Author: Sarah

Justice Neil Gorsuch’s approach to textualism, which this Note will call “muscular textualism,” is unique. Most notably exemplified in Bostock v. Clayton County, muscular textualism is marked by its rigorous adherence to what Justice Gorsuch perceives to be the “plain language” of the text. Because Justice Gorsuch’s opinions exemplify muscular textualism in a structured and consistent manner, his appointment to the Supreme Court provides the forum from which he can influence the decision-making process of other members of the judiciary when they seek guidance from Supreme Court precedent. Accordingly, it is important for both advocates and judges to understand the muscular textualist analysis and its often rights-restrictive results.

Muscular textualism departs from new textualism, the interpretive approach Justice Scalia promoted, in several respects. This Note focuses on two main differences between muscular textualism and new textualism: muscular textualism’s enhanced literalness, which causes the interpreter to adopt the most basic, narrow, and superficial interpretation of the text rather than exploring the nuances of the phrase at issue, and muscular textualism’s constrained view of what context interpreters may consider to discover the proper meaning of the text.

Part III of this Note applies the framework developed in Part II to two interpretive questions that have created a circuit split. First, it examines whether Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act prohibits restrictive voter ID laws. It then turns to Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act and asks whether plasma centers are subject to compliance with Title III. Finally, this Note concludes by pointing to the potential impact of muscular textualism beyond the confines of statutory interpretation.

Under U.S. immigration law, non-citizens are subject to deportation following certain criminal convictions. One deportation category is for “crimes involving moral turpitude,” or CIMTs. This category usually refers to crimes that involve fraud or actions seen as particularly depraved. For example, tax evasion and spousal abuse are CIMTs, but simple assault generally is not. For a crime to qualify as a CIMT, it must include depraved conduct and some level of intent.

The CIMT framework has been criticized for a variety of reasons. Not only is it defined ambiguously with outdated language, but the moral values it enshrines can sometimes seem antiquated. The framework also leads to inconsistent results. This is partly because courts make CIMT determinations using the categorical approach, which is as confusing as it is controversial. In addition, the standard may allow for arbitrary and potentially discriminatory decisions by immigration adjudicators.

This Note evaluates a CIMT determination that the Eighth Circuit recently upheld. There, the court agreed that failure to register as a sex offender involves moral turpitude. This Note argues that the Eighth Circuit applied the categorical approach incorrectly and relied on an outdated case that should be overturned. A violation of Minnesota’s sex offender registration law lacks the requisite depravity and intent to be a CIMT. Further, this Note contends that the moral turpitude standard creates too many problems and should be abandoned in immigration law.

A tribute to Professor David I. Bruck, who served on the faculty of the Washington and Lee University School of Law from 2004 to 2020. Bruck directed W&L’s death penalty defense clinic, the Virginia Capital Case Clearinghouse, also known as “VC3”. He became Professor of Law, Emeritus in 2020.

Issues of racial inequality and violence are front and center today, as are issues surrounding artificial intelligence (“AI”). This Article, written by a law professor who is also a computer scientist, takes a deep dive into understanding how and why hacked and rogue AI creates unlawful and unfair outcomes, particularly for persons of color.

Black Americans are disproportionally featured in criminal justice, and their stories are obfuscated. The seemingly endless back-to-back murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and heartbreakingly countless others have finally shaken the United States from its slumbering journey towards intentional criminal justice reform. Myths about Black crime and criminals are embedded in the data collected by AI and do not tell the truth about race and crime. However, the number of Black people harmed by hacked and rogue AI will dwarf all historical records, and the gravity of harm is incomprehensible.

The lack of technical transparency and legal accountability leaves wrongfully convicted defendants without legal remedies if they are unlawfully detained based on a cyberattack, faulty or hacked data, or rogue AI. Scholars and engineers acknowledge that the artificial intelligence that is giving recommendations to law enforcement, prosecutors, judges, and parole boards lacks the common sense of an eighteen-month-old child. This Article reviews the ways AI is used in the legal system and the courts’ response to this use. It outlines the design schemes of proprietary risk assessment instruments used in the criminal justice system, outlines potential legal theories for victims, and provides recommendations for legal and technical remedies to victims of hacked data in criminal justice risk assessment instruments. It concludes that, with proper oversight, AI can increase fairness in the criminal justice system, but without this oversight, AI-based products will further exacerbate the extinguishment of liberty interests enshrined in the Constitution.

According to anti-lynching advocate, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, “The way to right wrongs is to turn the light of truth upon them.” Thus, transparency is vital to safeguarding equity through AI design and must be the first step. The Article seeks ways to provide that transparency, for the benefit of all America, but particularly persons of color who are far more likely to be impacted by AI deficiencies. It also suggests legal reforms that will help plaintiffs recover when AI goes rogue.

In two recent opinions, Maryland v. Shatzer and Howes v. Fields, the Supreme Court concluded that inmates serving prison sentences were not in custody for purposes of Miranda—in Shatzer’s case while he was living among the general prison population and in Fields’s case while he was undergoing police interrogation. The question addressed in this Article is one that has divided the lower courts in the wake of those two decisions: the impact of the Court’s rulings on the hundreds of thousands of pretrial detainees in this country, many of whom are poor, Black, and Brown. This Article maintains that the Court’s language and reasoning in Shatzer and Fields, as well as the relevant policy considerations, call for limiting the reach of those opinions to prisoners serving time.

This Article therefore concludes that pretrial detainees should be deemed to be in Miranda custody for the duration of their confinement prior to trial. Any other result would allow gamesmanship on the part of prosecutors in making charging decisions and bail recommendations and would enable law enforcement to trade on the coerciveness of pretrial detention to elicit unwarned confessions from suspects who are especially susceptible to the threats and promises that are a leading cause of false confessions and who disproportionately represent communities of color and financially vulnerable populations.

De minimis tax rules—rules that eliminate tax burdens for low-income taxpayers or low-dollar transactions—abound in the tax law. Despite the prevalence of such rules, legal scholarship has treated them as—well—de minimis, or as mere rounding errors that do not merit sustained attention. This perspective is understandable. If de minimis rules address insignificant taxpayers or tax liabilities, aren’t the rules themselves likely to be insignificant?

Recent tax law developments have revealed that this conception of de minimis tax rules is deeply misguided. Major allocations of tax law liability, as well as accompanying questions about the fairness, efficiency, and administrability of the tax system, turn on the existence and design of de minimis tax rules. In the wake of the recent Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, for example, astute industry players successfully lobbied the Treasury Department to create de minimis tax rules, thereby scoring significant monetary victories. De minimis tax rules like these not only serve as low-salience giveaways but are also poorly designed in a way that undermines the integrity of the tax system.

The lack of scholarly attention to de minimis tax rules has left this lobbying largely unchecked. There is no scholarly framework evaluating existing de minimis tax rules. There is no policy framework to help lawmakers decide why, when, or how such rules should be made. And there is no separation of powers framework analyzing when the Treasury Department has the authority to create de minimis tax rules without express Congressional authorization. This Article seeks to fill this gap by analyzing de minimis tax rules along all of these dimensions. It provides a framework for considering when de minimis tax rules are preferable to other policy options and offers important design considerations. Scholars can apply this analysis to the de minimis tax rules that already pervade the Internal Revenue Code and policymakers can use it to guide the many more they will consider in the future.