Federal Courts

Complete preemption is a jurisdictional doctrine in which a federal statute so wholly envelops certain state law claims that those claims effectively cease to exist. Aside from an explicit complete preemption hook, the Supreme Court has recognized just one way for a federal statute to completely preempt state law claims: it must provide an exclusive federal remedy and also have a special nature that makes it extra federal. In this Comment, Ryan Jain-Liu tracks the historical evolution of U.S. bankruptcy to make this second showing. In doing so, this Comment observes two entwined trends in the history of U.S. bankruptcy: bankruptcy simultaneously became more remedial—and thus more voluntary—as the federal government asserted increased control over bankruptcy law. The dual developments toward bankruptcy-as-remedy and bankruptcy-as-federal combine to provide involuntary debtors special protection and to give involuntary bankruptcy a special federal nature. Finally, this Comment expands on the case study of involuntary bankruptcy to argue that historical evolution can form the basis for recognizing an area of law’s special federal nature and support application of the complete preemption doctrine to novel contexts.

After Ricardo Saldana suffered a stroke in 2014, his family moved him into Elms Convalescent Hospital, a skilled nursing facility in Glendale, California, so he could receive the care he needed.

This past term, the Supreme Court in Kennedy v. Bremerton School District (2022) formally overturned the notorious Lemon test that had governed Establishment Clause jurisprudence for more than a half-century.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, many businesses transitioned to remote work for some or all of their employees, relying on videoconference platforms like Zoom and Microsoft Teams for communication.

In the 1950s, American corporate executives were overwhelmingly white, male, and valued progression within well-defined hierarchies over creativity.

The default rule for judicial review of agency action is that review is available under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) for agency actions that are both ripe and final.