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Essay
Direct Democracy Denied: The Right to Initiative During a Pandemic
Richard L. Hasen
Richard L. Hasen is the Chancellor’s Professor of Law and Political Science at UC Irvine School of Law.

He thanks Joshua Spivak for useful comments and suggestions.

Putting aside the Supreme Court’s controversial decision in Republican National Committee v. Democratic National Committee, the case overextending the date for receipt of absentee ballots in the April 2020 Wisconsin primary, many (although not all) courts have done a fairly good job protecting voting rights during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Online
Essay
Election Litigation in the Time of the Pandemic
Nicholas Stephanopoulos
Nicholas Stephanopoulos is a professor at Harvard Law School. He specializes in election law.

In a time when normal life has ground to a halt, it may be reassuring that one American tradition—suing over electoral rules—is still going strong.

Online
Essay
Uproot or Upgrade? Revisiting Section 230 Immunity in the Digital Age
Michael Daly Hawkins
Michael Daly Hawkins is a Senior Circuit Judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. He also serves as Editor-in-Chief of Western Legal History, a publication of the Ninth Judicial Circuit Historical Society (NJCHS).
Matthew J. Stanford
Matthew J. Stanford is an attorney and a senior research fellow at the California Constitution Center at Berkeley Law, where he received his J.D. in 2017.

We thank the University of Chicago Law Review Online editorial team for their careful and thoughtful edits. The views expressed in this article, as well as any mistakes, are the authors’ alone.

The internet has drastically altered our notion of the press.

Online
Essay
Kendall v. United States and the Inspector General Dilemma
Daniel Epstein
Daniel Epstein is the Vice President for Legal and Policy at Trust Ventures, a venture capital firm focused on startups facing regulatory barriers. He is also a PhD candidate in administrative law and empirical methods at George Washington University. Prior to Trust Ventures, Dan served as Senior Associate Counsel and Special Assistant to the President in the White House, from inauguration until March 2020. Dan is currently a pending nominee for the United States Court of Federal Claims.

In a span of less than two months, President Donald Trump removed or replaced multiple inspectors general (“IGs”)—statutorily authorized watchdogs within federal agencies.

Online
Essay
Free Exercise in a Pandemic
Zalman Rothschild
Zalman Rothschild is a law clerk to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, a Nonresident Fellow at the Stanford Constitutional Law Center, and Faculty at the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America. He earned a J.D., magna cum laude, from Harvard Law School, a Ph.D. from New York University, and an M.A. from Yeshiva University.

The author wishes to thank Rick Garnett and Zachary David for helpful comments.

It was only a matter of time before the Supreme Court would have to issue a decision on a church’s challenge to a state’s stay-at-home orders.

Online
Essay
Mobile-Based Transportation Employment Disputes: Corporate Chutzpa and the Potential Resurrection of Class Arbitration
Tamar Meshel
Dr. Tamar Meshel is an Assistant Professor at the University of Alberta Faculty of Law. Her research focuses on international and domestic arbitration and international water law.

The thriving mobile-based ride-sharing and food-delivery business in the United States has proven to be fertile grounds for litigation.

Online
Essay
What Kind of Oversight Board Have You Given Us?
Evelyn Douek
Evelyn Douek is a lecturer on law and S.J.D. candidate at Harvard Law School, and Affiliate at the Berkman Klein Center For Internet & Society. She studies global regulation of online speech, private content moderation, institutional design, and comparative free speech law and theory. She has participated, at Facebook’s invitation, in several workshops on the FOB, all unpaid and in her academic capacity. Tweet @evelyndouek.

The Facebook Oversight Board (the “FOB”) will see you now—well, at least a very small number of a select subset of you.

Online
Essay
Legislative Hurdles and Unintended Consequences: Potential Pitfalls of Vice President Biden’s Interest in Cabinet Restructuring
Eli Nachmany
Eli Nachmany is a J.D. Candidate in the Harvard Law School Class of 2022. Prior to law school, he served as a domestic policy aide in the White House Office of American Innovation, an assistant with the U.S. Department of Justice’s Nominations Team during the Supreme Court confirmation of Justice Brett Kavanaugh, and the Speechwriter to the U.S. Secretary of the Interior.

The author thanks Professor Adam White, Jacob Richards, and Jeremy Lewin for insightful comments on earlier drafts of this essay. The author also thanks Matthew Reade and the editors of the University of Chicago Law Review for their careful review and excellent edits. All errors are mine.

Now that former Vice President Joe Biden has emerged as the Democratic Party’s presumptive nominee for president in the 2020 general election, he and his team have started to think about a possible presidential transition.

Online
Essay
The Federal Government Probably Can’t Order Statewide Quarantines
Maryam Jamshidi
Maryam Jamshidi is an Assistant Professor of Law at the University of Florida, Levin College of Law.

For helpful comments and conversations, thanks to Paul McGovern, Scott Skinner-Thompson, and Ehsan Zaffar. Many thanks, as well, to the editors of the University of Chicago Law Review for their thoughtful revisions and suggestions. All errors are my own.

On Saturday, March 28, 2020, President Donald Trump floated the possibility of issuing a “quarantine” order for the states of New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut because of their numerous COVID-19 cases.