This bibliography comprises scholarly books, book chapters, and journal articles published or accepted for publication by full-time, emeritus, and retired faculty of the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law between July 1, 2026 and September 30, 2026.
Jessica Berch & Amy Langenfeld, Introduction to Legal Method and Process: Cases and Materials (7th ed., West Academic 2026)
This innovative casebook on legal method provides a practical roadmap for thriving in law school by introducing students to judicial opinions, statutes, interpretive techniques, and the roles of lawyers, courts, and legislatures in conflict resolution. The book has student-centered, approachable design, and it tackles diverse topics in civil procedure, torts, and criminal law. Of particular note is Chapter Two’s Anatomy of a Legal Dispute, which shows students how a simple car crash case progresses through the court system (including hypothetical direct- and cross-examinations), and which illustrates the ways in which even seemingly simple cases may raise complex jurisdiction and judgment collection issues, among other issues of litigation strategy. Other chapters introduce essential interpretive techniques and explore the role of judicial restraint, giving students a broader lens on legal reasoning. The Seventh Edition offers updated advice for students beginning their legal studies and plug-and-play exercises to help faculty bring classroom discussion of precedent into today’s context.
Khaled A. Beydoun & Sheldon A. Evans, Transnational Campus Borderlands, 106 Boston University Law Review 1225 (2026)
The political boundaries of the American campus extend far beyond its terrestrial limits. Campus “borderlands” reach further, particularly in a world where the footprints of American higher education are cultural, virtual, and existential. This is particularly the case for elite research universities. Although physically rooted in American cities such as New Haven, New York, Berkeley, and Boston, these institutions operate as transnational actors. Their engagements, influence, and institutional identity are global.
At the very top levels of the institutional hierarchy, American higher education extends across domestic boundaries. While the so-called “war on higher education” marks an existential crossroads for all American colleges and universities, elite transnational institutions face distinct perils. For them, the executive attack on race-consciousness, political dissent, freedom of speech, and academic freedom does not merely threaten their educational mandate on a domestic level, but on a global scale.
While scholars have examined the current reckoning in American higher education through a purely domestic lens, this Essay expands the scope to consider its international impacts. As we explain more fully in our piece, Campus Borderlands, the executive onslaught on American higher education is an effort to remake the identity and mandate of the liberal university in the image of the Trump Administration’s white Christian nationalist vision. This vision is not only antithetical but actively hostile to the inclusive, cosmopolitan and transnational oriented missions of elite American colleges and universities.
The Trump Administration’s war on higher education seeks to reshape America’s research institutions, redirecting them from their transnational missions toward an “America First” model. Yet the transnational character of these institutions—long central to their function as instruments of American soft power—remains understudied and undertheorized in legal and political scholarship. Elite universities have historically invited the world’s best talent to teach and learn here in the United States, in turn exporting American values through students and scholars who return home to their countries of origin.
This Essay builds on our work and focuses on the elite American research university as a unique educational actor that transcends domestic bounds. Thus, the stakes of policing campus borderlands and the people within them highlight the broader transnational implications of the protracted war on higher education.
This Essay proceeds in two Parts. Part I surveys the transnational mission of American higher education, mapping its global ascent alongside the nation’s emergence as an international hegemon. Next, Part II examines the Trump Administration’s effort to upend that global mission through an ensemble of executive orders that seek to constrict universities’ international reach and contort their institutional identities in accordance with the restrictive contours of the America First model.
Dan Bodansky, How Authoritative is the ICJ Climate Change Advisory Opinion?, 16 Climate Law 287 (2026)
This brief essay offers an initial assessment of the authority, persuasiveness, and potential effects of the Climate Change Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice (ICJ AO). It proceeds in five steps. First, it considers whether the ICJ should be regarded as infallible. Second, it examines the legal status of ICJ advisory opinions and questions the finality of the ICJ AO. Third, it evaluates the persuasiveness of the Court’s legal reasoning, focusing on the ICJ interpretations of the Paris Agreement. Fourth, it explores the potential effects of the ICJ AO on the United Nations climate change regime, other international environmental negotiations, and the behaviour of states. Finally, it assesses its potential effects on future climate litigation.
