Cornell University

Category: Notes

Modern Cyber Warfare and International Law

Esther In

J.D., 2026. Cornell Law School. Thank you to Professor Sarah Kreps for inspiring this line of research, and to the Cornell Law Review Notes Offce for lending their talent to this Note.

In an increasingly technological, interconnected, and digital world, advancements in technology pose significant legal challenges. “Grey zone” conflicts—such as in cyber warfare, election interference, political subversion, and proxy wars—share a common characteristic: exploiting gaps in international law. These conflicts allow States to leverage legal ambiguities as tools in their strategic planning, enabling them to pursue…

Aug 2025

Undue Computational Experimentation: Can In Silico Experiments Allows Genus Claims to Survive?

Gregory Jameson

J.D., Cornell Law School, 2025; Ph.D. (Biophysics), The Ohio State University, 2022. Thank you to Profs. Joanna T. Brougher and Oskar Liivak for inspiring this line of legal research and to Prof. Steffen Lindert for seeding the scientific knowledge in this idea.

U.S. courts have, time and again, struck down genus claims for undue experimentation. The most recent blow came last year in Amgen v. Sanofi, when the Supreme Court affirmed the lower court’s ruling that Amgen’s patent on antibodies with a specific target was invalid for lack of enablement. In that ruling, the Court invoked the…

Aug 2025

Treating Each Applicant as an Individual in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard and its Key Precedents

Jiayu Liu

J.D., Cornell Law School, 2024; B.S.S., Political Science and Economics, University of Hong Kong, 2017. The author would like to thank Professor Andrei Marmor for his comments and guidance. The author would also like to thank the editors of Cornell Law Review for preparing this Note for publication.

This Note argues that the Supreme Court’s shifting attitude towards race-conscious school admissions can be best understood by making sense of the Court’s gradually elevated requirements of individuality in school admissions. Specifically, this note argues that (1) treating each applicant as an individual has been a constitutionally necessary, but not constitutionally sufficient, requirement since Bakke;…

May 2025

Blazing a Trail for the Enhanced Enforcement of Women’s Rights: Erga Omnes Partes Standing

Kathryn A. Donoho

J.D./L.L.M., Cornell Law School, 2026; M.B.A., Cornell Johnson Graduate School of Management, 2026; B.B.A. (Economics) and Bachelor of Accountancy, University of San Diego, 2017. A special thank you to Sandra L. Babcock, Elizabeth W. Brundige, Muna B. Ndulo, Radwa S. Elsaman, and Valeria Chiappini for your helpful feedback and insight on this Note.

The revolutionary principle of erga omnes partes standing can be utilized as an enforcement tool for the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (“CEDAW”). Recent judicial developments within the International Court of Justice propel this argument forward, providing a novel solution to enforce international human rights obligations. While erga omnes…

May 2025

Protecting Entitlement-Holders with a Uniform Meaning of Fifth Amendment Property

Cameron Misner

J.D., 2024. Cornell Law School. I’m grateful to the to the notes editors at Cornell Law Review for lending their talents to this Note, to Professor Gali Racabi for inspiring the research, and to Professor Michael Dorf for helpful feedback.

Courts and commentators take it as given that the word “property” in the Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause refers to a broader class of assets than does the word “property” in the Fifth Amendment’s Takings Clause. In this Note, I challenge that assumption and argue that takings “property” ought to include the same assets that…

Apr 2025

Murder, Multiple Values, and Harmless Free Exercise Error

Josiah Rutledge

Law Clerk to the Hon. Martha M. Pacold, United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. Thank you to Professor Nelson Tebbe for overseeing this project, and to the members of the Religion & The Constitution directed reading group: Gabrielle Blom, Michelle Briney, Carolyn Click, Kate Dolbear, Patrick George, Trinity Kipp, Pierre Saint-Perez, and Gigi Scerbo. Finally, thank you to all the members of the Cornell Law Review Notes Office.

Happily, ours is a country dedicated to religious toleration. Among the “crucial principles of our liberal democracy” is that “Americans should freely practice their religions, and government should not establish any religion.” Not content to let those principles remain aspirational, we give them legal force in the form of the Free Exercise and Establishment Clauses…

Apr 2025

In Pursuit of Quality: Amplifying Panel Effects on the United States Courts of Appeals

John McCloud 

J.D. Candidate, Cornell Law School, 2025. B.S. in Mechanical Engineering, University of California, Berkeley, 2020. Admissions & Membership Editor, Cornell Law Review Vol. 110.

