Waived overnight in response to a crisis for capital but maintained in the face of protest from former and current territories, the Jones Act has a colonial logic that is impossible to ignore. Yet recent constitutional challenges have done precisely that, refusing to acknowledge the Act’s imperial origins and on-going economic harms.
Unable to realize enough profit from their portfolios to repay their investors, landlords are turning the screws on tenants in the form of rising rents and declining conditions. Understanding this financial distress points us beyond questions of supply to a more nuanced analysis of the political economy of rental housing, revealing the market interventions needed to unlock tenant power.
Beau Baumann’s case for legislative supremacy offers a compelling vision for the left. However, branding it as a form of “constitutional politics” risks obscuring its deeper claim: that nothing, not even the Constitution, should stand above democratic lawmaking. His vision will also face significant opposition from liberals and progressives, many of whom remain tempted by courts and presidential power.
Beau Baumann on the lost art of constitutional politics, Hal Singer on the market definition trap, and Ben Gerstein on the political economy of settler retrenchment. Plus, Alexander Hertel-Fernandez and Paul Sonn explain how cities and states can help boost funding for labor organizations, Samuel Bagg and Shai Agmon discuss the critical role of friction in market competition, Adelle Waldman and Matt Bruenig propose a right to full-time scheduling, Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins interviews Sophia Rosenfeld about the rise of personal choice in the modern world, and Diana Reddy flips the script on a transaction cost-centric analysis of employment.
When courts recognize Indigenous sovereignty or jurisdiction over contested lands, governments and corporations often respond with warnings of potential economic chaos. These claims of uncertainty are not neutral forecasts but a recurring strategy of settler retrenchment aimed at preserving existing property regimes.
Antitrust defendants increasingly prevail not by disproving competitive harm, but by dragging plaintiffs into costly battles over market definition. As courts have broadened the rule of reason and complicated the evidentiary standards for proving market power, these threshold fights have become a structural barrier to antitrust enforcement.
If we are to realize the dream of post-Trump reconstruction, policy reform will not be enough. We must articulate a constitutional politics capable of dismantling both juristocracy and the modern managerial presidency.
How might we recover a pro-labor vision of the Constitution, and what would such a vision look like today? Kate Andrias, Willy Forbath, Jennifer Abruzzo, Keith R. Bolek, Andrea Hoeschen, Darin Dalmat, and Alvin Velazquez share their perspectives.
Victor Pickard on the American media polycrisis and Mariana Pargendler on Brazil’s forgotten legal innovation. Plus, a fellowship in constitutional law and history, a new report on workplace democracy, an interview with Ahilan Arulanantham on third-country removals, Ivana Isailović on the Serbian student protests, Ilias Alami, Tom Chodor, and Jack Taggart on the causes and consequences of the emerging post-multilateral world, and Vanessa Williamson and Aziz Huq on the dissolution of laws that protect public money.
In the early 20th century, foreign companies operating in Brazil would extract profits while using thinly capitalized subsidiaries to directly employ their workers. When things went wrong, workers were left with worthless claims while capital remained safely sheltered in the foreign-located parent companies. To address this issue, in 1937 Brazil adopted a novel legal innovation: imposing joint and several liability on parent companies for labor obligations. Recovering this history reveals that legal innovation often flows from the Global South, that limited liability is neither natural nor universal, and that seemingly technical corporate law doctrines are deeply entangled with questions of distribution, power, and sovereignty.
The whistle is sounding in Minneapolis. The question before the legal profession is whether we will hear it, amplify it, and act accordingly, or instead insist that the ground eroding beneath our feet is temporary and manageable.
As the government seeks to erase the past injustices and achievements of marginalized groups, it is worth recalling how those gains were made. Parents, partners, students, and lawyers pursued a more just future at significant personal and institutional risk. Their courage offers a lesson for the present. At stake is whether this moment marks a temporary break in the long arc toward justice, or the beginning of a far grimmer chapter.
Seventy-two University of Minnesota Law faculty address the federal government’s ongoing campaign of fear, intimidation, and violence against Minnesotans.
Nathan Yaffe on the immigration agencies openly defying federal courts, and Sabeel Rahman and Jocelyn Simonson on the Part IV problem in legal scholarship. Plus, Michael Macher traces the bipartisan origins of Trump’s immigration crackdown; Eric Blanc, Claire Sandberg, and Wes McEnany advocate targeting ICE’s corporate collaborators; David Austin Walsh discusses socialism in one city; Alondra Nelson examines the Trump administration’s more intensive and less transparent approach to AI regulation, William Boyd analyzes the White House’s push for emergency auctions in the largest wholesale electricity market in the country, and Vincent Mancini, Marshall Steinbaum, and Robert Stutchbury propose an antitrust exemption for independent contractors.
Edie, James, Eve, and Liz highlight some of their favorite posts from 2025.
