To say 2024 was a busy year for legal scholars would be the understatement of the year.
From the U.S. presidential election to the ongoing AI boom to growing human rights concerns in the wake of global conflicts and rising inequities, it’s been a time of significant changes with myriad legal implications and questions to probe.
What were some of the top law review article topics of the year?
We’ve compiled a new edition of “what legal scholars are writing about” (or “Scholastica Wrapped” as one law review editor coined it!) to provide some insight.
Below, we highlight a list of the 25 most-used keywords for articles accepted via Scholastica in 2024 and some notable new and forthcoming pieces related to those topics. You can check out our last “What Legal Scholars Are Writing About” roundup from 2023 here.
As noted in all previous editions of this series, the 25 most-used keywords list is not a ranking of any kind. It’s simply intended to shed light on legal scholarship trends over the past year.
25 most-used keywords for articles accepted via Scholastica in 2024
As noted above, this is not a ranked list. The keywords are alphabetized.
- Administrative law
- Antitrust
- Artificial intelligence
- Civil procedure
- Civil rights
- Climate change
- Constitutional law
- Copyright
- Corporate governance
- Corporate law
- Criminal law
- Criminal procedure
- Discrimination
- Environmental law
- Federalism
- First Amendment
- Gender
- Human rights
- Immigration
- Intellectual property
- International law
- Privacy
- Race
- Regulation
- Supreme court
Connections in the recent literature
Below, we highlight examples of new law review articles on topics that correlate with the most-used keywords for submissions accepted via Scholastica in 2024.
This is just a sampling of noteworthy pieces we found. What would you add? Let us know in the comments!
Constitutional law, the Supreme Court, and the First Amendment
It likely comes as little surprise that constitutional law and the related top keyword federalism were a focus amid the U.S. presidential election. As was the case in recent years, there were also many articles analyzing the power of the U.S. Supreme Court, as well as new questions surrounding the First Amendment, particularly as it relates to social media. Examples include:
- The Supreme Court Wants to Know: Can a President Pardon Himself? (by Michael Conklin, forthcoming in Penn State Law Review): Conklin’s article offers “a thorough analysis of the implications from the Trump v. United States case and the arguments for and against the constitutionality of a presidential self-pardon,” noting that “the ability of a President to pardon himself could become the most pressing constitutional question of the twenty-first century.” The article offers a framework for analyzing this current debate as well as other areas of constitutional ambiguity.
- Constitutional Federalism and the Nature of the Union (by Anthony J. Bellia Jr. and Bradford R. Clark, William & Mary Law Review): The authors consider “interpretive questions relating to the residual rights and powers of the States and the nature of the Union,” arguing that “the proper question in federalism cases is not whether the Constitution affirmatively grants the States sovereign rights and powers […] but whether it includes text sufficient to alienate the rights and powers they enjoyed when they became ‘Free and Independent States.’”
- Platform Transparency and the First Amendment (by Daphne Keller, Journal of Free Speech Law): Keller’s article discusses “First Amendment concerns with platform transparency laws generally, and the Texas and Florida laws in particular, arguing that the laws have major problems that were scarcely addressed in the rulings so far — and that there are arguments and framings in favor of transparency that have also been insufficiently considered.” Keller outlines specific ways to improve the current laws.
- Unequal Protection of the Laws for Women is Constitutional Terrorism, So How Come Nobody Knows About It? (by Wendy J. Murphy, Ohio Northern University Law Review): Murphy’s article focuses on the “Equal Rights Amendment,” (ERA), which was ratified in 2020 but is yet to be added to the U.S. Constitution, making it the only Constitution in the world written post World War II without a provision that men and women must be granted equal stature under the law. The article discusses why the ERA remains in legal limbo and how to get it added to the Constitution.
- No Time for Caution: Ensuring Equity for Transgender Individuals in Fourteenth Amendment Equal Protection Challenges (by John M. Rossi, Gonzaga Law Review): Rossi discusses the Equal Protection Clause as it relates to the rights of transgender individuals and argues that “despite consistently finding themselves beset by an ambient milieu of legislative and social harms, the transgender community has yet to receive formal recognition from the U.S. Supreme Court as a protected class.”
International law and human rights
Articles with the top keywords international law and human rights spanned current global conflicts, including the Russia-Ukraine war and the Israel–Hamas war, as well the intersection of other leading issues that appear in the top keywords list, including immigration, race, and climate change. Examples include:
- War Reparations: The Case for Countermeasures (by Oona A. Hathaway, Maggie M. Mills & Thomas M. Poston, Stanford Law Review): The authors probe the question “Who pays for the terrible destruction wrought by war?” focusing on the Russia-Ukraine war. They argue the most-discussed options for Ukraine, including seizing frozen Russian sovereign assets, “attempt to cure one international legal violation by engaging in another,” and propose an alternative way forward.
