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No Sword, No Shield, No Problem: AI in Pro Se Section 1983 Suits
Full text linkOriginating during the Reconstruction era, 42 U.S.C. 1983 emerged as a legislative tool to safeguard individuals’ constitutional rights and liberties. Initially designed to combat state-sanctioned violence, its efficacy has been eroded over time by subsequent judicial and legislative action. Unfortunately, the current state of Section 1983 falls short of this envisioned role, particularly for incarcerated individuals who find themselves navigating the complexities of the federal court system as pro se litigants.
Faced with a landscape devoid of resources, incarcerated individuals struggle to realize their constitutional rights, further perpetuating their collective status as a second-class citizenry—a status imposed by their own government. As this Article will posit, the systemic perception of incarcerated pro se litigants as a low priority within this legal framework underscores the urgent need for change. While other scholarship has advocated for legislative reform of Section 1983, this Article uniquely contends that access to resources alongside a shift in federal jurisprudence is a workable mechanism to recapture the intended purpose and capabilities of Section 1983.
Recent and rapid advancements in AI offer a cost-effective, meaningful avenue for incarcerated pro se litigants to access the federal court system and address this need for change. While other scholarship has exhaustively explored this technology’s transformative potential in legal practice, this Article is the first to emphasize the necessity of extending it to those who require it the most—incarcerated litigants.
This Article confronts the intersection of civil rights litigation and AI, recognizing the two as unlikely yet compatible partners capable of catalyzing transformative change in Section 1983 litigation. By elucidating the dire need for reform in incarcerated pro se litigation and showcasing AI as an unconventional protagonist, this Article endeavors to redefine the narrative for individuals and shape the trajectory of pro se litigant access to AI-powered legal tools such that it can realize the full intent of Section 1983
It’s Past Time: Unionization and Self-Determination in Minor League Baseball
Full text linkFor more than a century, labor disputes have tormented the relationship between American professional baseball players and management. Although Major League Baseball players unionized in the 1960s, disagreements over workplace conditions and ever-growing profit allocations endured for decades. The first thirty years of collective bargaining between players and League post-unionization fostered notable improvements in players’ labor conditions. However, those years were also plagued by acrimonious negotiations, grievances, lawsuits, lockouts, strikes, and eventually, the cancellation of the 1994 World Series. The story in Minor League Baseball is altogether different. Its players, despite their close nexus with the Major League game, did not unionize alongside their Major League counterparts sixty years ago, and the workforce has suffered the consequences. Further frustrating MiLB labor progress is the sport’s long-standing exemption from antitrust law and its exclusion from minimum wage and overtime requirements at both the federal and state level. These harms perpetuated severe working conditions, including long hours, grueling travel schedules, minimal job security, and fixed wages, placing Minor League players squarely in the throes of poverty
The Minerals Challenge for Renewable Energy
Full text linkOne potential obstacle to a successful energy transition involves the critical minerals used in production of photovoltaic solar panels, wind turbines, electric vehicles, and batteries. A substantial portion of these will have to come from new and expanded mining operations around the world. But mining is controversial, in part due to the past failures of operators to protect communities and the environment. This Article considers how nations can responsibly identify, source, and process these minerals, and then deploy them in renewable energy products. Its scope is global, but U.S. laws and policies take center stage with a nod to the broader global aspects involved. These policy issues include the emerging commitment of private companies to environmental, social, and governance standards, and the federal government\u27s role in authorizing mining operations, especially on public lands
House Journal
Full text linkhttps://scholar.law.colorado.edu/colorado-house-and-senate-journals/1613/thumbnail.jp
Invisible Adjudication in State Supreme Courts
No full textAs the U.S. Supreme Court continues retrenching important constitutional rights, interest is shifting to state courts and constitutions to serve as a backstop. More and more, state supreme courts are at the center of some of our most important debates of law and policy, resolving questions concerning bodily autonomy, democracy, the environment, and more. The increased attention on state supreme courts highlights the complexity and nuance that attend these institutions and reveals our limited understanding of how they operate and influence society. This Article examines one such aspect of state supreme court practice: the shadow docket. While the U.S. Supreme Court\u27s shadow docket has garnered a significant amount of scholarly attention and public engagement, state shadow dockets are virtually absent from scholarly literature and public debate.
This Article finds state shadow dockets are both broader and less transparent than their federal counterpart. Due to structural differences between state and federal courts, state supreme courts have access to a larger universe of procedural and administrative devices that empower them in subtle but significant ways. Beyond the more expansive universe of shadow docket tools, state supreme courts are substantially less transparent than the U.S. Supreme Court. Unlike the Supreme Court\u27s docket, where the public can easily access the inputs on and outputs from its shadow docket, most state supreme court dockets lack meaningful public access. In other words, compared to the U.S. Supreme Court, state high courts have access to more power and are subject to less scrutiny. This Article refers to this broader, less transparent form of shadow docket activity as invisible adjudication.
