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In the first medical malpractice verdict of its kind, a New York jury awarded $2 million to a detransitioner who sued the clinicians responsible for performing a double mastectomy when she was 16 years old. The case marks a historic legal development and signals the emergence of a new frontier in medical malpractice litigation. At its core are difficult and consequential questions about standards...

The Council of the ABA's Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar has long been the only federally recognized accreditor for law schools. In that role, it is able to direct what law schools teach and determine what constitutes sufficient coursework for law students. Over the past several years, the ABA has faced several challenges to proposed directives for law schools, including a rec...

Last session saw no shortage of proposals in Congress for labor-law reform. In the Senate, lawmakers introduced proposals ranging from mandatory interest arbitration to bans on organizing undocumented workers. In the House, representatives proposed a range of union-democracy reforms, including a requirement for unions to poll their members before endorsing a candidate for president. And in between...

Join us for a webinar examining the Third Circuit’s ongoing review of a decision holding that publishing ASTM standards—which are funded by licenses to use the standards—is a noninfringing fair use under US copyright law. This session will present arguments from both sides, analyzing the tension between a private entity’s right to protect its investments in developing copyr...

CLE credit for this event will be available at On-Demand CLE. This webinar brings together current and former General Counsels from the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Department of War (Defense), and the Department of the Navy. Drawing on their experience, practice, and diverse career paths, the panel will explore the practice of law within the Department of War and the individual services; t...

The Federal Judicial Center describes itself as “the research and education agency of the judicial branch of the United States Government.” Yet it has recently come under scrutiny for its release of a new Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence, which critics argue departs from the judiciary’s traditional role as a neutral arbiter. In particular, the Manual’...

Ellingburg v. United States concerned whether forced restitution under the Mandatory Victims Restitution Act of 1996 (MVRA), was a civil remedy or a criminal penalty. The MVRA requires defendants who are convicted of some types of federal crimes to pay monetary restitution to the victims. Holsey Ellingburg committed a robbery in 1995. Then, during the course of his trial, the MVRA was passed. When...

Who controls your financial data and who decides how it can be used? As Americans increasingly rely on digital banking, apps, and financial technology tools, that question has moved to the forefront of a policy debate that may come to a head in the coming months. Section 1033 of the Dodd-Frank Act is currently under review by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, prompting renewed debate over...

School choice has come more to the fore of public awareness in the past several years. This recent increase in attention may be evidenced by the inclusion of the Federal Tax Credit Scholarship Program in 2025's "One Big Beautiful Bill Act," which, among other things, created a federally funded tax credit scholarship program for elementary and secondary education. This panel will discuss the curren...

Last year was a tumultuous one for labor law. Not only was the National Labor Relations Board stalled by the firing of then-Member Gwynne Wilcox, but the Board itself came under fire in lawsuits challenging its current structure. Perceiving a gap, lawmakers in California and New York stepped in, authorizing local agencies to take up much of the Board’s work. Those laws, however, have each be...

The panel will discuss the questions left open—or raised—by the Supreme Court’s decisions in FCC v. Consumers' Research and Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, about the proper approach to statutory construction and the role that the nondelegation doctrine should play as a background principle in statutory analysis in cases where an agency has claimed broad authority to weigh c...

Bost v. Illinois State Board of Elections involved whether a candidate for federal office has standing to challenge an Illinois law that requires election officials to count mail-in ballots postmarked or certified as of election day and received within two weeks of the election. Following the 2024 election cycle, Congressman Michael Bost and two other political candidates sued the state board of e...

Louisiana's congressional districts, which it redrew following the 2020 census, currently sit in a state of legal uncertainty. The map initially only had one majority-black district. However, following a 2022 case called Robinson v. Ardoin (later Laundry), which held that it violated section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, Louisiana re-drew the map to include two majority-black congressional districts...

In Barrett v. United States, the Court was asked to consider the relationship between two provisions of the Armed Career Criminal Act and whether a single act that violated both provisions could yield two convictions. The Court held the answer was "no", with a majority of the Court holding that Congress did not "clearly authorize" two convictions stemming from a single act. Though at first glance...

Little v. Hecox and West Virginia v. B.P.J., both involve the question of whether states can designate women’s sports based on biological sex consistent with Title IX and the Equal Protection Clause. In 2020 and 2021, Idaho and West Virginia passed laws that required public schools and colleges to designate sports by biological sex and to forbid males from competing on women’s sports t...

Recent federal prosecutions have renewed attention on the administration and future of the federal death penalty. This panel brings together experienced capital litigators to examine the evolving legal, institutional, and practical landscape facing federal practitioners. Panelists will address issues including the use of commutations and clemency, charging and authorization protocols in capital ca...

Two state laws could transform labor relations in the United States. In both California and Massachusetts, statutes now allow rideshare drivers to organize at the sectoral level: one union could represent all drivers in each state. Both represent a bold experiment—one that departs from the way labor relations has been regulated for more than a century. And each could produce the biggest spik...

In an unprecedented action, the SEC in July dismissed with prejudice a pending enforcement case concerning an alleged violation of a rule promulgated under the Investment Company Act of 1940 (ICA). In 2023, the SEC had charged the defendants (a mutual fund, its investment advisor, and independent directors of the fund) with violating its 2016 “liquidity rule,” which limits the percenta...

On November 20th, 2025, the EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers proposed a rule to define what “waters of the United States” (WOTUS) means under the Clean Water Act. This is yet another effort to finally provide a durable WOTUS rule. Fortunately, the 2023 Supreme Court opinion in Sackett v. Environmental Protection Agency provided much-needed clarity for the agencies when determining w...

Päivi Räsänen, a Finnish parliamentarian, has been criminally prosecuted for expressing her Christian beliefs on marriage and sexuality in a 2019 tweet. Following multiple police interrogations, in April 2021, she was charged with “hate speech” under the War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity section of the Finnish Criminal Code, alongside Lutheran bishop Juhana Pohjola....

Allegations of politically motivated “debanking” have intensified debate over how federal regulation, supervisory practices, and concerns about “reputation risk” influence banks’ decisions about which customers to serve. In recent months, the President issued an Executive Order directing agencies to reexamine supervisory and risk-management frameworks, while the banki...

Each month, a panel of constitutional experts convenes to discuss the Court’s upcoming docket sitting by sitting. The cases covered in this preview are listed below. Chevron USA Inc. v. Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana (January 12) - Federal Officer Removal Statute; Issue(s): (1) Whether a causal-nexus or contractual-direction test survives the 2011 amendment to the federal-officer removal...

In Defending Education v. Olentangy Local School District Board of Education, Defending Education brought a suit challenging Olentangy Local School District policies related to student speech. These policies, among other things, barred students from using pronouns that match a person's biological sex if that individual identified with different pronouns. Defending Education challenged the policies...

In National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) v. Federal Election Commission (FEC) the Court is set to consider “whether the limits on coordinated party expenditures in 52 U.S.C. § 30116 violate the First Amendment, either on their face or as applied to party spending in connection with "party coordinated communications" as defined in 11 C.F.R. § 109.37.”. The case kicke...

On June 27, 2025, a class action lawsuit was filed in the United States District Court for the District of New Hampshire challenging President Trump's Executive Order No. 14,160, which denies birthright citizenship to children born after February 19th, 2025 to parents who are either illegally present in or temporary residents of the United States. On July 10th, the District Court issued a prelimin...