Volume 77, Number 4 Category
Dead Bodies as Quasi-Persons
May. 22, 2024—Ela A. Leshem | 77 Vand. L. Rev. 999 This Article argues that American law treats dead bodies as quasi- persons: entities with a moral status between things and persons. The concept of quasi-personhood builds on dead bodies’ familiar classification as quasi- property. Just as quasi-property implicates only a subset of the rights usually associated...
Anti-Transgender Constitutional Law
May. 22, 2024—Katie Eyer | 77 Vand. L. Rev. 1113 Over the course of the last three decades, gender identity anti- discrimination protections and other transgender-supportive government policies have increased, as government entities have sought to protect and support the transgender community. But constitutional litigation by opponents of transgender equality has also proliferated, seeking to limit or...
Choosing Sides: On the Manipulation of Civil Litigation
May. 22, 2024—Yotam Kaplan & Ittai Paldor | 77 Vand. L. Rev. 1211 Our litigation system is broken. Scholars have long warned that professional litigants, such as debt-collecting firms, insurance companies, and commercial landlords, enjoy immense and unfair advantages over private individuals. What has gone unnoticed is professional litigants’ ability to manipulate their litigatory position—that is, to...
Needful Rules and Regulations: Originalist Reflections on the Territorial Clause
May. 22, 2024—Anthony M. Ciolli | 77 Vand. L. Rev. 1263 There are few areas where the current state of the law is as inconsistent, incoherent, and intellectually bankrupt as the law of U.S. territories. The seminal cases in the field are the infamous Insular Cases, where the Supreme Court of the United States held that the...
Protecting Protected Characteristics: Statutory Solutions for Employment Discrimination Post-Bostock
May. 22, 2024—Chase Mays | 77 Vand. L. Rev. 1303 Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits employment discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. Significantly, these protected characteristics are undefined, and judicial interpretations of race, sex, and national origin have allowed employers to lawfully discriminate against proxies for...
On the Defensive: Analyzing Insurers’ Duty to Defend Pharmaceutical Companies for Contributing to the Opioid Epidemic
May. 22, 2024—Madison Perry | 77 Vand. L. Rev. 1349 Opioids have had a devastating impact on the United States. They have drained governmental agencies’ resources, decreased property values, and destroyed families and entire communities. A growing number of individuals, local governments, and states have filed lawsuits, aiming to hold pharmaceutical companies accountable for their negligent contributions...