Volume 22
Issue
2

Letter from the Editor

by Jerry Blake Blevins
Dear Reader: The Georgetown Journal of Law & Public Policy excitedly presents the second issue of Volume 22. This issue features a selection of articles analyzing legal issue hotly debated […]

Racial “Box-Checking” and the Administrative State

by David E. Bernstein
Americans have grown accustomed to checking ethnic and racial boxes when applying for colleges, requesting a mortgage, filling out medical paperwork, and more. “Where do these boxes come from?,” Justice […]

Curbing Racial Classifications

by Jonathan Berry
Harvard’s affirmative action woes have sparked a new national conversation. In that context, I would like to look upstream from affirmative action or other programs that assign benefits or burdens […]

Race and Regulatory Equity

by Ming H. Chen
As Harvard and universities nationwide redesign their admissions programs after Students for Fair Admissions v. President & Fellows of Harvard College1 they will need to navigate trip wires of regulation.2 […]

Why DEI Will Not Die

by Jesse Merriam
Affirmative action is dead and DEI programs are next—that is the consensus,at least, on both the left and right. Indeed, following the Supreme Court’s decision in Students for Fair Admissions […]

Beyond Equity: The Counterfactual Administrative State

by Joy Milligan
What kind of administrative state would we have, if the United States had been a true democracy earlier? In this short essay, I begin to address that question. I argue […]

A Critical Take on Separation-of-Powers Formalism

by Bijal Shah
Formalism has come to dominate both legal scholarship and judicial decisionmaking that bears on the separation of powers. Today’s constitutional law scholars and the Supreme Court characterize formalism’s preferred interpretive methodologies—originalism and […]

Defenses Commensurate with the Danger of Attack: The Special Counsel Regulations, Separation of Powers and A Call for Reform in the Department of Justice

by Noel L. Hillman
This paper examines constitutional and practical issues surrounding criminal investigations of a sitting or former president and related matters. Part I examines the source and nature of the executive power […]

Military Necessity and Racial Discrimination

by Paul J. Larkin, Charles D. Stimson, and Thomas W. Spoehr
Americans celebrate July 4th with beach outings, baseball, hot dogs, and fireworks. Yet it is the last of those items that most signifies the importance of the day. The nation might […]

Dangerous, but not Unusual: Mistakes Commonly Made by Courts in Post-Bruen Litigation

by Mark W. Smith
When the U.S. Supreme Court decided New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, it provided the lower courts with a detailed roadmap to ensure proper application of the text-first and […]

Too Much Advice and Not Enough Consent: How the Senate’s Questions in a Highly Publicized Confirmation Process Undermines Presidential Appointment Authority and Judicial Independence

by Jerry Blake Blevins
I. INTRODUCTION Senate confirmation hearings have become quite the spectacle over the past few decades. What once was a process without much fanfare has now become a cable broadcast favorite. How did […]

The Illusion of Absolute Prosecutorial Immunity: The Supreme Court’s Legislative Magic Trick

by Emily Nicole Janikowski
He’s going to show you the bricks. He’ll show you they got straight sides. He’ll show you how they got the right shape. He’ll show them to you in a […]

Non-Credible Strategy No More: Droning Drug Dealers to Stop Cartel Violence

by Connor W. Reese
Mexican Cartels have engaged in a relentless onslaught against American citizens for more than a decade, wreaking havoc on families across the country. This cycle of destruction has only increased in […]