Dan Bodansky & Harro van Asselt, The Art and Craft of the Paris Agreement, 16 Climate Law 411 (2026)
Ten years after the Paris Agreement’s adoption, this article takes stock of international climate change law through the lens put forward in The Art and Craft of International Environmental Law. The article first outlines the distinctive features of the approach to international environmental law in Art and Craft and how the Paris Agreement exemplifies them. Next, the article examines several key developments in international environmental law since the original publication of Art and Craft in 2010—namely, the changing role of non-state actors, a turn to (international) courts, and the growing complexity of the legal architecture—and discusses how these changes are reflected in international climate change law. To the extent these developments become embedded in international climate change law, they reflect a shift from the state- and treaty-centric paradigm described in the first edition of Art and Craft to a new, more polycentric form of governance.
Andrew Carter, Managing an American Predator: Wildlife Law and the Mountain Lion, 50 Harvard Environmental Law Review 365 (2026)
To date, how American governments have managed mountain lion populations has received little to no attention in the legal scholarship. There is a substantial body of legal scholarship examining the management of grizzly bear and wolf populations, largely because managing these predators under the Endangered Species Act raises complex administrative law and federalism questions. And even when predator management is discussed generally, the focus remains on wolves; mountain lions are treated as a sort of adjunct species, the presumption being that managing mountain lions is effectively like managing wolves. But that is not the case. Mountain lions pose dramatically different management challenges than wolves.
To begin, for the past fifty years, wolves in the lower 48 have been managed under the federal ESA; “wolf law” today is largely, if not entirely, federal administrative law. In contrast, “Mountain Lion Law” is entirely state law; each state manages (or does not manage) its mountain lions as it sees fit, usually under a managed sport hunting model. But perhaps the most salient distinction between wolf and mountain lion management is that wolves do not attack people, and mountain lions do. Remarkably, in the long arc of American history, there are no documented reports in the lower 48 of a healthy wild wolf killing or even attacking a human. In contrast, in the summer of 2025 alone, mountain lions attacked an eleven-year-old girl in Malibu, California; a four-year-old child hiking with his family on a popular National Park trail in Washington; a man walking his dog in a suburb of Phoenix; and a summer camp employee in Northern California.
Such attacks make good copy; every mountain lion attack is detailed in the press, often in gruesome detail. Consequently, mountain lion management has become a national discussion. Against this backdrop, perhaps the time is ripe for a dedicated legal history of the American mountain lion.
Laura Coordes & Edwin E. Smith, The Push for Uniformity Under the Uniform Assignment for Benefit of Creditors Act, 81 Business Lawyer 661 (2026)
In October of 2025 the Uniform Law Commission promulgated the Uniform Assignment for Benefit of Creditors Act (the “Act”). The Act provides for the use of an assignment for benefit of creditors (an “ABC”) as an additional method in the enacting state for the winding up of a distressed business in an efficient and flexible manner. In situations where an ABC is appropriate, an ABC under the Act may reduce transaction costs, and provide for greater recoveries by creditors of the distressed business, than other alternatives for winding up the business. This Article explains the background leading to the promulgation of the Act and then summarizes many of the Act’s provisions.
Laura Coordes, Taming Judicial Estoppel: Keathley v. Buddy Ayers Construction, 29 Green Bag 269 (2026)
The U.S. Supreme Court has not often spoken about judicial estoppel, but a recent bankruptcy opinion gave observers a glimpse of the justices’ views on the topic. Spoiler alert: they don’t hold it in high regard. In Keathley v. Buddy Ayers Construction, Inc. the Court held that when determining whether an omission was inadvertent or mistaken for the purpose of applying judicial estoppel – an equitable doctrine – a court should look to the totality of the circumstances, not a narrower, two-factor test.
