MMU: 02/10/25–02/16/25

This Week @ NDLS Mass Times Commons Daily Menu Saint of the Week General Announcement

Spring \u2725 International and Graduate Programs Lunch and Learn Series

Spring 2025 | 12:30 PM | Biolchini Hall of Law, Room 1315 ND Law\u27s International and Graduate Programs are pleased to announce the spring 2025 Lunch and Learn series. During these sessions, visiting professors will share insights on various topics of expertise. All are welcome to attend, and lunch is provided. Please mark the dates below on your calendar. We look forward to having you there. All sessions are held at 12:30 p.m. in 1315 Biolchini Hall. Sponsor: International and Graduate Programshttps://scholarship.law.nd.edu/ndls_posters/1983/thumbnail.jp

Judge Joseph E. Mahoney Award, The

For outstanding leadershi

Get to Know Your Legal Writing Professors

Wednesday, October 1, 2025 | 12:30 PM | Eck Hall of Law, Room 1130 Join WLF on October 1st (10/1) in Eck 1130 from 12:30-1:30 for a Get to Know You lunch event with three of NDLS\u27 female Legal Writing professors! Profs. Gallagher, Liedl, and Venter will be in attendance and lunch will be served. We hope to see you there! Sponsor: Women\u27s Legal Forumhttps://scholarship.law.nd.edu/ndls_posters/2153/thumbnail.jp

Graciela Olivarez Award

The Notre Dame Hispanic Law Student Association, HLSA, annually recognizes The Outstanding Hispanic Lawyer or Judge that best exemplifies the principles and ideals of the pioneer for whom this award is named, including commitment to community service, demonstration of the highest ethical and moral standards, and dedication to justice

Federalist Society General Body Meeting

Monday, September 1, 2025 | 12:30 PM | Eck Hall of Law, Room 1140 All are invited to participate in the 1L Rep Elections, eat Chick-Fil-A, and hear more about our chapter\u27s plans for the year. 1Ls in particular are encouraged to attend! Sponsor: Federalist Societyhttps://scholarship.law.nd.edu/ndls_posters/2117/thumbnail.jp

Lifting Club

Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, Fall 2025 | 6:30 AM | Smith Center The NDLS Lifting Club has officially started! Whether you\u27re an experienced lifter or never stepped foot into a gym, you\u27ve got a spotter in the Lifting Club. Feel free to join the club even if you only want to see the new workouts that will be posted ~daily. Yeah buddy! Sponsor: Student Bar Association Athletics Committeehttps://scholarship.law.nd.edu/ndls_posters/2140/thumbnail.jp

Edward J. Kelly Prize in Elder Law

The Elder Law Prize is intended to advance the study of elder law and to encourage and assist Notre Dame Law students who may have an interest in this field. This award is given annually to the NDLS student who has written the best essay, article, or legal brief on a topic relating to elder law. Due to a gift from the Retirement Research Foundation on behalf of Mr. Ed Kelly, the winner of the award will receive a monetary prize

The Solicitor General, Consistency, and Credibility

This Article offers the first comprehensive look at cases in which the Solicitor General (SG) rejects a legal argument offered on behalf of the United States in prior litigation. Such reversals have received considerable attention in recent years, as shifts in presidential administrations have produced multiple high-profile “flip-flops”—as the Justices sometimes call them—by the SG. Even those observers who defend the SG, including veterans of the office, caution that inconsistency in legal argument poses a threat to the SG’s credibility with the Court. Our goal is to better understand the circumstances that lead the SG to change its position on the meaning of the law, and to unpack the connections between consistency and credibility. To assess these questions, we build an original dataset of 131 cases, dating from 1892 to the close of the Court’s 2022 Term, that include such reversals. A close reading of the cases and associated briefing and oral argument transcripts confirms that changes in the government’s litigating position have become more common in recent decades—but it also reveals significant blind spots in the prevailing picture, which depicts positional changes as a function of political polarization and shifts in presidential administrations. Reversals happen for a variety of (often overlapping) reasons, many of which stem from the SG’s unique role in coordinating litigation across a vast and constantly changing federal government. Indeed, our study calls into question the idea that ideological swings associated with changes of presidential administrations can be isolated, either in theory or in practice, from other sorts of legal, social, and technological changes that shape the government’s understanding of the law. It also shows that the connection between consistency and credibility, while intuitive at first blush, rests on a formalist understanding of law and an unpersuasive equation of the judiciary and the executive. These insights are particularly important today, given the Justices’ willingness to jettison their own longstanding precedents while simultaneously hamstringing administrative agencies’ ability to update or modify policies. The Court’s decision in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, overruling Chevron U.S.A. Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., endorsed an understanding of the law and legal interpretation in which even the hardest questions have single “best” answers—and, once ascertained, the meaning of the law is fixed. As we show, the Justices’ reactions to litigation reversals by the government rest on similar premises. Given that the SG has powerful incentives to offer arguments that appeal to the Justices, the Court’s skepticism of litigation reversals risks freezing legal interpretation by the government actors who often are best situated—by virtue of democratic accountability and on-the-ground experience—to consider the tradeoffs between stability and change