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Rest My Case: Sleep Science Should Inform J.D. Program Structures and Licensure Examinations to Enhance Performance, Equity and Well-Being
No full textThis Article critically examines the legal profession’s longstanding marginalization of sleep and circadian biology and argues that temporal structural norms embedded in legal education and licensure are at odds with established scientific evidence. Drawing on extensive and interdisciplinary research in neuroscience, chronobiology, cognitive psychology, and timekeeping, this Article explores how sleep deprivation and chronotype misalignment with institutional schedules impair attention, memory, emotional regulation, mental and physical health, and decision-making—capacities that are essential to competent, ethical, and sustainable legal practice. Despite robust scientific consensus that sleep quality, quantity, and timing have profound effects on performance and well-being, law schools and licensing bodies continue to rely on rigid, time-bound structures that disregard individual variation in chronotype and sleep needs. This rigidity not only hinders optimal performance but disproportionately burdens students whose biological rhythms, life responsibilities, or health conditions do not conform to traditional schedules. In this way, temporal inflexibility functions as an overlooked axis of inequity, one that intersects with and exacerbates existing disparities in legal education and licensure. The Article situates this institutional indifference within a broader professional culture that often treats sleep deprivation as a necessity—or worse, as a demonstration of commitment or resilience. It argues that such norms are scientifically indefensible and ethically problematic, particularly in a profession tasked with upholding fairness and justice, and with training students in competent and diligent representation. By tracing the disconnect between modern sleep science and prevailing legal education practices, the Article challenges legal educators, examiners, and policymakers to reconsider what is being measured, rewarded, and excluded by current models
Back to Basics: Shelving Training for Student Employees in Academic Libraries
No full textA comprehensive training program focused on shelving and stack work is critical for student employees’ success in academic libraries. At the University of Minnesota Law Library, we have developed a robust orientation and training program that prioritizes the foundational skill of shelving. Shelving is the backbone of nearly all library operations; without a strong foundation in this area, student employees cannot effectively perform more advanced or independent tasks. While much of the literature emphasizes training for the circulation desk or reference work, there is little focus on shelving and stack maintenance, which are essential to preserving access to print collections in large academic libraries. This paper explores the University of Minnesota Law Library’s approach to developing a robust training program that builds a strong foundation in shelving and promotes a supportive environment for student employees
Jurisdiction and Citizenship
No full textThis Article makes a series of interventions into the existing literature on birthright citizenship. It makes three historical claims about the common law rule and its development. First, the Article centers the importance of parental status. The relevant status was not the citizenship of the parents, however, but whether they were under the protection of, and owed allegiance to, the sovereign. The common law rule therefore did not depend on descent, but the modern belief that the rule depended solely on place of birth is also mistaken. Second, it reveals through an examination of safe-conducts and English statutes from the twelfth through fourteenth centuries that the sovereign’s consent to an alien’s presence was necessary to extend the king’s protection. Third, it uncovers new evidence, including from treatises and military authorities, that suggest that by the American Civil War the applicability of the common law rule to children born of temporary sojourners was contested.
Whether the common law was incorporated by the Fourteenth Amendment’s jurisdictional phrase is another matter. The Article offers a historically grounded understanding of the Citizenship Clause: it required the parents of a child born to be subject to the complete municipal jurisdiction of the United States. If the law of nations applied, or if the law of nations provided for an exception to the exercise of a legislative, executive, or judicial jurisdiction over a foreigner within the territory, then any child born would not have been “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States in the relevant sense. This law of nations theory allowed the drafters to incorporate the bulk of the common law because the sovereign’s protection was a precondition to the applicability of much of the sovereign’s municipal jurisdiction. Ambassadors and foreign armies, for example, were subject to the law of nations and not to the municipal law because they were not under the protection of, and owed no allegiance to, the sovereign. This theory also accounts for the exclusion of the Indian tribes, which were dependent nations under the law of nations with their own municipal laws.
This Article briefly concludes with tentative applications to the modern-day questions surrounding children born to temporary visitors or unlawfully present aliens. As suggested, there is evidence that protection was a precondition for jurisdiction, and permission was necessary for that protection, suggesting that unlawfully present aliens might fall outside the scope of the rule. Some contemporaneous commentators also thought that temporary visitors were not subject to the complete jurisdiction of the United States, although their theory as to why is unclear. This Article suggests ways in which temporary visitors may not have been fully subject to U.S. jurisdiction: to take but one example, Union authorities in Louisiana thought they could not conscript the children born in Louisiana to temporary visitors. The case both for and against a recent executive order purporting to deny citizenship to such children is therefore more complicated than either side has assumed
Creative Destruction for the Patent System? Impact Of Generative AI
No full textAI raises the provocative possibility that patents could one day become obsolete. AI has the ability both to generate inventions and to simulate the perspective of a person having ordinary skill in the art (PHOSITA). This article explores the transformative impact of generative artificial intelligence (AI) on the United States patent system. The article supports a scenario in which everything becomes invented—and simultaneously, everything becomes obvious—thus challenging a foundational criterion for patentability. These developments can occur within established principles of inventorship, obviousness, and subject matter eligibility under U.S. patent law. Using a narrative case study and a test invention, the article illustrates how generative AI can produce patentable ideas and draft applications while also serving as a powerful prior art search engine and analytical tool for invalidating patents. Schumpeter’s concept of “creative destruction,” suggests that the patent system itself may face existential disruption, particularly as AI floods the USPTO with applications, accelerates patent thickets, and amplifies the problem of patent trolls. Potential legal responses, including proposed legislative reforms such as the Patent Eligibility Restoration Act and shifts in USPTO administrative guidance will have little effect. Apocalyptic outcomes are unlikely, but the patent system\u27s evolution will be influenced by economic factors, cultural resistance to change, and rent-seeking and agency costs affecting the USPTO and key stakeholders. Already, inventors are increasingly relying on trade secrets and first-mover advantages. The patent system could soon fade into irrelevance as AI expands invention, complicates patentability, and potentially marginalizes patents as a tool for innovation protection.
AI will not destroy the patent system outright, but it will reshape it profoundly. Its disruption opens up the possibility for fundamental reforms
Relational Justice and Family Agreements
No full textPremarital agreements have always been controversial, and the change to much greater enforceability has not much changed their reception. Many of the criticisms premarital agreements evoke seem connected to the concerns Hanoch Dagan and Avihay Dorfman raise in their book, Relational Justice. That book’s emphasis on our obligation of relational justice to those with whom we interact and transact goes a long way to explaining many of the current doctrinal constraints on premarital agreements. One question this article investigates is whether significantly one-sided substantive terms in such agreements might nonetheless be consistent with both relational justice and general family law policy