Laura Coordes et al., Introduction to the Uniform Commercial Code and 2022 Amendments, Arizona State University Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law Paper No. 7280520 (August 13, 2026)
According to The Uniform Law Commission, it is the Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) that provides consistency and uniformity of law as “a comprehensive set of laws governing all commercial transactions in the United States.” Adopted by each state individually, the UCC recognizes that “Uniformity of law is essential…for the interstate transaction of business [since] businesses can enter into contracts with confidence that the terms will be enforced in the same way by the courts of every jurisdiction.” As private law, the UCC is applicable only “to voluntary commercial transactions between private parties. For example, the UCC governs sales and leases of goods at both the wholesale and retail level, payments and funds transfers, loans where personal property (as opposed to real estate) are used for collateral, shipping and warehousing, and transactions involving investment securities.” Your authors teach the UCC and are aware of the need for an introductory overview and update to reflect the recent changes and definitions. Because many of the textbooks now in use have not been updated to reflect the 2022 Amendments, we believe this law journal article is of considerable value.
Laura Coordes et al., Whatever Happened to Commercial Law?, 46 Bankruptcy Law Commentaries NL 1 (August 2026)
This issue of Bankruptcy Law Commentaries breaks from doctrinal analysis to discuss a matter of importance to legal academics, practitioners, and judges: the preparation of modern law school graduates to practice in the areas of bankruptcy and commercial law.
Commercial law has receded from the law school curriculum at a pace that has accelerated in recent years. According to data collected by the ABA Task Force on Commercial Education (“Task Force”) in early 2026, only 50% of law schools currently offer a course on sales (Article 2 of the Uniform Commercial Code (“UCC”)), only 21% offer a course on commercial law or commercial transactions (a broader UCC-survey course), only 23% offer a course on payment systems or negotiable instruments (Articles 3 and 4 of the UCC), and only 79% offer a course on secured transactions (Article 9 of the UCC). The National Conference of Bar Examiners’ Next Gen Bar Exam, which has reduced emphasis on commercial law concepts in contracts and property and excised secured transactions completely, is likely to hasten this trend.
In this issue, regular contributors Laura Coordes and Kara Bruce are joined by Anthony Palermo, who chairs the Task Force. We aim to accomplish three things: first, we catalogue the nature and pace at which commercial law concepts are disappearing from law school curricula; second, we identify the stakes at play; and third, we provide interested readers with opportunities to help address this problem.
Tenielle Fordyce-Ruff, Contemporary Appellate Advocacy, 26 Journal of Appellate Practice & Process 425 (2026)
Most legal advocacy texts cover constructing the parts of an appellate or trial brief, persuasive writing techniques, and oral advocacy. Contemporary Appellate Advocacy goes beyond the usual coverage. The text covers the science of persuasion, creating professional identity, discussion of professionalism and bias, formatting briefs for modern readers, and technology’s evolving role in contemporary appellate practice. And it masterfully accomplishes this all in an easy-to-understand 300 pages.
Elissa Gentry et al., Embryonic Option-Hood, 79 Southern Methodist University Law Review 239 (2026)
A frozen embryo does not merely represent a potential for human life; it represents a deferred decision to trigger this potential. Parties value this decision deferral because it allows them to retain the option to attempt conception after any uncertainty about future events or desires has resolved. Failing to recognize this “option value” of embryos has resulted in confusion over the best approach to allocating ownership of embryos and calculating damages for reproductive harms. This Article provides a novel paradigm showing that embryos should be treated as neither persons nor mere property; instead, a significant portion of their value is in their ability to preserve and defer decisions over implantation. When such embryonic option-hood is overlooked, society risks improperly allocating disposition rights and undercompensating patients who were deprived of this option. Given this insight, this Article makes two significant contributions. First, this Article proposes a modified approach to embryo disposition that validates—rather than undermines—the option value of embryos. In the absence of a valid contract, most courts balance party interests at the time of conflict. Because this approach is not focused on party expectations at the time of embryo creation, reliance on the traditional balancing test can essentially destroy the option value of embryos. This Article adds an intermediate step before resorting to balancing which requires the court to make a fact-intensive determination into whether there was an agreed-upon disposition at the time of embryo creation. In the absence of evidence of original intent, the Article proposes a modified version of the traditional balancing test courts have used. Second, acknowledging the option value of embryos sheds light on how to calculate damages in different contexts. This Article establishes a methodology for determining both the standard of care/regulatory standards necessary to protect embryos as well as damages for compensating patients for negligence resulting in embryo loss and for intentional interference with embryos. The Article concludes by cautioning that state interference newly allowed by Dobbs can eviscerate the option value of embryos, with upstream effects for embryo creation and fertility care access.
