New Amateurism

This Article proposes a new model for the legal and economic relationship between college athletes and their schools. The National Collegiate Athletic Association and its member conferences and schools are besieged with legal challenges over rules that restrain the capacity of athletes to earn compensation for their athletic labor and the commercial value of their identities. The legal challenges are extensive and scrutinize membership rules under labor, employment, and antitrust laws. The days of “amateurism” and the “student-athlete” enjoying judicial and administrative deference are over. For college sports to maintain a character distinct from professional leagues, university athletic programs that feature de facto pro teams and those that rely on students who play a sport should be formally separated

Diverse Originalism, History & Tradition

The Supreme Court’s New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n v. Bruen decision appears to be an originalist opinion, ostensibly looking for the meaning of the Constitution’s text by looking to the public’s understanding of the language used. But Bruen\u27s test actually fails to follow a public meaning originalist methodology. The Court focuses present-day constitutional interpreters on evidence of constitutional meaning that only reflects a portion of the public—the politically empowered men who were in a position to pass legislation. Two unfortunate outcomes follow. First, by limiting potential evidence of public meaning so severely, the Court raises the risk that future decisions concerning regulations of arms will arrive at nonoriginalist results, both by the Supreme Court itself and by lower courts applying Bruen\u27s test. Second, by unnecessarily and incorrectly sending the message that the meaning of the Constitution to Framing- and Reconstruction-era white women and people of color doesn’t matter, the Bruen majority unnecessarily contributes to the narrative that originalism doesn’t care about these people, historically or today

Michael Keeling v. John Wetzel

USDC for the Middle District of Pennsylvani

Justin De La Cruz Martinez v. Katherine Emery

USDC for the Western District of Pennsylvani

Jacob Poole v. USCIS Pittsburgh Field Office

USDC for the Western District of Pennsylvani