Among the key characteristics of democratic governance are opportunities for meaningful public participation, transparency, and adherence to the rule of law, including reasoned and substantiated decision-making. These characteristics are particularly important in decision-making by administrative agencies, which, unlike legislative bodies that formulate public policy and adopt laws, are not directly accountable to the electorate. Under the Trump Administration, the processes by which agencies w…

[This is] a country whose existence was predicated on the torture of black fathers, on the rape of black mothers, on the sale of black children. . . . Having been enslaved for 250 years, black people were not left to their own devices [after slavery ended]. They were terrorized. In the Deep South, a second slavery ruled. In the North, legislatures, mayors, civic associations, banks, and citizens all colluded to pin black people into ghettos, where they were overcrowded, overcharged, and undered…

Excess added sugar negatively impacts health and can lead to a litany of problems, such as diet-related chronic diseases, e.g., diabetes, cancer, heart disease, and obesity, costing Americans millions in rising medical bills each year. Even more, new studies reveal that individuals with these underlying chronic diseases are at a higher risk of complications from COVID-19 and other viruses compared to those who are deemed healthy. And yet added sugars are difficult to avoid because unlike natura…

There is a dominant narrative in international intellectual property (“IP”) law of ever-increasing harmonization. This narrative has been deployed in ways descriptive, prescriptive, and instrumental: approximating the historical trend, providing justification, and establishing the path forward. Appeals to harmonization are attractive. They evoke a worldwide partnership and shared sacrifice to meet the goals of innovation and access to technology through certainty, efficiency, and incr…

For many Pacific Islands, complete territorial loss due to sea level rise is not a question of if but when. Despite the urgency of the issue, however, legal discourse and international instruments have only analyzed such loss through a narrow construction of adaptation and mitigation efforts. In particular, climate change and the accompanying national and international responses are typically viewed through an exclusively scientific, political, and financial lens. Even the framing of climate ch…

In 1991, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit upheld the conviction of Derek Foster, whose prosecution was based in part on rap lyrics he wrote referencing drugs and narcotics trafficking. United States v. Foster ignited a trend across the country in which prosecutors use defendant-authored rap music as evidence at trial. Beginning in the 1970s, Black artists in the United States created rap music as a form of resistance and as a means of expressing uniquely Black identit…

Reparations reappeared in the news even before the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and others made headlines as modern-day lynchings. As data continue to show the perpetuation of social and economic harm and hardship that Black Americans suffer for being Black Americans, notions of fairness and justice suggest redress for slavery and its rippling harms should be possible. But is it? Generations of powerful Black Americans have spoken against the bitter realities of Ameri…