- Law Breaking, Law Making, and International Law: Palestine, Israel, and the Foundations of International Law (by Mohammad Fadel, Virginia Journal of International Law): In this essay, Fadel argues that “the Israel-Palestine conflict’s prominent place in global consciousness reflects deep disagreement on the nature of post-World War II international law and the relationship between power, sovereignty, and legitimacy in that order” and considers how different conceptions of the relationship of power to law can offer perspective for interpreting the current conflict.
- Lethal Immigration Enforcement (by Abel Rodriguez, Cornell Law Review): In this article Rodriguez offers “a comprehensive examination of lethal immigration enforcement, arguing that racialized policy rationales, impunity instituted by courts, and prevailing political paradigms have coalesced to render migrants of color expendable” calling for a “paradigm shift beyond liberal reforms to end lethal enforcement and its racial subordination.”
- The Secret History of the Carceral State (by Laura Appleman, forthcoming in Maryland Law Review): This article provides one of the first historical accounts of how the pursuit of private profits has shaped the American carceral system. Appleman argues that “deriving profits from punishment has been a crucial and formative aspect of American carcerality […] tracing the role of profits from colonial days to the 21st century.”
- State Obligations to Protect the Climate System (by Braden Reese, Arizona Journal of Environmental Law & Policy): Analyzing international environmental law, customary law, and human rights law, Reese argues that “States, through integration of these areas of international law, have an obligation to protect the climate system to the extent that they cannot harm the human rights and environmental interests of other states,” highlighting the injustices of mass carbon-producing countries.
Antitrust, corporate governance, and AI
As scrutiny of megacorporations rises, legal scholars are also working to unpack past, present, and future concerns. Many probed the relationship between corporate governance and advances in artificial intelligence (AI) in 2024 law review articles, in addition to exploring general and sector-specific AI use-case opportunities and limitations. Examples include:
- Regulating Location Incentives (by Brian Highsmith, Duke Law Journal): Highsmith discusses concerns surrounding more state and local budgetary resources being channeled to large corporations like Amazon in recent years through multibillion-dollar location incentive megadeals and argues that “federal market supervision offers various institutional advantages as compared to previous (unsuccessful) attempts to rein in this source of public resource misallocation.”
- The Big Tech Antitrust Paradox: A Reevaluation of the Consumer Welfare Standard for Digital Markets (by Christos A. Makridis and Joel Thayer, Stanford Technology Law Review): The authors argue that “gratis” services offered by technology megacorporations like Google and Meta force consumers to “engage in a de facto quid pro quo by tendering personal data” and they advocate for “the reconceptualization of data as a currency” to “ameliorate prevailing incongruities in the application of the consumer welfare standard.”
- AI, New Technologies, and Corporate Governance: Three Phenomena (by Martin Petrin, Seattle University Law Review): If you’re looking for a primer on the relationship between new AI technologies and corporate governance, Petrin’s article offers a thorough analysis of the topic. The article argues that “existing models and concepts are inadequate for addressing the challenges posed by the digital and AI revolution,” and calls for a “reevaluation of corporate governance strategies.” Petrin “proposes the creation of regulatory frameworks to mitigate power imbalances and ensure adequate access to AI and the platform economy.”
- Deepfake 2024: Will Citizens United and Artificial Intelligence Together Destroy Representative Democracy? (by Richard W. Painter, Journal of National Security Law & Policy): Painter discusses how the proliferation of computer-generated videos passed off as reality, a.k.a. “deepfakes” poses threats of election interference and proposes “publicly and privately funded programs that could create an alert system, identify deepfakes on social media, and educate voters to be discerning about what is fake and what is reality.”
- ChatGPT, Large Language Models, and Law (by Harry Surden, Fordham Law Review): Honing in on the current and potential impacts of LLMs, this essay “examines the significant evolution of LLMs since 2022 and their improved capabilities in understanding and generating complex documents, such as legal texts” and it discusses “the limitations of these technologies, offering a balanced view of their potential role in legal work.”
Putting it all together
As noted, this blog post highlights a small sample of the many noteworthy law review articles published in 2024.
What would you add? We encourage you to share legal reading suggestions touching on the keywords discussed in this post and any other research topics that stood out to you this year via the blog comments section. You can also find Scholastica on X (formerly Twitter) and Mastodon.