Elissa Gentry et al., Strategic Submissions: An Analysis of Supplemental Drug Approvals, Journal of Economics & Management Strategy (forthcoming)
Off-label use regulation has the potential to change pharmaceutical firms’ behavior and—consequently—affect patient welfare. We investigate the impact of changes in off-label regulation on pharmaceutical firms’ behavior in seeking formal marketing approval for supplemental uses. In 2012, a US court decision protected truthful off-label promotion, providing pharmaceutical companies more leeway to promote off-label uses of their drug. Using a unique data set of pharmaceutical firms’ research and development projects, we exploit this regulatory change to understand how firms react to government policies. Results demonstrate that the hazard of approval declined for supplemental uses, relative to original uses, after the policy change. Patent protection, potential market size, and competition are also important determinants of the hazard of approval. These results have implications not only for innovation policy but for the creation of high-quality data for certain indications.
Tamara S. Herrera, Arizona Legal Research (5th ed., Carolina Academic Press 2026)
Arizona Legal Research, Fifth Edition was written for first-year law students, paralegals, and anyone who wants to learn the fundamentals of conducting legal research in Arizona. The fifth edition places greater emphasis on the legal research process and legal analysis, helping readers develop the skills needed to approach research problems systematically and effectively. The updated material focuses on preparing to conduct research, organizing and evaluating research results, as well as integrating research into legal analysis. The book also includes a new standalone chapter devoted to research techniques and strategies that readers can apply across a wide range of research problems.
Arizona Legal Research explains legal research as a researcher would approach a problem in practice. Specifically, it covers research in Arizona secondary sources, constitutional law, statutes (including legislative history), administrative law, and case law. It also includes a chapter introducing the basics of Indian and tribal law research, an important area for Arizona legal practitioners.
The fifth edition continues to provide practical guidance for students and practitioners who conduct research primarily online or in remote environments. Throughout the book, chapters identify both free online resources and subscription-based research platforms, enabling readers to choose the most appropriate tools for a given research task. In addition to Arizona law, Arizona Legal Research explains the principal resources used to research federal law. As a result, it can serve as the primary text for an Arizona legal research course or as a companion to texts that focus more extensively on federal or specialized legal research.
Art Hinshaw, Eleni Kosta & Diana Bowman, Report on the Conference on “Tech-Trust Nexus: Revolutionizing Online Dispute Resolution”, Tilburg Institute for Law, Technology, and Society White Paper (October 2026)
This white paper reports the proceedings of the 1 July 2025 conference titled “Tech-Trust Nexus: Revolutionizing Online Dispute Resolution”, co-organized by Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law (Arizona State University, U.S.A.) and the Tilburg Institute for Law, Technology, and Society (TILT – Tilburg Law School, Tilburg University, The Netherlands). The conference explored the intersection of issues of trust, technology, and dispute resolution, focusing on how the rise of artificial intelligence is reshaping the way individuals and institutions engage in and resolve conflict through public and private online dispute resolution providers.
James G. Hodge, Jr. & Summer Ghaith, Exploring Constitutional Limits of Insurrection Powers, 1 Arizona State Law Journal Forum 1 (2026)
Just over a year into his second term in office, President Donald Trump and his administration have threatened to invoke extensive national powers under antiquated provisions of the Insurrection Acts to quell “rebellions” and other purported threats to public health and safety. The primary bases under President Trump’s purview for such powers are repeated acts of civil unrest largely in response to immigration practices via federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and U.S. Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) agents in Minneapolis beginning in early 2026 as well as other urban areas this past year.
James G. Hodge, Jr., Federal Quarantine Authority Gone Awry, 1 University of Pittsburgh Journal of Health Law & Policy 1 (2026)
Ask yourself – are you willing to set aside over 10% of your life this year, specifically forty-two consecutive days, to be physically corralled and medically monitored daily in a federal facility in Nebraska on the grounds that your potential exposure to a sometimes lethal disease, which is not easily spread person-to-person, may lead to your infection and threaten others? Nearly twenty Americans faced this same question recently regarding their willingness to be quarantined for a disease they did not have at the time and, ultimately, never contracted.
