In a cap­i­tal case, can a defense attor­ney, against his client’s express objec­tions, con­cede his client’s guilt to the jury? In this Con­tri­bu­tion, Rona Li (’19) dis­cuss­es the tri­al strat­e­gy of a defense attor­ney con­ced­ing guilt to avoid a death sen­tence and the con­flict with his client’s Sixth Amend­ment right to con­duct his own defense. Ulti­mate­ly, this Con­tri­bu­tion argues that when a defense attor­ney admits his client’s guilt to the jury over his client’s unequiv­o­cal objec­tion, he vio­lates the defendant’s Sixth Amend­ment right to make fun­da­men­tal deci­sions about his case, and fur­ther, that his actions con­sti­tute inef­fec­tive assis­tance of coun­sel.

When an auto­mo­bile is parked in a dri­ve­way in the cur­tilage of the home, does the auto­mo­bile excep­tion to the Fourth Amend­ment still apply? In this Con­tri­bu­tion, Kristin Mul­vey (’19) argues that the auto­mo­bile excep­tion to the Fourth Amend­ment should not apply when the vehi­cle is in the cur­tilage of the home. Fur­ther, this Con­tri­bu­tion demon­strates that the under­ly­ing jus­ti­fi­ca­tions for the auto­mo­bile excep­tion do not sup­port a war­rant­less search of an auto­mo­bile parked in a dri­ve­way.

How should police offi­cers take into account the dif­fer­ent needs of a per­son with dis­abil­i­ties dur­ing an arrest? In this Con­tri­bu­tion, Conor Gaffney (’18) exam­ines the role of the Amer­i­cans with Dis­abil­i­ties Act in gov­ern­ing arrests and inves­ti­ga­tions by police of per­sons with dis­abil­i­ties. Ulti­mate­ly, this Con­tri­bu­tion argues that the ADA’s rea­son­able accom­mo­da­tion require­ment mod­i­fies what search­es and seizures of indi­vid­u­als with dis­abil­i­ties are con­sid­ered rea­son­able under the Fourth Amend­ment.

To what extent can state actors lim­it an individual’s Sec­ond Amend­ment right after Dis­trict of Colum­bia v. Heller? In this Con­tri­bu­tion, Deepa Devanathan (’19) argues that to prop­er­ly bal­ance Sec­ond Amend­ment rights with a State’s need to pro­tect peo­ple from gun vio­lence, gun per­mit schemes that cov­er both open car­ry and con­cealed car­ry must include a pro­ce­dur­al right to appeal per­mit denials and “good cause” require­ments to get per­mits.

In 2008, fed­er­al tri­al and appel­late courts found against the NFL Play­ers Asso­ci­a­tion on the appeal of an arbitrator’s deci­sion on the grounds that the league and pol­i­cy admin­is­tra­tors had breached their fidu­cia­ry duties to play­ers. The tri­al court held that the steroid policy’s strict lia­bil­i­ty regime pre­clud­ed any breach of fidu­cia­ry duties, and the Eighth Cir­cuit found on appeal that plain­tiffs had failed to offer author­i­ty under New York law for a pub­lic pol­i­cy encour­ag­ing the per­for­mance of fidu­cia­ry duties. Did the NFL case get it right? In this Con­tri­bu­tion, John Muller (’19) argues that to pre­serve New York’s pub­lic pol­i­cy, courts should set aside the result of arbi­tra­tion under a col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing agree­ment on state com­mon law grounds in these breach of fidu­cia­ry duty cas­es.

When patent hold­ers gain stan­dard-essen­tial sta­tus, should antitrust law treat the monop­oly con­ferred on them like every oth­er monop­oly? In this Con­tri­bu­tion, Ran­di Brown (’19) argues that the best approach to such monop­o­lies is not to expose them to antitrust scruti­ny, but instead to allow con­tract and patent reme­dies to main­tain the ben­e­fits to com­pe­ti­tion and inno­va­tion afford­ed by stan­dard­iza­tion.

May a school restrict a student’s online speech with­out vio­lat­ing the First Amend­ment? In this Con­tri­bu­tion, Avery Med­juck (’18) explains how the omnipres­ence of dig­i­tal com­mu­ni­ca­tion chal­lenges the Tin­ker frame­work for deter­min­ing when a school admin­is­tra­tor can law­ful­ly restrict speech. This Con­tri­bu­tion argues that only a test that con­sid­ers the intent of the stu­dent speak­er can ade­quate­ly bal­ance stu­dents’ free speech rights against admin­is­tra­tors’ need to pro­tect the school envi­ron­ment.