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Seila Law: Is There a There There?
Jack M. Beermann
Jack M. Beermann is Professor of Law and Harry Elwood Warren Scholar at Boston University School of Law and a 1983 graduate of the University of Chicago Law School.

In Seila Law LLC v. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the Supreme Court, in an opinion by Chief Justice John Roberts, invalidated the provision of the Dodd-Frank Act restricting the president’s removal of the director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) to cases of “inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office.” The Court’s decision leaves the director subject to removal by the president for any reason or no reason at all.

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Seila Law as an Ex Post, Static Conception of Separation of Powers
Timothy G. Duncheon
Timothy G. Duncheon is a law clerk for the Honorable William A. Fletcher of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
Richard L. Revesz
Richard L. Revesz is the Lawrence King Professor of Law and Dean Emeritus at New York University School of Law. He filed an amicus brief in Seila Law on behalf of administrative law professors.

The authors thank Kirti Datla for her insightful comments on this piece.

Commentators have explored many important questions in the wake of Seila Law LLC v. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Do Myers v. United States and Humphrey’s Executor v. United States still stand for the proposition that Congress can impose limitations on the president’s removal authority for agency heads as long as it does not retain a role for itself?

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Judicial Review of Deadlock Votes: Campaign Legal Center & Democracy 21 v. Federal Election Commission (D.C. Cir. 2020)
Kate M. Harris
Kate M. Harris is a J.D. Candidate in the University of Chicago Law School Class of 2021. She received a B.S. from University of Colorado Boulder in 2016.

She thanks Matthew Reade for his terrific comments on this piece.

The “little agency that can’t,” an “impotent joke,” and “worse than dysfunctional.”

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Welcome to the Maze: Race, Justice, and Jurisdiction in McGirt v. Oklahoma
Elizabeth Reese
Elizabeth Reese (Yunpoví) is a Bigelow Fellow & Lecturer in Law at the University of Chicago Law School. Relevant to this piece, she spent a year at the National Congress of American Indians serving as the Department of Justice’s technical assistance provider to tribal governments as they implemented expanded criminal jurisdiction under VAWA 2013. She is tribally enrolled at the Pueblo of Nambé.

The morning of July 9th, American Indian tribal citizens and non-Indian residents of eastern Oklahoma woke up and experienced a similar shock.

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A Proposal for Police Reform: Require Effective Accountability Measures in Police Union Contracts as a Condition of Tax-Exempt Status
Brian Mogck
Brian Mogck is a partner in the New York law firm of Walden Macht & Haran LLP. The views expressed are solely his own and do not express the views of the firm, its personnel, or any of its clients.

The author gratefully acknowledges the helpful comments on prior drafts from Derek Borchardt, Daniel Chirlin, Christopher Dioguardi, among other generous readers, and the research assistance of Theodora Danias. All errors are the author’s alone.

In the wake of the May 25 police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, government leaders across the nation are urgently considering reforms that might prevent police brutality.

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Making Wilkie Worse: Qualified-Immunity Appeals and the Bivens Question after Ziglar and Hernandez
Bryan Lammon
Bryan Lammon is a professor at the University of Toledo College of Law.

He thanks participants in a breakout session at the Fourth Annual Civil Procedure Workshop. And special thanks, as always, to Nicole Porter.

Qualified immunity is awful. It inhibits government accountability and precludes recovery for victims of government misconduct. But it’s not just the substantive defense that’s a problem.

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Solving the Problem in One Bite: Addressing “Meat” Advertising with Federal Law
Daly Brower
B.A. 2013, The University of Virginia; J.D. Candidate 2021, The University of Chicago Law School.

The author would like to thank the editors of The University of Chicago Law Review for their helpful feedback and tireless efforts on this Essay.

Consumers in the United States increasingly eat plant-based food products rather than meat.

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Separation-of-Powers Faux Pas: The McGahn Litigation and Congress’s Efforts to Use the Courts to Resolve Interbranch Information Disputes
Reid Coleman
Rice University, B.A. 2017; Special Assistant to the White House Counsel, 2017–2018; J.D. Candidate, Class of 2021, The University of Texas School of Law.

For helpful commentary and feedback, the author thanks Hugh Brady, Dan Epstein, Matthew Reade, and The University of Chicago Law Review. The author would also like to thank Don McGahn and Annie Donaldson for their role in an incredibly formative year at the White House. This Essay reflects the author’s views only.

After former White House Counsel Donald F. McGahn refused to comply with a congressional subpoena, the U.S. House of Representatives initiated a federal lawsuit.

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Her Alone: Feminist Perspectives on the Future of Spousal Privileges
Alexandra Aparicio
A.B. 2018, Princeton University; J.D. Candidate, 2021, The University of Chicago Law School.

The author thanks Professor Emily Buss and the staff of The University of Chicago Law Review for their helpful feedback on this essay.

On August 30, 2019, the New Mexico Supreme Court prospectively abolished the state’s spousal communications privilege.

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A Small World After All: Extending the Martindell Standard to Block Grand Jury Access to Sealed Foreign Discovery Materials Held at U.S. Law Firms
J. Sam Bonafede
A.B. 2018, Princeton University; J.D. Candidate 2021, The University of Chicago Law School.

For helpful feedback and discussion, the author thanks Deb Malamud, Matthew Reade, and The University of Chicago Law Review. The author would also like to thank Colby Chanenchuk for her indispensable support.

Picture this: the Department of Justice (DOJ) plans to open a criminal grand jury investigation into the business conduct of a foreign corporation.

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The Troubling Case of the Unlimited Pass-Through Deduction: Section 2304 of the CARES Act
Clint Wallace
Clint Wallace is an Assistant Professor of Law at the University of South Carolina School of Law.

The author thanks Lad Boyle, Ari Glogower, Daniel Hemel, Greg Polsky and Steve Rosenthal for discussion and feedback. He also thanks Madison Rinehart for assistance with research, and Matthew Reade and his colleagues at the University of Chicago Law Review for their attentive editing. Other work by the author is available here.

When the CARES Act was signed into law in late March 2020, it looked to be an appropriately extraordinary legislative response befitting the extraordinary public health and economic challenges presented by the COVID-19 pandemic.

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Pandemic Elections
Miriam George
Miriam George is a J.D. Candidate in The University of Chicago Law School Class of 2021. She received a B.A. from Boston College in 2018.

She thanks Matthew Reade for his comments on this piece.

The year 2020 will go down in U.S. history as a year of myriad unprecedented events that transformed American life.