To be sure, the public health authority to quarantine individuals in the United States is well-established and practiced annually, largely through state and local governments. Thousands of Americans with active tuberculosis, for example, regularly adhere to home-based or limited institutional quarantines for the health and safety of their communities.
Yet, what the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) conducted beginning in May 2026, tied to the hantavirus – Andes strain (Andes virus) outbreak on a foreign cruise ship, arguably exceeded effective, ethical, and lawful quarantine powers.
As one of the disgruntled U.S. passengers from the ship, Angela Perryman, publicly argued, CDC stretched the boundaries of its quarantine authority in her case while similarly situated passengers were exempted from heavier-handed measures.
Within the realm of mandatory social distancing powers, CDC’s discordant approach to instituting quarantines forewarns its handling of additional persons exposed to Ebola and other dangerous, infectious diseases at home and abroad.
James G. Hodge, Jr., Summer Ghaith & Emma Schmidt, Addressing Emergency Department Boarding Systems and Policies to Protect Patient Health, Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics (forthcoming)
Emergency department (ED) boarding entails the longstanding hospital practice of temporarily holding admitted patients in the ED due to lack of available inpatient beds. Widespread boarding across urban and rural hospitals has escalated into a national public health crisis creating dangerous gridlock, delaying care for existing and new emergency patients, and significantly increasing the risks of medical errors and mortality. Congress and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services have introduced legislative and regulatory proposals to modernize bed tracking and care model innovations. High-level policy accountability and strategic, site-specific prioritization are needed to protect EDs’ core clinical missions of assuring the highest quality care for critical need patients.
Kimberly Holst et al., Legal Drafting for Conflict Resolution (West Academic 2026)
Law school teaching is heavily focused on litigation. This is true for both doctrinal and skills courses. While an increased emphasis on contract drafting skills has occurred, the conceptualization of lawyerly work remains dichotomous—litigation v. transaction—rather than adopting a broader conception that recognizes that successful lawyers employ a wide array of skills regardless of their practice area. This text contextualizes drafting skills in a variety of practical settings. By using a framework of alternative drafting contexts, readers are free to examine skills as they might approach them in their area of practice. This emphasizes the transferability of these skills across practice types.
These skills will be important for students as they approach clinics and externships, the NextGen Bar exam, and their future practice as attorneys. This text may be a helpful supplement for students in a clinical setting, but it can also serve as a primary text for drafting across practice areas.
Kimberly Holst et al., International Legal Developments Year in Review: 2025, 60 The Year in Review 1 (2026)
This publication, International Legal Developments – Year in Review: 2025, presents a survey of important legal and political developments in international law that occurred during 2025. The volume consists of articles from twenty-nine committees of the American Bar Association Section of International Law, whose members live around the world and whose committees report on a diverse range of issues and topics that have arisen in international law over the past year. Not every development in international law can be included in this volume, and the omission of a particular development or perspective should not be construed as an indication of insignificance. The content of each article reflects the work and views of its authors and editors. The Section of International Law committees draft their articles under extremely strict guidelines that limit the number of words that each committee has. Within these guidelines, committee members contribute submissions that describe the most significant developments in their substantive practice area or geographic region. In some cases, non-section members who have specialized knowledge or expertise in an area may also be contributing authors.
Gary Marchant & Jordan Buckwald, Private Standards as Liability Shields: A Pro-Innovation Artificial Intelligence Regulatory Approach for States, 27 Minnesota Journal of Law, Science & Technology 61 (2026)
States face a dilemma. The federal government is not regulating artificial intelligence (AI), and is threatening states that regulate the technology with preemption and funding restrictions. Moreover, piecemeal state regulation with different substantive requirements risks impeding AI innovation and harming our national interest and security. And yet, AI creates a whole host of problems relating to accuracy, safety, security, bias, transparency, privacy, and autonomy that needs to be governed. This Article presents a solution to this dilemma that can protect against AI risks without harming innovation and the national interest. The proposal is for states to provide a liability shield for AI systems that conform to recognized comprehensive risk management standards. After discussing the proposed solution, as well as drawbacks to the model, the analysis concludes that these liability shields are a simple, positive step that states can take to both promote AI innovation and protect their citizens from risks.
