacobson. Thus, a contemporary case asking the same question will almost certainly be overturned.

Merchant v. Mayorkas (formerly Alasaad v. Nielsen) questions the legality of long and extensive searches of technology by the Department of Homeland Security (“DHS”). Though the devices searched potentially hold information that the Department of Homeland Security claims to be a key investigational resource, plaintiffs argue that the searches are carried out in a way that violates their rights. It is important to recognize that these searches can be carried out without probable cause, meaning that people are being searched at the whim of the DHS. Moreover, these searches are significantly more intrusive than searches to detect, for example, dangerous objects on one’s person, because one’s devices often hold personal and sensitive pieces of information that rarely, if ever, pose an imminent threat to the safety of others. In reality, these devices hold information and data that a home or collection of papers might, which would be protected against unwarranted and excessive searches by the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Because the Court improperly weighed the importance of national security against digital personal rights, plaintiffs were unsuccessful in this case. However, because of the increasing importance and power of technology in our digitizing world, this issue should return and be reevaluated.

Sackett v. EPA, a 2021 9th Circuit Court case, illustrates the burdensome nature of ambiguous regulations and the all-too-common incompetency of executive agencies. Sackett has a complicated history: intending to build a house, the Sacketts purchased a marshy residential property and began filling the lot after attaining local permits. Six months into the project, the EPA informed the Sacketts that they had violated the Clean Water Act (CWA), a notoriously vague act that even the Supreme Court has struggled to comprehend. The EPA ordered the Sacketts to restore the land or face crippling fines. Believing that their property did not contain water governable under the CWA, the Sacketts sued the EPA. A 13-year legal battle ensued; ultimately, after atrocious false play by the EPA, the 9th Circuit Court decided, incorrectly, for the defendant.

Demonstrating the dangerous flaws of unrestrained executive agencies, Sackett provides an opportunity to reimagine American bureaucracy. Re-embracing federalism and prizing state and local agencies over their faceless federal counterparts will encourage accountability, efficiency, clarity, and effectiveness, all of which, as Sackett illustrates, federal bureaucracy sorely lacks.