The Shouldice Hospital, a medical center outside of Toronto, has become well known for bucking prevailing medical norms. Rather than performing the full panoply of medical services, like most hospitals, it focuses on a single type of surgery— hernia repair. The surgeons at Shouldice perform up to 800 hernia repairs per year, more than a…

Mar 2025

How the FTC Ban On Noncompetes Will Impact Use of the Inevitable Disclosure Doctrine

Amanda Shoemaker

J.D., Cornell Law School, 2024; B.S., Marketing and Media Arts, Bentley University, 2021.

This Note argues that some courts might increase their use of the inevitable disclosure doctrine if the FTC rule banning noncompetes survives legal challenge. The Note begins from the premise that the reason many courts reject the inevitable disclosure doctrine is that if the employer wanted to protect itself against the competition of former employees,…

Mar 2025

On Bankruptcy Appeals: Equitable Mootness as Gatekeeper to Plan Confirmation Review

Zachary R. Hunt

J.D., Cornell Law School, 2024. M.S. in Finance, University of South Florida, 2021. Senior Articles Editor, Cornell Law Review Vol. 109.

In bankruptcy appeals, the judge-made prudential doctrine of “equitable mootness” allows appellate courts to dismiss an appeal as moot when granting the requested relief would undermine the finality of a substantially consummated plan of reorganization. As applied, however, the doctrine of equitable mootness is neither mootness nor equitable. On the former, equitable mootness is not…

Dec 2024

Payment as Punishment: Establishing College Athletes as Employees to Safeguard Athlete Welfare in the “Super Conference” Era

Haley Lukas

J.D., Cornell Law School, 2025; M.B.A., Cornell SC Johnson College of Business, 2025; B.S. (Business Administration) UC Berkeley, 2017. Prior to law school, Lukas captained the NCAA Division I UC Berkeley (California) women’s soccer team and played professional soccer in multiple top divisions across Europe.

This Note argues the increased profitability and shift toward “super conferences” in Division I college athletics does not comport with the NCAA’s “revered tradition of amateurism” and justifies college athletes’ classification as employees under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). Rather than making more traditional compensation arguments rooted in fairness or market value, employment status…

Dec 2024

Takings and Homeowners’ Expectations in Times of Rapid Climate Change

Gijs de Bra

J.D. Candidate, Cornell Law School 2025; M.S., University of Amsterdam 2019.

This Note argues that courts should give more weight to climate change when assessing the reasonable investment-backed expectations that define the owner’s property interest. First, the owner’s expectations should be viewed dynamically, evolving over time, because government regulations—climate and disaster controls in particular—must also respond to changing circumstances. Currently, expectations are fixed at the time…

Sep 2024

The Case For a Uniform Invention Assignment Agreement Act (UIAAA) 

Amanda Shoemaker

J.D., Cornell Law School, 2024; B.S., Marketing and Media Arts, Bentley University, 2021.

An invention is broadly defined as “anything that is created or devised.” As the Supreme Court once remarked, “the word cannot be defined in such manner as to afford any substantial aid in determining whether a particular device involves an exercise of the inventive faculty or not.” Today, most “inventors” are employees of a corporate enterprise…

Sep 2024

How the Mitigation Doctrine Produces Protections Against Workplace Discrimination

Richard A Gagliardi, III

J.D. Candidate, Cornell Law School, 2024; Ph.D. in Politics, Princeton University, 2021; A.B. in Economics and Political Science, Brown University, 2015; Online Editor, Cornell Law Review Vol. 109. 

Employment discrimination weakens the American economy, contributes to inequality, and deprives individuals of career opportunities. Estimates place the annual cost of employment discrimination at over sixty-four billion dollars. Economic research further documents earnings differentials of more than thirty percent between members of different racial groups or genders. To combat employment discrimination, Congress enacted a series…

Aug 2024

Neurosearches

Josh A. Roth

J.D. Candidate, Cornell Law School, 2024; Articles Editor, Cornell Law Review Vol. 109.

