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Alabama’s IVF Immunity Law: A Constitutional License to Kill?
No full textIn today’s post-Dobbs world, states may freely define fetal “persons” and those fundamental rights afforded to them, but not without consequence. The Supreme Court of Alabama’s groundbreaking decision in LePage v. Center for Reproductive Medicine, P.C., holding that frozen embryos are “children” under the Wrongful Death of a Minor Act, led fertility clinics and services across the state to close. These in vitro fertilization (IVF) providers feared liability exposure because their standard practices—including embryonic fertilization, testing, cryopreservation, and transfer—inevitably result in damage or death to embryos. The Alabama Legislature swiftly responded by enacting a law granting broad civil and criminal immunity to individuals or entities for death or damage to embryos related to IVF. However, this immunity scheme unconstitutionally deprives extrauterine embryos, now recognized as “persons” under the law, of their right to life at the state and federal level.
This Note explores the fetal personhood landscape as it relates to IVF, focusing on Alabama’s constitutional dilemma. It evaluates the novel due process and equal protection concerns inherent in a state recognizing extrauterine embryonic personhood while conferring immunity for death or damage to embryos. Ultimately, this Note compares three legislative proposals, rooted in alternative state approaches, for Alabama to simultaneously retain fetal personhood and access to IVF. It concludes that excluding extrauterine embryos from all relevant terms of personhood under the law is the only way to ensure constitutional compliance and protect IVF
Patients v. Profits: Addressing Private Equity’s Incursion on Healthcare
No full textBetween 2013 and 2023, private-equity-sponsored investment funds spent one trillion dollars on healthcare acquisitions, targeting hospitals, physician practices, and specialty providers. This Note examines the growing role of private equity in the US healthcare system and its implications for cost, quality, and competition.
ring struggling hospitals and medical practices much-needed capital and managerial expertise. In practice, however, prevalent private equity practices often create moral hazards by prioritizing short-term financial gains over long-term community health. Their reliance on debt, short investment horizons, and consolidation strategies can translate into higher prices, compromised care, and anticompetitive behavior. Mounting empirical studies reinforce these concerns, linking private equity ownership to higher costs and increased hospital-acquired adverse events.
This Note situates private equity’s rise in healthcare within the broader story of financialization and analyzes how existing legal frameworks, particularly antitrust law, struggle to address its consequences. It reviews emerging state and federal legislative responses, as well as the Federal Trade Commission’s evolving enforcement strategies, highlighting both opportunities and limitations.
Ultimately, the Note argues that lack of transparency is the greatest obstacle to effective antitrust enforcement of private equity activity in healthcare and proposes robust premerger notification programs targeting private equity sponsors as a politically viable and legally effective first step toward aligning healthcare finance with the public interest. These programs would provide regulators with the tools needed to identify harmful transactions earlier, deter practices that undermine healthcare access and quality, and help ensure that patient care, rather than financial engineering, remains at the center of American healthcare
Insurrection and Black Political Participation
Full text linkThe Reconstruction Congress envisioned a comprehensive set of rights and structural protections in the Fourteenth Amendment to establish and preserve a multiracial democracy. The Fourteenth Amendment’s third section, the Insurrection Clause, may seldom have been enforced in recent memory, but it remains a vital part of the Amendment’s framework. The Insurrection Clause bars any state or federal government official who participates in a rebellion or insurrection after taking an oath to support the Constitution from serving in such a position again. In Trump v. Anderson, the Supreme Court was given a choice to either enforce the Insurrection Clause’s protection of Black political participation or condone insurrection. In keeping with its long tradition of anti-Black jurisprudence, the Court chose the latter
State Legislatures and Trans* Genocide (?) in the United States
No full textCertain state legislatures in the United States have targeted trans* people and other members of the queer community through an onslaught of legislative efforts since early 2020. Many of these efforts have targeted trans* youth specifically, by banning or limiting their access to gender-affirming care. As I have shown, gender-affirming care is necessary health care for trans* youth and is crucial for their mental and physical health and well-being. Some have argued that these legislative efforts targeting trans* youth are genocidal, that they are intentionally aimed at destroying the trans* community. I agree that the harm experienced by the trans* community generally, and trans* youth specifically, is severe. Yet I see the legislative efforts as part of a more widespread phenomenon of denying medical expertise and tamping down on groups and individuals who challenge the gender binary or other heteronormative expectations like reproduction. This greater phenomenon causes harm and erasure, and it need not meet the legal definition of the term “genocide” for us to say as much
Mandatory Public Reason-Giving in Corporate Governance
No full textSince the late 1970s, corporate governance law has incorporated a growing number of mandates that require corporate boards to explain to their shareholders the reasons behind their decision-making. These mandates do more than merely require boards to disclose certain decisions. They compel boards to publicly state why they have made a particular choice.
Public reason-giving is a core democratic value that recognizes the accountability of a representative body to its constituents. It provides a basis for constituents to assess the quality of leaders’ decision-making and to engage with that decision-making in effective ways. In corporations, public reason-giving facilitates the shareholder’s exercise of the vote; it also provides key tools for shareholders to contest decisions with which they disagree, while encouraging boards to employ care and deliberation around controversial issues that are likely to generate dissent among stakeholders.
This Essay describes the trend in favor of public reason-giving and situates it in relation to the “democratic turn” in public company governance. It also assesses the merits of the trend. The Essay argues that public reason-giving mandates have the potential to move boards beyond superficial or politically motivated decision-making to reach reasoned decisions that will hold up under scrutiny and contestation. Mandatory public reason-giving can be useful for mitigating polarization and thus could play a constructive role in board decision-making related to climate risk. Indeed, the SEC’s climate risk disclosure rule included some reason-giving requirements, and investors demanded more reason-giving than the final rule prescribed. The Essay concludes that regulators should continue to experiment with reason-giving mandates, and investors should continue asking for them and, if possible, use private ordering to get them
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No full texthttps://scholarlycommons.law.wlu.edu/scholarcelebration2025/1002/thumbnail.jp
Introductory Remarks - Wilson
No full texthttps://scholarlycommons.law.wlu.edu/scholarcelebration2025/1008/thumbnail.jp
Introductory Remarks - Christensen
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Introductory Remarks - Hasbrouck
No full texthttps://scholarlycommons.law.wlu.edu/scholarcelebration2025/1016/thumbnail.jp