CLR Online – Cornell Law Review

Volume 111

Copyright’s Invisible Hand: Subsidizing America’s Cultural Institutions

Guy A. Rub

Vincent J. Marella Professor of Law, Temple University Beasley School of Law.

The doctrine of copyright exhaustion conceals a substantial and underappreciated subsidy at the heart of American copyright law. For more than a century, it has operated as a deliberate congressional scheme transferring billions of dollars in value to cultural institutions, such as libraries, museums, and galleries. This Essay reconceptualizes copyright law as a system of…

The Beginnings Of The One Big Beautiful Bill Act: Placing The 2017 Tax Cuts And Jobs Act In Historical Perspective

Amanda Borwegen & Ajay K. Mehrotra

J.D. 2025, Northwestern Pritzker School of Law; B.A. 2019, Washington & Jefferson College. Stanford Clinton Sr. and Zylpha Kilbride Clinton Research Professor of Law, Northwestern Pritzker School of Law; Affiliated Professor of History, Northwestern University; and Research Professor, American Bar Foundation. An earlier version of this essay was presented at the 2025 American Association of Law School Conference. We thank the participants at that conference for their useful feedback, and to those colleagues and friends who reviewed and discussed drafts of this essay including Jennifer Bird-Pollan, Ari Glogower, Christopher Hanna, Andy Koppelman, Philip Postlewaite, Samy Abdelsalam, and Maggie Amen. We are grateful to Noah Taran for excellent research assistance, and to Jeena Patel and the staff of the Cornell Law Review for their assistance. All errors, of course, remain our own.

On July 4, 2025, President Donald J. Trump signed into law the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA). This new law was built on the foundations of its immediate predecessor, the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA). This Essay examines the historical roots and contemporary implications of these two laws. It argues that both…

Current Print Issue

Her Fundamental Right To Procreate: The Unconstitutionality Of Abortion Bans

Yasmine Leila Kasra

J.D., Cornell Law School, 2026; B.A., Government, Cornell University, 2022. I would like to extend my gratitude to Professor Nelson Tebbe for the generosity of his time and guidance, along with the Cornell Law Review editors for assisting in the publication of this Note. Most importantly, I would like to thank my mother and father for teaching me to have courage in my convictions and speak loudly against injustice. I hope this Note does just that.

As she was wheeled into surgery, Amber Thurman said to her mother, “Promise me you’ll take care of my son.” She was suffering a rare complication from the abortion pill that she was legally prescribed at nine weeks of pregnancy. Not all of the fetal tissue had been expelled, and, as a result, she needed…

A Call To Eradicate The Reid Technique: An Alternative To Deceptive Interrogations

Marieya E. Jagroop

J.D., Cornell Law School, 2026; B.A., Political Science, Macaulay Honors College at CUNY John Jay College of Criminal Justice, 2023. Thank you to the editors of Cornell Law Review for their suggestions and edits. This Note is dedicated to the innocent who were pressured to confess and to those working to make sure it never happens again. To truth, fairness, and the hope of a better future.

The use of manipulative interrogation techniques by police officers in the United States, specifically the Reid Interrogation Technique, is like a psychological tsunami. The steam-rolling effect of utilizing intense pressure and police deception to intimidate suspects into confessing to crimes has resulted in false confessions and wrongful convictions, which disparately impact the Black community, youth,…

The Public/Private Home

Clare Ryan

Associate Professor of Law, University of Alabama School of Law. My deepest thanks to the participants in the 2023 and 2024 Family Law Scholars and Teachers Conferences, the 2024 West Coast Gender, Sexuality, and the Law Conference, the 2024 Law & Society Association Annual Meeting, the Northeastern University School of Law faculty colloquium, the Yale Law School PhD in Law 10th Anniversary conference, and the 2024 Junior/Senior Faculty workshop, as well as to my wonderful colleagues at the University of Alabama School of Law for their insights. I am also grateful to my excellent research assistants, Margaret-Anne Stewart, Sydney Hardern, and Bailey Ruhm for their hard work. My thanks to the editors of Cornell Law Review.

Families today are more private and more public than traditional family law doctrine ever envisioned. This Article reveals how many elements of family life, which the law often assumes will occur in public—work, school, social life—have moved into the private sphere of the home. While at the same time, private family life has become increasingly…

A Critical Analysis Of Rap Shield Laws

Alexa Perez

Assistant Professor of Law at Drake University Law School.

Many thanks to Andrea Dennis, Laura Appleman, Erin Sheley, Danielle Shelton, Anthony Gaughan, Andrew Jurs, Mark Kende, Joseph Schomberg, and the participants at the 2024 Evidence Summer Workshop at Vanderbilt Law School and the 2024 Women in Law Teaching Works-in-Progress Workshop at the University of Minnesota Law School for helpful comments and suggestions. For research support, many thanks to Rachel Rozendaal, Michael Blankenship, and the Drake University Law School Library, particularly Karen Wallace, Lexi Brennan, Rebecca Lutkenhaus, and David Hanson. Thanks also to the editors of the Cornell Law Review for their excellent editing and professionalism.

For years, scholars have been sounding the alarm on “rap on trial,” or the use of rap as evidence in criminal proceedings, pointing out that the fundamental characteristics of rap music make it uniquely susceptible to misinterpretation and prejudice. Scholars have also cautioned that rap on trial has the potential to chill artistic expression in…

Formulating Public Pharma

Shweta Kumar

Assistant Professor of Law, University of Kentucky J. David Rosenberg College of Law. I am very grateful to Christopher Morten, John F. Duffy, Joshua Sarnoff, Sapna Kumar, George Horvath, Anya Prince, Larry Solum, Amanda Levendowski, Omolara Bewaji Joseney, Sarah Dorman, Regina Wang, Ashlynn Kendzior, and Sophia Tan for their incredible expertise and insights on this paper. Thank you to the scholars and organizers at the Wiet Life Science Law Scholars Workshop, ASMLE Health Law Professors Conference, Intellectual Property Scholars Conference, and Mid-Atlantic Clinicians Writing Workshop who provided valuable suggestions and helped me workshop this paper.

In 2022, prices for both brand-name and generic drugs in the United States were nearly three times as high as prices in comparably industrialized nations, with the cost of insulin products in particular being nearly ten times as high. As a result, three out of ten American adults cannot afford to take their medication as…

Current Online Issue

Copyright’s Invisible Hand: Subsidizing America’s Cultural Institutions

Guy A. Rub

Vincent J. Marella Professor of Law, Temple University Beasley School of Law.

The Beginnings Of The One Big Beautiful Bill Act: Placing The 2017 Tax Cuts And Jobs Act In Historical Perspective

Amanda Borwegen & Ajay K. Mehrotra