Neurotechnology is advancing exponentially, and the laws of data privacy and security cannot keep pace. Soon, governments will exploit this technology in criminal investigations with what this Note calls “neurosearches.” Scholars have argued against the compelled gathering of neurological evidence as a violation of the Fifth Amendment, likening it to testimony and thus barred as…

Aug 2024

Collective Disagreement: The Uneasy Interaction of the FLSA and FRCP 4(k) After Bristol-Myers Squibb

Ronahn Clarke

J.D. Candidate, Cornell Law School, 2024; B.A., Philosophy and Classical Civilization, Colby College, 2021. 

 

Across the country, due to a circuit split over the meaning of Federal Rule of Civil Procedure (“Rule”) 4(k), federal courts are enforcing the Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”) inconsistently. This Note argues that, under the current state of the law, Rule 4(k) must be read to apply to out-of-state opt-in employee-plaintiffs’ claims and FLSA…

Apr 2024

Dependent Contractors? The Case for Giving Non-Competes a Central Role in Worker-Classification Tests Under Federal Law

Cameron Misner

 J.D. Candidate, Cornell Law School, 2024; B.A. in Political Science, University of Indianapolis, 2021. 

As legal commentators and policymakers have taken greater notice of the harms that covenants not to compete (“noncompetes”) cause workers, they have offered numerous policy proposals seeking to curb those harms. Indeed, the Federal Trade Commission proposed an outright ban on non-competes on January 5, 2023. None of these policy proposals have yet become law…

Apr 2024

Eliminating the Common Law Limitations on Force Majeure Clauses

Ben Luo

J.D. Candidate, Cornell Law School 2024; B.A., University of California, Berkeley 2020. 

This Note will argue that as a matter of law, courts should not apply common law limitations when interpreting catch-all provisions in contractual force majeure clauses. Instead, to properly limit the potential all-encompassing scope of force majeure catch-alls, courts should rely on the more general principles of contract interpretation. Part I of this Note will…

Feb 2024

Regulating Crisis Pregnancy Centers: the State Attorney General Perspective

 Yue Wu

 J.D., Cornell Law School, 2024; B.A., Carleton College, 2019. 

This Note will discuss state AGs’ role in addressing CPC regulations and in fighting questionable CPC practices. Part I introduces CPCs and their history, describes some of the earlier efforts in combating deceptive CPC practices, and summarizes the supreme Court’s NIFLA ruling that invalidated legislation designed to curb CPC harm. Part II grapples with the…

Jan 2024

Port in a Storm: Colorado’s “Safe Harbor” Settlement as a Template for Online Lending Reform 

Zachary R. Hunt

J.D. Candidate, Cornell Law School, 2024. M.S. in Finance, University of South Florida, 2021. Senior Articles Editor, Cornell Law Review Vol. 109. 

Innovations in financial technology have enabled nonbank firms to market, originate, and service consumer loans entirely online via web-based lending platforms. These online lenders promote themselves as a faster, disintermediated alternative to traditional lending that leverages technology to provide borrowers with convenient and near-instantaneous access to a wider variety of credit products. Yet despite its…

Jan 2024

Political Advertising on Free Streaming Sites: Conflicts with First Amendment and Exploring Viability of Regulation

Pilar Gonzalez Navarrine

J.D., Cornell Law School, 2024; B.A., Washington University in St. Louis, 2018.

When broadcast TV first became a staple in the American household, it probably seemed unlikely that fifty years later, its hold on the American public would lessen in favor of other types of media. However, for years now, users have relied on online news—whether websites, social media sites, or streaming sites—instead of cable and broadcast…

Jan 2024

Waging War: Exercising the Right to Selfdefense in Disputed Territories

Merrick Black

B.A., Yale University, 2019; J.D., Cornell Law School, 2024; Publishing Editor, Cornell Law Review, Vol. 109.

This Note will focus on whether a state may invoke the right to self-defense in order to protect citizens living in a different territory. In my Note, I will examine the separatist regions of Abkhazia, Transnistria, and Donbas. First, I will argue that Russia’s efforts to foster sovereignty in separatist regions by creating treaties with…

Jan 2024

How to Get Away with Murder: The Norwegian Approach

Elena Smalline

J.D., Cornell Law School, 2023; B.S. (Business Management and Psychological Sciences), Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, 2020.

