Courts agree that the federal government may not seize a person in the United States and immediately ship them off to a prison in another country without providing any opportunity for judicial review. But this basic constitutional rule has proven difficult to enforce in court. The challenge comes not only from a defiant Executive Branch, secret orders, and midnight transfers, but also defense-side agency forum shopping. As soon as the Supreme Court held that challenges to designation and removal under the Alien Enemies Act must be brought in the district of confinement, the federal government moved detainees away from districts issuing protective orders to districts that have declined to act, necessitating a dramatic late-night intervention from the Supreme Court. This story is an especially vivid example of defense-side Executive Branch forum shopping, a phenomenon that has gone largely unnoticed and unstudied.
2025
Flexibility & Resilience are Essential Legal Skills
The legal profession is facing an era of change driven by technological
advancements, environmental crises, shifting client expectations, and
evolving societal norms. This article argues that flexibility and resilience are
not just positive personality traits but essential legal skills that should be
intentionally cultivated in law school curricula. By integrating adaptability
into legal education—through emphasizing the evolving nature of law,
incorporating interdisciplinary approaches, reshaping assessments, and
fostering collaborative learning—law schools can better equip students to
navigate an unpredictable future. Encouraging law students to embrace
flexibility and resilience as a professional skill will not only enhance their
long-term success but also strengthen the legal profession’s ability to lead in
times of transformation.
Academic Limbo: Reforming Campus Speech Governance for Students
This essay examines the structural inequalities in academic freedom protections between faculty and students at private universities, highlighted by the 2023 Gaza-related campus protests. While faculty members enjoy multiple layers of protection through tenure, contracts, and legal precedents, students must rely solely on discretionary university policies interpreted by the administrators who restrict their speech. Through analysis of recent campus conflicts, this essay argues that current frameworks for protecting student academic freedom in private universities are fundamentally inadequate and proposes establishing institutional oversight boards inspired by social media governance models. Unlike temporary committees, these boards would provide consistent, transparent adjudication processes while building precedent for future cases. This essay demonstrates why university implementation of such oversight mechanisms offers distinct advantages over social media models, including manageable case volumes and clearer contextual standards. By creating institutional separation of powers, these reforms would help align administrative actions with stated commitments to academic freedom while maintaining necessary operational control.
NextGen Bar Success: A Student-Tested, Student-Approved Method for Completing Counseling Integrated Question Sets
Legal educators nationwide need to begin teaching students a method for completing Counseling Integrated Question Sets, a novel type of question the National Conference of Bar Examiners (“NCBE”) is introducing on the NextGen bar exam. Counseling Integrated Question Sets require students to answer a series of six multiple choice or short answer questions focused on client counseling or dispute resolution, as they work through an unfolding common fact pattern that also contains rules or elicits rules students have memorized.
Stategraft: Facilitating Predatory Takings by Eminent Domain
The following Case Study is published as part of the continuing conversation from the Wisconsin Law Review’s 2023 Symposium on Stategraft. Download PDF Tanya Washington The concept of stategraft, as described in Professor Atuahene’s groundbreaking article, frames …