Ben McJunkin, Reckless Accomplices, 121 Northwestern University Law Review 301 (2026)
In recent years, criminal prosecutors have pursued homicide charges against the parents of teenaged school shooters. Two high-profile cases—one from Michigan and one from Georgia—provide paradigmatic examples. In each case, the parents provided their children with weapons and ammunition despite obvious signs of each child’s dangerousness and instability. Criminal liability for such reckless conduct is appropriate. But homicide charges are not. This Article critiques this new trend in prosecutions as distorting the substantive criminal law to obtain an outcome that is otherwise unavailable without criminal code reform.
It is a long-held criminal law tenet that intentional wrongful conduct by one party—such as a school shooter—severs the chain of causation that might otherwise tie earlier wrongdoing—such as the provision of weapons— to prohibited results. In order to seek convictions against the parents of school shooters, prosecutors and judges have been discarding this foundational tenet of criminal causation and replacing it with a tort-like assessment of simple foreseeability. This distorts the substantive criminal law in dangerous ways, radically expanding the number of people and types of acts that can be said to have caused the deaths in question, misattributing blame, producing punishment out of proportion to culpability, and undermining the criminal law’s commitment to free will.
Meanwhile, more appropriate theories of liability, such as accomplice liability, are foreclosed by strict mens rea requirements that do not reflect the parents’ wrongful acts in these cases. Prosecutors thus find themselves stuck between pursuing inappropriate charges and taking no action at all.
To forestall any further corruption of the criminal law’s causation doctrines, and to more accurately sanction the parents’ problematic conduct, this Article calls for the creation of a new class of accomplice liability: reckless accomplices. A reckless accomplice is one who is aware of a substantial and unjustifiable risk that their actions will materially facilitate another’s criminal wrongdoing. Importantly, unlike traditional accomplices, who share a criminal purpose with the perpetrator, reckless accomplices would not be liable for the crimes they facilitated. Rather, legislators should create a standalone crime with punishment statutorily cabined to reflect the accomplice’s individual contribution to the crime. In most cases, this would be a small fraction of the punishment authorized for the principal offender. Criminalizing reckless accomplices in this manner would provide a relief valve for our punitive instincts in the wake of sensational tragedies, without the overcriminalization and overpunishment that attend homicide prosecutions. And it may, more broadly, invite us to reconsider the derivative nature of accomplice liability generally, which holds accomplices responsible for harm that is more properly attributable to the acts of others.
Robert Miller, Destroying the Doctrine of Discovery, Arizona State University Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law Paper No. 7444598 (September 10, 2026)
The non-European, non-Christian world was colonized under international law that is called today the Doctrine of Discovery. This international law of colonialism was developed in the fifteenth century by Portugal, Spain, and the Catholic Church. It was thereafter adopted and adapted by England, France, and Holland in their colonial and commercial activities around the world. Under this international law, European countries claimed superior rights over Indigenous Nations and Peoples. When European explorers planted crosses and raised flags on newly discovered lands, they were making legal and religious claims of ownership, sovereignty, and conquest over the Indigenous Nations, and their lands and assets. These claims were justified on racial, ethnocentric, and religious ideas about the alleged superiority of Christian nations. This conference paper examines the application of the Doctrine around the world, and its comparative law analysis demonstrates the genocidal and pernicious effects the Doctrine created. The author identifies ten elements that comprise the Doctrine of Discovery and that demonstrate how Euro-Americans used international law to colonize Indigenous Nations. Needless to say, Euro-American domination, exploitation, and colonization seriously injured the human, property, sovereign, and self-determination rights of Indigenous Nations and Peoples, and still seriously affects them today. This conference paper sets out some initial steps that Indigenous, and non-Indigenous, peoples and nations can pursue to begin to unravel and even perhaps to destroy the international law of colonialism – the Doctrine of Discovery.
