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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.

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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.

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Essay
Clarifying and Reframing the “Ministerial Exception”
Tyler B. Lindley
B.S. 2018, Brigham Young University; J.D. Candidate 2021, The University of Chicago Law School.

For helpful feedback and discussion, I thank Geoffrey Stone, Douglas Baird, Rob Barthelmess, Jonathan Acevedo, Addison Bennett, Parag Dharmavarapu, and The University of Chicago Law Review. I would also like to thank my wife, Katrina Lindley, for her indispensable discussion and support.

This term, the Supreme Court is scheduled to hear and consider Kristin Biel’s case.

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Essay
Corporate Behavior and the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act
Nicholas H. Cohen
Nicholas Cohen is the Founder and Principal of LobbySeven LLC, where he regularly publishes on fiscal policy through a quantitative lens.
Manoj Viswanathan
Manoj Viswanathan is an Associate Professor of Law at the University of California, Hastings College of the Law.

Thanks to Amrita Sethi for outstanding research assistance.

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 (the “TCJA”) fundamentally altered United States tax law.

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Essay
Go Configure
Lee Anne Fennell
Lee Anne Fennell is the Max Pam Professor of Law, University of Chicago Law School.

Research support from the Harold J. Green Faculty Fund and the SNR Denton Fund is gratefully acknowledged.

In Slices and Lumps: Division and Aggregation in Law and Life, I argue that the future depends on configuration. Putting together resources and cooperation in the right combinations is essential to human flourishing in multiple domains: the environment, the city, the workplace, the market, and the home.

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Essay
The Smooth Value of Lumpy Goods
Matthew D. Adler
Matthew D. Adler is the Richard A. Horvitz Professor of Law and Professor of Economics, Philosophy and Public Policy at Duke University School of Law

Economists often employ a convenient set of assumptions regarding the goods that individuals care about and the form of individuals’ preferences for these goods.

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Essay
Slicing Defamation by Contract
Yonathan Arbel
Yonathan Arbel is an Assistant Professor Law at the University of Alabama.

Slices and Lumps is a recipe book for thinking. Using a deceptively simple analytical framework, the book showcases the power of conceptualizing the world through the prism of “slices” and “lumps.”