Introduction Today’s Legal Theory Lexicon is about the “reasonable person.” The notion of a “reasonable person” usually makes its first appearance in the Torts course. The context, of course, is the tort of negligence, where the “reasonable person” is used to define the standard of care that triggers liability for unintentional harms. But what makes a “reasonable person” reasonable? The concept of the reasonable person is not limited to torts, however.

<p><span>The Supreme Court’s decision in <i>Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo</i> to end <i>Chevron </i>deference has at least temporarily unsettled the fiel

Contract law polices a line between interpretation, the recovery of meaning a text already holds, and gap filling, the supply of terms the text lacks. The bound

Philosophers have argued that stakes affect knowledge: a given amount of evidence may suffice for knowledge if the stakes are low, but not if the stakes are high. By contrast, empirical work on the i....

Black stories, told in Black voices, documenting the American story in full.

Long presumed obsolete after Erie Railroad v. Tompkins, the "general common law" has reemerged as a subject of serious inquiry in recent scholarship i

The first trillionaire's fortune, one pixel per $1,000 — scroll past every dollar, and see what a fraction of it could do instead.

The 2026 McGlothlin Award for Exceptional Teaching has been granted to Professor Aaron-Andrew P. Bruhl of William & Mary Law School and to Professor Dawn Edmiston of the Raymond A. Mason School of Bus...

Matthew B. Lawrence and Mark Nevitt (both Emory University School of Law) have posted Reviving the Military&#8217;s Term Limit (G.W. L. Rev. (forthcoming)) on SSRN. Here is the abstract: This Article argues for the revival of a dormant constitutional safeguard that the Framers intended to keep the military accountable to the people. The safeguard is the Constitution&#8217;s forgotten Two-Year Clause, which prohibits Congress from appropriating funds &#8220;to raise and support Armies&#8221; for a period longer than two years.

In 2025, the LLIRN ran its first internship program, with the goal of developing a set of peer-informed resources to support those wishing to incorporate a law and language focus into their teachin…

The Download of the Week is Historical Practice Theories by Ashraf Ahmed. Here is the abstract: Contemporary constitutional law and theory is preoccupied with the question of practice. Over the last decade, across a range of issues—from gun rights to elections to school prayer to the structure of the administrative state—the Supreme Court has decided cases on the basis of past practice.

By standard accounts, there are fifty-four constitutions across the federal, state, and territorial governments of the United States. But in fact, there are 230 other governmental constitutions that currently govern peoples and territories within the United States. These constitutions not only flow from a sovereignty that existed prior to the United States but also came out of a legal movement that asserted its independence from both the U.S. Constitution and state constitutions. This Article tells the story of these constitutions — the constitutions of Native nations.

When algorithms make legal decisions, people perceive the process as less fair than when humans do — a phenomenon known as the judicial human-AI fairness gap. W

Should linguistics inform textualism? When legal theories make claims about another discipline’s subject, that discipline is often illuminating: History impacts

<p><span>Where is Congress? Why hasn’t it reined in some of the worst abuses of the Trump Administration? This Article argues that a significant part of the ans

Over 100 international law experts sign letter on Iran War, UN Charter, and international humanitarian law.

Should linguistics inform textualism? When legal theories make claims about another discipline’s subject, that discipline is often illuminating: History impacts

Born and raised in the South Bronx. Law professor who researches and writes about race, wealth, tax policy and current events. Click to read Dorothy Brown on Substack. Launched a month ago.

Amy J. Griffin (Georgetown University Law Center) has posted Peer Precedent: How Sister Circuits Shape Federal Appellate Decision-Making on SSRN. Here is the abstract: When federal appellate courts face issues of first impression, they attribute great weight to sister circuit precedent, even though they don’t have to. This Article provides the first full empirical and theoretical account of how and why courts use sister circuit decisions—peer precedent—in the absence of binding authority.

Brian Flanagan & Guilherme de Almeida, Lawful, But Not Really: The Dual Character of the Concept of Law, 43 L. & Phil. 507 (2024).Izabela SkoczenIn the article, Lawful, But Not Really: The Dual Charac...