The EJLS Blog

The EJLS Blog offers timely, contemporary, and opinion-driven writing from our journal staff, featuring personal perspectives and greater freedom to explore emerging issues and ideas in law and society.

Examining Food Insecurity Policy at Emory University

By Jordan Antwi

Take a look at the campus around you. If someone were to ask you to state what one of the biggest food-related issues facing students is, what would you say? Some might say the lack of dining options, inflated food truck prices, or even the closure of Cox dining hall. However, what often goes undiscussed and unnoticed throughout campus culture is the prevalence of food insecurity among students. Food insecurity can be defined as an economic and social condition of “limited or uncertain access to adequate food” [1]. Within the Emory…

Why Stalking Cannot be Reduced to Threats

By Stephanie Ma

Stalking is a serious crime involving a pattern of behavior designed to intimidate, harass, or control another person. While threats of violence are often part of stalking, the crime itself extends beyond threatening speech, encompassing a range of behaviors that cause significant harm to victims. The Supreme Court’s 2023 decision in Counterman v. Colorado highlights these concerns by reducing stalking to a question of verbal threats, neglecting the broader context of persistent harassment. In this case, Billy Counterman’s conviction for stalking was overturned because the trial court failed to prove he had malicious…

Love thy Neighbor, but don’t Forget to Use Deadly Force

By Kaylah Holmes

Religious traditions have long shaped the ethics of warfare, providing moral frameworks that guide leaders and communities through difficult questions of how to engage in conflict. Catholic just war theory, Islamic principles of jihad, and Jewish laws on conflict have all offered ethical guidelines, balancing the necessity of defense with the imperative to minimize harm. Historically, these doctrines often served as justification and constraint. In modern times, however, the dominance of secular…

Media Literacy Eroding Trust in Government

By Avery Neuer

As social lives become increasingly digital, concerns over privacy breaches and data exploitation have grown, threatening the online lives of Americans. Legal cases like Facebook v. Massachusetts (2018) have demonstrated these serious vulnerabilities and, in turn, have contributed to a broader distrust of governmental institutions regarding cybersecurity and data protection [1].This erosion of trust stems from the widespread exploitation of personal data by social media platforms. For instance, in Facebook v. Massachusetts, Facebook was accused of misleading users into policy agreements…

The Political Reality of Life Tenure

By Jane Sanderson

Donald Trump’s victory in the 2024 election sparked speculations about the possibility of Supreme Court retirements in the next 4 years. With Republicans regaining control of the Senate, the groundwork has been laid for successful confirmations of potential Trump nominees. During his first 4 years, Trump successfully appointed 3 justices to the Supreme Court (Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett), which is as many as Obama and Biden over 16 years combined. With just two more vacancies, Trump could appoint…

The Fragility of Precedent

By Kaitlyn Llerena

On June 24th, 2022, the Supreme Court of the United States issued a decision that profoundly transformed the fundamental protections granted to women across the nation. On this day, the Court chose to disregard nearly five decades of precedent established under Roe v. Wade (1973) [1] with their ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization (2022) [2]. At the center of this drastic shift in court norms is the Court’s reexamination of substantive due process under the Fourteenth Amendment. By overturning Roe, the Court signaled a shift away from the broad…

Law and Technology: Concerns About AI Usage

By Daniel Bomberger

In the past few years, artificial intelligence (AI) has gradually become more integrated within the legal industry. Recent economic volatility has led to shrinking legal budgets and rampant layoffs, pressuring lawyers to find new tools to increase their efficiency [1]. Additionally, as businesses and organizations become more technologically advanced, lawyers are expected to develop expertise in these areas to keep up with client demands [2]. With this context in mind, it is easy to…

Project 2025 and the Establishment Clause

By Ariana Rossuck

The Establishment Clause of the First Amendment is one of the constitutional principles that has been indispensable to the legal groundwork of American life. Often associated with the Free Exercise Clause, the Establishment Clause prohibits the government from making any law that respects an establishment of religion, giving rise to the idea of separation of church and state and ensuring that no one is legally bound to the tenets of one particular religion; however, the Establishment Clause has…

An Analysis of Jones v. Mississippi

By Elyn Lee

The sentencing of juvenile offenders has stirred a contentious legal issue, igniting scholarly debates about whether imposing mandatory life imprisonment without the possibility of parole for juvenile homicide offenders violates the Eighth Amendment. Before 2005, adolescents convicted of homicide could be subjected to the death penalty, and as of 2012, around 2,500 individuals were serving life sentences for offenses they committed in their teenage years [1]. Over time, landmark cases such as Miller…

Glacier Northwest and its Implications for Unions

By Michelle Tucker

Since May of this year, when the Writers Guild of America went on strike, many of us have been discussing the role of unions in American economics and daily life. Currently, union strikes are at a 15-year high, with unions across the country standing up against harsh working conditions, unfair contracts, and more. In June of this year, the Supreme Court decided the fate of another American workers union, the International Brothers of Teamsters Local Union No. 174. Workers who belong to this…