Robert Miller, American Indian Influence on the U.S. Constitution in Encyclopedia Virginia (Patricia Miller et al. eds., Virginia Humanities 2026)
Indian nations, Indigenous peoples, and forms of tribal government helped shape the development of the U.S. Constitution in two ways. They were, as some historians have called them, “exemplars of liberty,” and they were one of the threats that motivated white Americans to “provide for the common defense” with the far more powerful federal government created by the Constitution. Prominent founders such as George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison were well acquainted with Indian peoples, tribal governments, and Indigenous theories of governance. Many had worked with Indian nations in diplomatic settings in the decades before the United States was established. Tribal governments, especially the Iroquois Confederacy, exemplified federalism, checks and balances, and democratic principles. Inspired by the Iroquois Confederacy, Franklin promoted early ideas of colonial unity through his Albany Plan, which influenced later constitutional thinking. Jefferson and Adams praised Indigenous governance systems for their simplicity and democratic elements. Most white Americans, however, saw Native nations as military and political threats, underscoring the need for a strong federal government, a standing army financed by national taxes, and a unified Indian policy—all motivations for replacing the Articles of Confederation with the U.S. Constitution. The U.S. Constitution references tribes and Native peoples explicitly in the Indian Commerce Clause and census provisions and implicitly in the Treaty Clause. Though the U.S. Congress acknowledged the influence of the Iroquois Confederacy on the development of the U.S. Constitution in 1988, some scholars dispute the extent of this impact, citing limited evidence and major differences between tribal systems and the U.S. Constitution.
Chad Noreuil, Mindfulness and Bar Exam Preparation in Mindfulness in Legal Education (Scott L. Rogers ed., Edward Elgar 2026)
This chapter addresses how a professor can incorporate mindfulness into bar exam preparation. The high-stakes nature of the bar exam can be highly stressful, potentially hindering performance. Rooted in the Zen principles of focus, discipline, awareness, balance, simplicity, and compassion, this chapter provides students with a template for a holistic approach to bar exam studying. By incorporating mindfulness techniques, students can enhance their emotional regulation and cognitive clarity. Research indicates that mindfulness not only reduces anxiety but also improves concentration, memory retention, and resilience—all necessary components for passing the bar exam.
Tracy Pearl & Stacey A. Tovino, Excluded at the Root: Health Insurance Discrimination Against Hair Loss Conditions, 87 Ohio State Law Journal 379 (2026)
Hair loss is an extraordinarily common medical condition impacting millions of men and women and is linked to significant psychosocial harms, including anxiety, depression, social withdrawal, and reduced quality of life, yet medical treatments and prosthetics designed to address these conditions are routinely excluded from health insurance coverage in the United States. This Article explores the extent and implications of hair loss exclusions. Drawing on original research, including a fifty-state survey of state benchmark plans implementing the Affordable Care Act’s essential health benefit requirements and an updated survey of state mandated benefit laws, it shows that most states either expressly exclude or sharply limit coverage for hair loss medications and other medical treatments in addition to wigs, hair prosthetics, and hair transplant surgery. Where coverage exists, it is often restricted to narrow clinical contexts, such as chemotherapy-induced alopecia, and explicitly excludes patients with autoimmune conditions, traction alopecia, androgenetic alopecia, or other common causes of hair loss. In so doing, insurers contradict public policy rationales underpinning coverage for analogous conditions, such as post-mastectomy breast reconstruction.
This Article argues that limiting coverage for hair loss based on the underlying medical condition or perceived “cosmetic” nature of treatment is discriminatory under federal regulations prohibiting benefit design that disadvantages particular health conditions and disproportionately impacts women, racial minorities, religious communities, and other vulnerable groups. It also proposes statutory and regulatory reforms designed to correct these inequities, including selecting state benchmark plans that cover hair loss services, enacting and strengthening state mandated benefit laws, and harmonizing coverage obligations with federal nondiscrimination standards. By reframing hair loss as a legitimate medical condition rather than a cosmetic issue, this Article situates hair loss coverage within broader health law and equity debates and offers practical solutions to ensure fair and inclusive access to care.
