In 2014, when the Supreme Court ruled in Riley v. California that police must get a warrant before conducting a search of a cell phone, Chief Justice John Roberts described comparing a search of data on a cell phone to a search of other physical items as “like saying a ride on horseback is materially indistinguishable from a flight to the moon.” A decade later, an overwhelming majority of Americans carry cell phones that contain an ever-expanding set of data showing their habits, routines, and the minutiae of their everyday lives, offering a potential wealth of information to law enforcement conducting criminal investigations.

This information can be accessed through data extraction, whereby forensic tools are used to retrieve a copy of all data stored on a cell phone, including data not easily accessible to the user themselves. Courts are increasingly recognizing that, because of the breadth of potential information easily available from cell phones, warrants to search such devices need to be more limited in scope. Searches based upon the consent exception to the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement are, however, frequently the means used to obtain the same, or greater, access to cell phones as a court might grant through a warrant. Consent searches of cell phones and the data they contain have yet to be subject to either the judicial or scholarly examination they deserve.

This Article is the first to identify and provide an in-depth examination of the issues presented by consent searches of cell phones in the data extraction age. These issues involve questions relating to the scope of consent and how and when the data from cell phone extractions is accessed and analyzed. This Article ultimately argues that in a world where the landscape of technology and data storage is continually and rapidly evolving, making it impossible for the average cell phone user to know all the information that can be obtained from their device via data extraction, truly voluntary consent to cell phone searches is impossible. Accordingly, consent searches of cell phones utilizing extraction technology should no longer be permitted under the Fourth Amendment.

Crowdfunded companies are legally bound to provide investors with an annual report—but most don’t. This “ghosting of the crowd” violates federal securities laws and raises the risk of opportunism by entrepreneurs, who are more prone to misbehave if no one is watching. Most ominously, it threatens the very viability of the investment crowdfunding market, as investors who are ghosted by one company are less likely to invest in another.

This Article reports on the embarrassing record of noncompliance with the annual report rule imposed by the Jumpstart Our Business Startups (“JOBS”) Act of 2012 and Regulation Crowdfunding, and proposes a simple solution: Crowdfunding platforms should withhold one percent of the capital raised by an issuer and only release it once the company files its first annual report. Due to competitive pressure, however, any given crowdfunding platform is unlikely to impose such a rule on its own; Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) action is needed. This Article accordingly concludes with a proposed regulation readymade for the SEC to adopt.

Tens of thousands of children, including disproportionate numbers of Black children, are hit in school every year. More than 50 percent of these students live in the Fifth Circuit states of Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas. Decades of government data, including the Department of Education’s most recent reports, reveal that Black students receive alarmingly inequitable rates of corporal punishment, demonstrating this education practice to be a legal form of institutionalized racism.

This Article uniquely focuses on the archaic discipline practice’s effects on Black students in Fifth Circuit states. Fifth Circuit law addressing students’ rights in corporal punishment cases has developed into a constitutional wasteland. This creates a perfect storm for children, and particularly Black children, who live in a region where, statistically, they are the most likely to receive physical school punishment and the least likely to receive constitutional protection or any post-punishment relief when excessive abuse results in injuries. The court has taken the isolated position that students are not entitled to constitutional protection for excessive physical discipline if they can pursue alternative remedies in state court—an endeavor that usually fails due to layers of protective shields afforded to schools and educators under state laws. Fifth Circuit jurisprudence misconstrues Supreme Court precedent and sharply deviates from the nine other circuit courts that have found that excessive corporal punishment can violate children’s constitutional rights.

It is time for the United States Supreme Court and Congress to catch up with the rest of the industrialized world. It is time to follow the recommendations of virtually every major medical, psychological, educational, and child advocacy group to recognize a child’s basic human rights—most fundamentally, the right to go to school without fear of being hit. It is time to repudiate this harsh discipline practice administered to children based largely on their skin color and where they live. The future will not look kindly on this practice. We have a responsibility to abandon fidelity to outdated judicial decisions and antiquated laws. We must treat children according to the principles of “liberty and justice for all” they are taught to recite in school.