What does it mean for one to be insane enough to not be held responsible for a criminal act one committed? The answer to this question varies across differing eras, cultures, countries, and laws. If one were to ask English legal-scholar Sir Matthew Hale, he would assert that to be insane enough to not be…

Nov 2023

Googling, Profiling, and Drafting a “Fantasy Team” of Jurors: Contextualizing Online Investigations into Jurors and Venirepersons Within Centurues of Analog Litigation Practices

Alison Draikiwicz

J.D., Cornell Law School, 2023; B.A., Wellesley College, 2018.

In recent years, judges and commentators have sounded the alarm on litigators’ increasingly extensive research into jurors’ and venirepersons’ online presences. Despite critics’ ethical and practical concerns, the age of “voir google” continues to thrive and evolve. In this Note, I seek to contextualize the era of online investigations within the broader era of American…

Nov 2023

A Site to Save a Life: The Case for Lobbying Congress to Restrict the Department of Justice from Targeting Supervised Drug Consumption Sites

Trevor Thompson

J.D., Cornell Law School 2022; B.A. Columbia University, 2018.

This Note will begin with an overview of fentanyl’s role in exacerbating the opioid crisis that has now claimed over a million American lives. It will then offer a partial explanation for why the crisis has gotten worse over the past few years: the Food and Drug Administration’s (“FDA”) refusal to initiate a prescription to…

Sep 2023

Tripping on Patent Hurdles: Exploring the Legal and Policy Implications of Psilocybin Patents

Jennifer S. Seidman

J.D., Cornell Law School, 2023; B.S. in Public Health, B.A. in Chemistry, University at Buffalo, 2020.

Ask any hippie and they will tell you about the euphoric and therapeutic properties of psychedelic “magic” mushrooms (psilocybin). While the therapeutic effects of psilocybin have been long known among indigenous and underground practices, the medicalization of psilocybin therapy is a new phenomenon. Psilocybin poses a unique and promising solution for the growing mental illness…

Jul 2023

Pharmaceutical Patent Protection Beyond the Twenty-Year Statutory Term

M. Houston Brown, Jr.

J.D., Cornell Law School, 2023; B.A. in Neuroscience and Behavior, Columbia University, 2019.

Although many life-saving pharmaceuticals on the market have already seen their patents expire, there are countless life-saving pharmaceuticals that still have patent protection, and many more are currently or will be seeking patent protection. Some of these pharmaceutical inventions still have patent protection despite the initial patents having been filed as far back as 1985….

Jul 2023

Religious or Not Religious? That Is Not the Establishment Clause Question

Ashley Stamegna
J.D. Candidate, Cornell Law School, 2022.

While the Supreme Court struggles to find solid footing for its Establishment Clause jurisprudence, it is rare that attention is given to this particular inconsistency. Instead, courts in the Establishment Clause context have done exactly what they condemn in the free-exercise context: evaluate the veracity of a claimant’s sincere beliefs. This Note attempts to reconcile…

Jun 2023

Political and Judicial Incorrectness: The Case for Modifying the Arlington Heights Test to Disincentivize Discriminatory Appeals

Steven D. Mirsen
J.D. Candidate, Cornell Law School, 2023.

Throughout history, discriminatory appeals to the public have been exploited by demagogues and dictators in order to concentrate power predicated on prejudice. As recent events have revealed, creating scapegoats, cultivating resentment, and capitalizing on fear and hate all remain unfortunately familiar marks on the political roadmap. Discriminatory appeals, particularly those rooted in Islamophobia, remain a…

Jun 2023

Unequal Protection: Challenges to Serious Mental Illness Exemptions from the Death Penalty

Claire M. Piorkowski

J.D. Candidate, Cornell Law School, 2023; B.A. in Political Science, University of Cincinnati, 2020.

This Note explores the contention that Ohio House Bill 136 and similar proposed bills with a diagnosis-based categorical approach to death penalty exemptions violate seriously mentally ill individuals’ rights under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment by limiting the scope of eligible mental illnesses to a narrow subset of specified disorders. This Note…

Apr 2023

Politicization of State Attorneys General: How Partisanship is Changing the Role for the Worse

Marissa A. Smith

J.D. Cornell Law School; B.S. University of Texas at Austin.

The position of State AG has long been said to stand for ‘Aspiring Governor’ rather than Attorney General. It is remarkable how the significance of that joke has changed as the role has become one of the most influential in the country.2 What began as insolent mockery is now a fearsome truth. State attorneys general…

Apr 2023