Navigating Sovereignty: McGirt v. Oklahoma and its Impact on Indigenous Rights

By Rebecca Schwartz

In Paradoxes of Hawaiian Sovereignty, historian J. Kehaulani Kauanui discussed the colonization and forced assimilation into Western culture that have been, and continue to be, imposed onto Indigenous and Hawaiian people by the United States government. Kauanui detailed…

Carbon Tax Versus
Cap-and-Trade

By Cate Bashore

With the increasing effects of climate change, concern is rising regarding how to address the environmental crisis. While some states agree there must be policies to address changing conditions, it is difficult to determine the best way to treat these problems through legislation—specifically, carbon emissions. The two primary methods proposed are carbon emissions taxes and cap-and-trade policies to combat this. While both effectively reduce carbon emissions, cap-and-trade legislation should be encouraged at the state level over other carbon tax policies due to its potential for investment…

Putting a Price Tag on Democracy

By Colin Senat

It goes without saying that the outcome of the 2024 presidential election is among the most consequential in recent memory. The issues at stake—climate change, healthcare reform, economic inequality, and global diplomacy—have deep implications for America’s future. Yet, behind the political platforms and fiery debates lies the powerful and often controversial influence of political action committees (PACs) and super PACs. These entities have become indispensable to modern political campaigns, enabling…

The Transition to Trump

By Audrey Zhang

By morning of Tuesday, November 6th, the day after the election, the projected winner of the 47th President of the United States was clear: Donald Trump had successfully claimed the electoral votes of Wisconsin, pushing him over the required 270 vote threshold to victory needing to beat his Democratic opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris [1].Only three days later would it be revealed that he had swept all seven key swing states (Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin), securing his presidential win for his second term in office [2].Even in historically blue states, Trump only lost by a narrow margin…

Challenging Colonial Precedents

By Maggie Stearns

In U.S. v. Vaello Madero (2022), the Supreme Court upheld the federal government’s denial of Social Security benefits— including retirement, disability and Medicare—to residents of U.S. territories by applying the rational basis test [1].A rational basis test is a standard of review used by courts to determine whether a constitutional law is reasonably related to a legitimate government interest. Under this test, a government policy is deemed constitutional as long as the government can provide any reasonable and legitimate justification for it [2].For example, the…

The Bandaid of Judicial Activism

By Melissa Shane

How can a document written in 1789 with only 27 amendments possibly represent the will of the general public? With the partisan tides of America constantly changing and the population rapidly growing, balancing the ideals of the original framework of the nation with those of the American people is growing increasingly difficult, leading to increased support for judicial activism. While in principle this judicial framework is beneficial and well-intentioned, the realities could erode our judicial system and devalue our founding document. The priority…

Mississippi v. Flowers: Racial Discrimnation in Jury Selection

By Kaylah Holmes

In 1996, a Black Mississippi man was involved in an armed robbery that resulted in the demise of multiple victims – three out of four of whom were White. Flowers was a former employee who had been terminated over issues with his attendance at work. Originally, he was held on suspicion of the death of a singular employee. However, over several years he was tried six times for a quadruple murder, and imprisoned for twenty-two years. When Flowers first appealed his conviction, the Mississippi…

What the First Amendment Means for Social Media Censorship

By Michael Krensavage

On September 29th, 2023, the Supreme Court agreed to rule on the legitimacy of internet censorship laws recently instituted in Florida and Texas [1]. The case is more interesting than one might initially think. While contemporary American politics have grown to be notoriously tribalistic, as conservatives advocate for conservative policy and liberals advocate for liberal policy…

The Future of Climate Cases in the Face of Held v. Montana

By Alexis German

The power of youth-led political action continues to grow as its influence has successfully reached the realm of climate litigation. In what many are calling a “historic” and “landmark” case, 16 youth delegates sued the state of Montana for violating their Montanian constitutional right to a
“clean and healthful” environment. It is the first of its kind in American history, highly likely to be a model for future climate battles. The largely conservative Montana…

Microsoft a Macro Monopoly: How U.S. v. Microsoft (2001) Set an Important Precedent

By Kardelen Ergul

In 1975, two childhood friends who spent most of their time creating programming languages for computers decided to found their own software company, and thus Microsoft was born. Throughout the years, Microsoft emerged as the leading software company with the launching of various services such as the MS-DOS operating system, Windows operating system, Office software package, and MS internet browsers with…

An Analysis of Allen v. Michigan

By Fahd Kapadia

Voting rights and voter suppression have been ongoing issues in the United States for over a century. The establishment of the 19th Amendment and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the entrance into the modern era, led many to believe that voting laws and elections in our country were finally truly equal. Yet, in 2023 we still see attempts by governments to suppress voting rights and affect election outcomes. Just last year the Supreme Court decided on Allen v. Milligan…