This Article builds on prior work by empirically analyzing the effect of federal intervention in local police departments on crime and clearance rates, using updated data and methodologies.

Congress passed 34 U.S.C. § 12601 (formerly 42 U.S.C. § 14141) in 1994 to give the United States Attorney General the authority to seek equitable relief against local and state law enforcement agencies engaged in patterns or practices of misconduct. Since its passage, the Department of Justice has investigated and intervened into dozens of American police departments, including some of the largest police departments in the country. Federal intervention represents one of the most significant, and arguably effective, forms of police reform. However, critics have argued that this top-down reform process may unintentionally cause officers to reduce enforcement, thereby contributing to higher crime rates. Some have labeled this theory the de-policing hypothesis. Prior studies have attempted to test this theory, often with inconsistent results.

Using updated methods and a significantly larger dataset, this Article attempts to re-examine the empirical support for the de-policing hypothesis in federal intervention cases. We find no evidence of de-policing after federal intervention. In fact, years after federal intervention, we find evidence that crime rates in cities targeted for federal intervention declined relative to our control group.

These findings have important implications for the literature on police reform and the empirical study of the criminal justice system. They suggest that there need not be a compromise between the protection of constitutional rights and public safety.

New generative artificial intelligence (“AI”) tools can increasingly engage in personalized, sustained, and natural conversations with users. This technology has the capacity to reshape the financial services industry, making customized expert financial advice broadly available to consumers. However, AI’s ability to convincingly mimic human financial advisors also creates significant risks of large-scale financial misconduct. Which of these possibilities becomes reality will depend largely on the legal and regulatory rules governing “robo-advisors” that supply fully automated financial advice to consumers.

This Article consequently critically examines this evolving regulatory landscape, arguing that current U.S. rules fail to adequately limit the risk that robo-advisors powered by generative AI will convince large numbers of consumers to purchase costly and inappropriate financial products and services. Drawing on general principles of consumer financial regulation and the European Union’s recently enacted AI Act, the Article proposes addressing this deficiency through a dual regulatory approach: a licensing requirement for robo-advisors that use generative AI to help match consumers with financial products or services, and heightened ex post duties of care and loyalty for all robo-advisors. This framework seeks to appropriately balance the transformative potential of generative AI to deliver accessible financial advice with the risk that this emerging technology may significantly amplify the provision of conflicted or inaccurate advice.

Video games have fundamentally transformed how humans learn, play, and connect, becoming essential cultural artifacts that warrant careful preservation for present and future study. Yet, video game preservation has emerged as a critical challenge for cultural institutions as the medium rapidly evolves and early works become inaccessible due to technological obsolescence and legal barriers. Without immediate action to address the limitations of current Digital Millennium Copyright Act (“DMCA”) exemptions for video game preservation, libraries, archives, and museums risk permanently losing access to historically significant games, with studies showing 87% of pre-2010 video games are already inaccessible. Congress should amend the DMCA to establish broader exemptions for video game preservation by cultural institutions that recognize emulation as a necessary and cost-effective preservation tool, while implementing reasonable access controls that protect copyright holders’ legitimate market interest. While scholars have extensively documented the technical challenges of video game preservation, and others have analyzed the DMCA’s impact on digital preservation generally, existing literature has not comprehensively examined how the triennial rulemaking process specifically impedes institutional efforts to preserve video games in their playable state.

This Note analyzes eight years of DMCA rulemaking proceedings to demonstrate how the temporary nature and narrow scope of current exemptions create unnecessary barriers for institutions, especially those using emulation as a preservation solution, while proposing both expanded temporary exemptions and broader statutory reforms that would enable preservation without undermining the commercial reissue market. By examining the technological necessity of emulation alongside the development of DMCA exemptions, this Note provides the first detailed analysis of how misalignment between preservation needs, technological solutions, and regulatory frameworks threatens both the historical record of video games and scholarly access to this culturally significant medium.