Troy Rule, Electricity Zoning, Ohio State Law Journal (forthcoming)
This Article argues that retail electricity rates should vary more from place to place across a utility’s service area to more accurately reflect geographic differences in the utility’s costs of providing electricity service. Utilities’ costs of supplying electricity have always varied by location due to topography, economies of density, wildfire risk, and other factors. Despite those cost differences, state utility commissions have historically set retail electricity rates that are the same regardless of a customer’s location. For nearly a century, this “postage stamp rate” approach has compelled customers in inexpensive-to-serve areas to subsidize the electricity service of other customers in costly-to-serve places. Although this “one-rate-for-all-locations model” keeps electricity rates lower in costly-to-serve communities, it does so by overcharging low-cost urban customers and distorting retail electricity markets. Today, as growing wildfire risks and data center development drive up electricity prices and create energy affordability challenges across the country, the inefficiencies of utilities’ postage stamp rate approach to electricity rates are increasingly difficult to ignore. A straightforward way to address these challenges would be to designate multiple rate “zones” on a utility’s service area map and set retail rates that vary from zone to zone to at least partially reflect clear geographic differences in the utility’s service costs. Such an approach would send more accurate price signals to customers about the true costs of their electricity service, enhancing efficiency and equity in these markets—just as “locational marginal pricing” has done in wholesale power markets for many years. Among other things, zoned retail electricity pricing could reduce local opposition to renewable energy development by making it possible to offer discounted electricity rates in a project’s host community. Zoned rates could also promote distributed solar and storage installations where they would most benefit the grid. Such rate structures could even make it more difficult for utilities to hide the costs new data center projects indirectly impose on other ratepayers. In an age when climate change, artificial intelligence, and rising infrastructure development costs are placing unprecedented strain on the electric grid, zoned retail electricity pricing could be a valuable means of promoting low carbon, affordable electricity for generations to come.
Michael Selmi, DEI and the Private Workplace, 35 Southern California Review of Law & Social Justice 181 (2026)
In 2023, the Supreme Court invalidated the use of race in the admissions practices of Harvard University and the University of North Carolina in a case known as Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard. Immediately following that decision, dozens of cases and inquiries were filed challenging the employment practices of private employers under the notion that the Supreme Court’s decision had effectively prohibited any efforts to diversify a workforce. But these recent challenges ignore the long history of workplace affirmative action which differs significantly from the educational setting where a diverse student body was seen as essential to creating an intellectual community. Private employers have long had substantial leeway to engage in practices to create and maintain a diverse workforce, now done primarily under the rubric of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion better known as DEI as opposed to affirmative action. This Essay will explore the older Supreme Court cases, how those cases have been interpreted over the years by lower courts, the move from affirmative action to DEI, and the limited effect the recent Supreme Court case should have on workplace diversity. Finally, I will discuss the recent cases and show that most of the cases resemble older cases alleging reverse discrimination and that most of the challenges to date have failed, leaving private employers with freedom to continue with their DEI practices.
Michael Selmi, Discounting Discrimination: Title VII’s Damage Caps, Arizona State University Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law Paper No. 7351259 (August 7, 2026)
In 1991, Congress incorporated damages into Title VII, capping those damages at a maximum of $300,000 depending on the size of the employer for combined compensatory and punitive damages. Those damage caps have not been altered or copies in other statutes in the ensuing 37 years and as a result of inflation are now worth half of what they once were, thus making discrimination today significantly cheaper than was originally intended. This is purely a product of neglect rather than a conscious decision. This Essay will argue that the damage caps cry out for reform and will further suggest that there is no reason federal employment discrimination cases should have capped damages. Rather, Title VII damages should be treated like other civil claims and be subject to existing law regarding punitive and compensatory damages. To reach this conclusion, the Essay explores the purpose behind punitive and compensatory damages, existing studies on jury verdicts and state discrimination alternatives, as well as comparisons to malpractice damages which are another area where damages are sometimes capped.
The post New Faculty Publications – Fall 2026 appeared first on Ross-Blakley Law Library Blog.