Online Volumes – Cornell Law Review

Reef C. Ivey II Excellence Fund Term Professor of Law, University of North Carolina School of Law, and Faculty Co-Director, UNC Center for Media Law and Policy. Thanks to Margaret Kwoka, Bill Marshall, Mary-Rose Papandrea, and participants at the UNC Faculty Scholarship Workshop for helpful comments and discussion. Thank you also to Amy Price, Blythe Riggan, Kloee Sander Placke, and Kalysta Strauss for their research assistance.

This Article tackles an increasingly important question: Can police round up people on American streets and keep secret the names of those they detain without violating the First Amendment? Alarmingly, the government made this very argument in the summer of 2020 when it sought to break up Black Lives Matter protests occurring in cities across…

An Empirical Examination of the Dangerous Patient Exception

Griffin Edwards, Samuel Landes & Stephen Rushin

Griffin Edwards is a Professor at the Collat School of Business at the University of Alabama, Birmingham. Edwards holds a Ph.D. from Emory University. Samuel Landes is a partner at Flannery | Georgalis, LLC. Landes holds a J.D. from The Ohio State University. Stephen Rushin is the Judge Hubert Louis Will Professor of Law and the Associate Dean of Faculty Research and Development at Loyola University Chicago. Rushin holds a J.D. and Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. Thanks to those who have provided comments on earlier versions of this Article, including Jeannine Bell, John Breen, Samuel Brunson, Ramsey Donnell, Cynthia Ho, Margaret Moses, Nadia Sawicki, Jonathan Sheffield, and Arti Walker-Peddakotla.

This Article empirically examines the effect of the dangerous patient exception to the psychotherapist-patient evidentiary privilege. The U.S. Supreme Court first recognized the psychotherapist-patient privilege in Jaffee v. Redmond. This evidentiary privilege prevents mental health professionals from testifying about confidential statements made by patients for the purposes of treatment. Since Jaffee, federal circuit courts have…

The Difference a Year Makes: The Admissibility of Expert Opinion Testimony Under the 2023 Amendment

Daniel J. Capra & Liesa L. Richter

Philip Reed Professor of Law, Fordham Law School. Reporter to the Judicial Conference Advisory Committee on Evidence Rules. All views expressed in this Article are those of the authors individually and do not represent the official views of the Advisory Committee on Evidence Rules. Our sincere thanks to Jessica Goldman, J.D. Fordham Law School 2025, for her invaluable research assistance.

George Lynn Cross Research Professor, Floyd & Martha Norris Chair in Law, University of Oklahoma College of Law. Academic Consultant to the Judicial Conference Advisory Committee on Evidence Rules.

Rule 702 of the Federal Rules of Evidence governs the admissibility of expert opinion testimony in federal court. Indeed, the admissibility of expert opinion testimony is a key driver of the outcome in a multitude of criminal and civil proceedings. In the absence of admissible DNA or fingerprint evidence, a prosecutor may make an attractive…

#Landback to Indigenous Peoples from “Land-Grab” Universities

Melissa Fergusson

J.D., Cornell Law School, 2026; M.P.P., University of Virginia, 2017; B.A. Foreign Affairs, University of Virginia, 2016. Special thanks to Professor Robert Odawi Porter and Professor Laura Underkuffler for your helpful review and feedback on this Note. Thank you to Dr. Robert Lee for your foundational research tracing and quantifying the economic value of the Morrill Act land parcels. Finally, thank you to the Cornell Law Review Notes Office for your work in preparing this Note for publication.

The Morrill Land Grant Act of 1862 (Morrill Act) was the first federal legislation to fund public higher education in the United States, funding fifty-two land-grant universities (LGUs) that still exist today. While the purpose of the Act was to “democratiz[e] . . . education” focusing on the study of agriculture and mechanical arts, it…

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 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…