Mastheads – Cornell Law Review

Thanks to Pamela Samuelson, Rebecca Tushnet, Jonathan Band, Charles Duan, and participants in the 2024 Intellectual Property Scholars Conference at Berkeley Law School for helpful comments and to Jacqueline Jedrych for research assistance.

††Emeritus Professor of Law, American University Washington College of Law.

This Article traces the intellectual history of copyright law’s fair use doctrine at the Supreme Court from its first encounter with fair use to its landmark decision slightly more than three decades ago in Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc. Campbell provided courts with a coherent, user-centered theory for applying the four statutory fair use factors…

The Coming Health Insurance Transition

Brendan S. Maher

Professor of Law and Director, Health Law, Policy & Management Program, Texas A&M University School of Law. Stanford A.B.; Harvard J.D.

This Article builds in part upon ideas originally formed while litigating benefit and insurance disputes before the United States Supreme Court, including Gobeille v. Liberty Mut. Ins. Co., 577 U.S. 312 (2016) (representing Gobeille); Montanile v. Bd. of Trs. of Nat’l Elevator Indus. Health Benefit Plan, 577 U.S. 136 (2016) (representing Montanile); Heimeshoff v. Hartford Life & Accident Ins. Co., 571 U.S. 99 (2013) (representing Heimeshoff); U.S. Airways, Inc. v. McCutchen, 569 U.S. 88 (2013) (representing McCutchen); and Conkright v. Frommert, 559 U.S. 506 (2010) (representing Frommert). I would also like to thank Professors Norman Stein, Dana Muir, Matthew Lawrence, Natalya Shnitser, Elizabeth McCluskey, Amy Monahan, Valarie Blake, Jessica Roberts, and Shaun Martin, as well as all the attendees at the Thirteenth Annual Employee Benefits & Social Insurance Conference, for their valuable insights. I would also like to thank my superb research assistants, Gregory Fassuliotis and Brandon Robinson, for their tireless work. All errors are mine.

For decades, the dominant form of private health insurance in the United States—by far—has been employment-based group health insurance. Somewhere in the range of 175 million employees and their families receive health care coverage through a system in which employers serve as financiers, procurers, administrators, and fiduciaries of the health insurance promise. An overwhelming percentage…

A Matter of More Worth: An Intent-Based Approach to Failed Tenancies by the Entirety

Arin Sheehan

J.D., Cornell Law School, 2027; B.S. in Applied Economics and Management, Cornell University, 2022.

Thank you to Professor Chang for inspiring this line of research and generously sharing your feedback and advice on this piece. As with all things, this work is dedicated to Sydney, Ellie, Lily, and Nolan.

“Marriage is a matter of more worth / Than to be dealt in by attorneyship.” William Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part I act 5, sc. 5, l. 55–56. A failed tenancy by the entirety occurs when a conveyance is made to an unmarried pair either as [1] tenants by the entirety or [2] as spouses; because…

Censorship as Segregation: Book Bans and the Return of “Separate But Equal”

Morgan Thomas

J.D., Cornell Law School, 2026; B.A., Public Policy, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2021.

I would like to extend my deepest gratitude to Professor Chan Tov McNamarah and Jared Ham for their guidance, as well as the Cornell Law Review associates and editors for assisting in the publication of this Note.

The year is 2021. Parents are riddled with strife over their children learning about white supremacy, “critical race theory” is America’s new buzzword, and 1,648 books have been banned. Of those books, 40% featured protagonists or prominent secondary characters of color, 21% of the titles directly addressed issues of race and racism, and 10% of…

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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…