The Article\u27s analysis of invisible adjudication offers both institutional and theoretical insights. At the institutional level, the analysis offers a new perspective on the ways state supreme courts can influence case outcomes and advance their institutional interests vis-à-vis coordinate branches. Invisible adjudication can also raise political costs that supreme courts must grapple with. On a theoretical level, invisible adjudication sheds light on the nature of the state judicial power. The Article then reflects on the practice\u27s doctrinal and methodological implications for fundamental questions concerning the role of state supreme courts and the power they wield
Carbon Pricing for a Just Transition
Full text linkThe legal tools to avoid the potential disasters of climate change are already available, at least according to economists. Economists overwhelmingly prefer carbon pricing tools like carbon taxes and cap-and-trade programs to combat climate change and guide the energy transition. Carbon pricing is more cost effective at lowering carbon and other greenhouse gases (GHGs) than other legal options such as efficiency standards, renewable portfolio standards, subsidies, and tax credits and deductions. Unlike those other options, carbon pricing targets both the supply of and the demand for GHG-emitting products and services; moreover, it gives firms and consumers flexibility in how best to respond to the tax or the cap, whether by conserving more or switching to alternatives. For the most part, however, U.S. lawmakers have eschewed carbon pricing in favor of the less-effective and more-costly non-pricing alternatives. The preference is due in large part to concerns over the distributive implications of carbon pricing, namely that it would result in an unjust energy transition. Many scholars, policymakers, and environmental justice advocates worry that since carbon pricing by design raises energy prices, it will disproportionately burden the poor, who spend a greater share of their budget on energy. They also worry that carbon pricing will disproportionately benefit the rich, such as through capital tax swaps or grandfathered emissions permits. Numerous recent economic studies have addressed the distributional implications of pricing and non-pricing climate policy instruments, yet those studies have received limited attention from legal scholars. Nor have economists compared and contrasted the distribution of pricing with non-pricing policies. This Article therefore surveys those economic analyses to show that a just transition is possible with carbon pricing. First, the United States currently relies on non-pricing policies that are themselves unjust: performance standards add costs that impose a disproportionate burden on the poor while subsidies and tax expenditures primarily benefit the rich. Carbon pricing can displace many of these laws and thereby eliminate their unjust impact. Second, the cost burden and regressivity of carbon pricing are overstated, so the impact on the poor will likely be much lower than commonly assumed—and might even be progressive for the poorest households because of the indexing of government transfers. Third, the ways in which revenues raised from carbon pricing are recycled play an important role: lowering other distortionary taxes like those on capital while allocating some money for government transfer programs and lump-sum rebates to the poorest households can balance efficiency and equity. This Article therefore argues that concerns over a just transition should not be a barrier to implementing carbon pricing, which is the most efficient and effective means for lowering GHGs and thus avoiding the harms of climate change
Senate Journal
Full text linkhttps://scholar.law.colorado.edu/colorado-house-and-senate-journals/1611/thumbnail.jp
Intersectionality Matters in Food and Drug Law
Full text linkFeminist scholars critique food and drug law as a site of gender bias and regulatory neglect. The historical exclusion of women from clinical trials by the FDA prioritized male bodies as the object of clinical research and therapies. Likewise, the FDA’s prior restriction on access to contraceptive birth control illustrates how patriarchal and paternalistic attitudes within the Agency can harm women’s reproductive health. However, there is little analysis of how race and gender intersect in this domain. This Article uses the regulation of skin-lightening cosmetics products to illustrate why and how intersectionality matters in food and drug law. While the inadequate regulation of cosmetics has a disparate impact on women’s health, it is women of color who predominantly use skin-lightening products, similar to some hair care products that are disproportionately marketed to women of color. Additionally, skin-lightening products are often toxic because they contain mercury and other harmful substances. The skin-lightening industry has also historically (and contemporarily) targeted women of color with racist and colorist advertising messages that idealize light skin as the pinnacle of beauty. The inadequate regulation of cosmetics illustrates why intersectional analysis is essential in food and drug law. An intersectional lens uncovers the various underlying forces that produce a disparate health impact for women of color: systemic racism in health, racially targeted marketing, and hegemonic beauty norms shaped by race and skin color constructs. The increased toxicity of these products also overexposes women of color to more serious health risks from cosmetics. While cosmetics reform has ushered in new regulations that improve the Agency’s authority to regulate cosmetics, the health risks posed to women of color from toxic personal care products in general deserves urgent attention in food and drug discourses. Intersectional analysis uncovers the contours of this urgency and offers an important response to the de-prioritization of women of color within food and drug law discourses