Tapping Into the Talent Pipeline While Repairing the Leaky Pipe

Diversity in the legal profession matters. It helps legitimize our legal system, giving everyone confidence that they will be treated fairly. Diverse legal teams make it more likely that the team will understand different perspectives and avoid “group think.” Having diverse groups make, enforce, and interpret laws leads to better outcomes. And yet, the legal profession is one of the least diverse in the country. The vast majority of lawyers are White men even though women constitute half of the population and about 40% of the U.S. population is not White. The percentage of Black lawyers has remained virtually unchanged in the last decade. Demographics besides race and gender are also telling. For example, only about one of every four law students are first-generation college students as compared to over 50% of undergraduate students. Law schools must redouble their efforts, particularly after the Supreme Court\u27s decision in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. Harvard and University of North Carolina and anti-diversity, equity, and inclusion (“DEI”) laws in several states, to prevent falling further behind. This Essay proceeds in four parts. Part I seeks to address one argument made by anti-DEI activists who claim that diversity efforts are discriminatory because they are rooted in equity, which they see as incompatible with equality, which is what the law requires. Part II explores the idea that equality must include equal opportunity, given that a person\u27s value largely depends on their family lineage. Part III provides a few suggestions for neutralizing the accident of our births, where advantage--and disadvantage--are meted out based largely on the families we are born into. Part III also describes two pipeline initiatives that the University of Tennessee College of Law is undertaking to help diversify law school and the legal profession. Part IV recognizes the role that public and private virtue play in diversity efforts. We continue to fall short of our country\u27s ideals. “Our nation still works to secure, in its laws and culture, the respect for all persons our founding convictions require.” The Black population is underrepresented in the legal profession. Even though about 14.2% of the U.S. population is comprised of Black people, only about 5% of lawyers are Black. Hispanic people are also underrepresented in the legal profession. In 2022, approximately 5.8% of lawyers were Hispanic whereas Hispanic people comprise 18.5% of the U.S. population. Part of the explanation for these disparities could be underperformance on the LSAT entrance exam and lower law school admission rates. Those disparities, in turn, might be explained by disadvantages that create opportunity gaps. Treating people equally in a country where the destinies of children are largely determined by the accident of their births, coupled with unequal public school funding, and a huge wealth and income gap, hardly seems equitable. Law schools should act to fix the leaky talent pipeline to ensure underrepresented students are exposed to law school and the legal profession and that interested students receive appropriate mentoring and skill-building to be successful in law school and beyond. The legal profession, and the legal system more broadly, depend on it

(Sub)Delegating National Security Powers

The President sometimes delegates important constitutional and statutory powers to use force or conduct other national security operations. Although these delegations are understudied, there may be reason for concern. Sometimes the President’s national security subdelegations have been unfaithful to Congress’s strictures. Sometimes the delegations are high stakes, as where President Eisenhower delegated to seven military officials the authority to launch nuclear weapons. Presidents sometimes even resist seemingly reasonable statutory limits on the power to delegate decisions that could lead the United States into armed conflict. National security delegations can be costly. They may diffuse political accountability for high-stakes decisions. The agent may fail to act in a way that reflects the principal’s intent. Inferior officials are generally less sensitive to the full scope of foreign policy concerns that may operate at a given moment. And delegations of war-related decisions to actors below the Secretary of Defense shift control of war from civilian officials to military ones. Classified national security delegations—and congressional efforts to regulate those delegations—raise difficult legal questions, including the extent to which Congress may restrict or require reporting about them. Yet the pressure on the President to delegate authorities to respond to “hyperwar,” and the coming autonomy revolution in which the President may delegate decisionmaking to artificial intelligence systems, will keep delegation questions at the fore. This Article analyzes the legal doctrine and historical practice surrounding presidential national security delegations, the costs and benefits of such delegations, and Congress’s powers to constrain delegations and subdelegations. After identifying gaps in congressional and even presidential awareness of the full range of existing delegations, it proposes ways in which Congress and the President herself can more consistently surface and structure those delegations

The Profit Principle: Tracing the Moral Decline of Corporate Law Firms

A review of Servants of the Damned: Giant Law Firms, Donald Trump, and the Corruption of Justice. By David Enrich

Kalife Crenshaw v. USA

USDC for the Middle District of Pennsylvani

Ralph Johnson v. The National Collegiate Athletic Association

USDC for the Eastern District of Pennsylvani

Insider may be an alter-ego when it exercises control over a debtor

(Excerpt) Section 101(31) of title 11 of the United States Code (the Bankruptcy Code ) defines an insider. This definition, however, is not exhaustive. Courts have concluded that certain persons or entities not mentioned in the statute can be non-statutory insiders. In certain circumstances, a statutory or non-statutory insider may be the alter-ego of a debtor. As an alter-ego, an insider may be liable for a debtor’s debt. Alter-ego liability may be imposed on an insider who significantly controls the debtor and has committed some form of injustice. This memorandum discusses an insider’s possible liability for a debtor’s debt in the Second and Third Circuits. Part I discusses statutory insider and non-statutory insider. Part II outlines the factors of an alter-ego claim. Parts III and IV examine when an insider is or is not an alter-ego of a debtor, which typically hinges on the amount of control an alleged insider asserts over a debtor. Specifically, Part III examines when an insider has been held liable, while Part IV examines when an alleged insider has not been held liable for a debtor’s debt

Restoring the Citizenship of the Soldier

Modern jurisprudence consistently treats the U.S. military as legally distinct, imposing different standards for service members’ constitutional rights, Federal Tort Claims Act lawsuits, and Title VII protections than it does for their civilian counterparts. The legal foundation for this treatment relies in large part on the constitutional military structure, which empowers Congress to prescribe rules and regulations for the “land and naval Forces” and exercise extensive power over “armies.” Usually, both entities—armies and the larger “land and naval Forces”—are considered synonymous with the modern-day all-volunteer force (“AVF”). This interpretation, though, neglects the foundational role the constitutional militia played in composing the larger armed forces. This Note proposes that the “land and naval Forces” is best understood as including both armies and militias, together creating the military as a whole. It advances this proposition through a close analysis of the text and history of the Army and Militia Clauses—a project that has not yet been undertaken with an eye toward service members’ rights. The evidence from this inquiry indicates the militia establishment was part of a deliberate effort to keep the armed forces integrated with the larger political community. As a result, this Note advances a constitutional reading that reengages with the principles behind the Founding-era militia system. In doing so, it questions modern judicial doctrines that leave military personnel legally siloed off from the general U.S. citizenry and advocates for more robust protection of service members’ rights