Many lawmakers and public university governing boards are looking to curb faculty tenure. Driven by both ideological and economic motives, recent efforts range from eliminating tenure systems altogether to interfering when schools seek to tenure individual, often controversial scholars. These actions raise serious questions about higher education law and policy and have important implications for the future of academic freedom. Indeed, if they gain further traction, current regulatory threats to tenure will jeopardize the ability of American universities to remain at the forefront of global research and intellectual progress.

This Article examines the growing anti-tenure sentiment among state officials and develops a framework for how members of academia should respond. In particular, this Article provides several novel legal strategies that public universities and their faculty can pursue to protect tenure from external interference. These strategies include replicating or defending tenure through alternative contractual means, as well as using privatization techniques to better preserve faculty autonomy. This Article also draws on collaborative governance theory to show how the quasi-legislative powers of private accreditors and similar groups can be applied to incentivize stakeholders on competing sides of the tenure debate to resolve their differences through cooperative decision-making.

Joseph W. Yockey *

* David H. Vernon Professor of Law, University of Iowa College of Law.

On January 6, 2021, the world looked on, stunned, as thousands of rioters stormed the U.S. Capitol on live television in support of then-President Donald Trump. In the days and weeks that followed, federal law enforcement scrambled to identify those involved in the attack, in what has become the largest criminal investigation in American history. Whereas even 20 years prior it would have been difficult to identify those involved, as of February 2023, more than 950 people have been identified and charged in relation to the January 6th Capitol attack. Many of these individuals were identified using a wide array of new technology, including automated license plate readers, complex facial recognition searches, and reverse location searches.

The use of reverse location searches dates to at least 2016. Reverse location searches provide law enforcement the ability to reverse-engineer the location of people for the purposes of an investigation. This is accomplished with location data collected by third-party companies from their users’ electronic devices. Many electronic devices, such as cellphones, are equipped with GPS, which determines a device’s location using signals from satellites. Additional information can be used to pinpoint the location of a device through Wi-Fi, mobile networks, and certain device sensors. Google, for example, states that in order to collect the location data, it uses “GPS and other sensor data from your device,” your “IP address,” “[a]ctivity on Google services, such as your searches and places you label like home or work,” and “[i]nformation about things near your device, such as Wi-Fi access points, cell towers, and Bluetooth-enabled devices.”

This Comment examines the two types of reverse location searches in detail, analyzing the constitutionality of each under these three questions: (1) is it a search under the Fourth Amendment? (2) can it meet the particularity and probable cause requirements? (3) does it fall into the category of general warrants prohibited by the Fourth Amendment? Ultimately, it argues that reverse location searches are constitutional, raising the question of whether existing Fourth Amendment doctrine is sufficient to guarantee the Amendment’s protections.

Matthew L. Brock *

*J.D. Candidate, University of Richmond School of Law.

Every other Western democracy now recognizes a right to counsel in at least some kinds of civil cases, typically those involving basic human rights. The World Justice Project’s 2021 Rule of Law Index ranked the United States 126th of 139 countries for “People Can Access and Afford Civil Justice.” Within its regional and income categories, the United States was dead last. The United Nations and other international treaty bodies have urged the United States to improve access to justice by providing civil legal aid. How did we fall behind, and what can we learn from the rest of the world?

This Comment considers how international human rights law might support a civil right to counsel in the United States. Part II discusses right-to-counsel principles in U.S. law and the current state of civil legal aid. Part III examines how international and foreign law, particularly in Europe, has conceptualized and implemented a civil right to counsel. Finally, Part IV explores and evaluates several strategies for drawing upon international human rights law to secure such a right in the United States.

Meredith Elliott Hollman *

*J.D. Candidate, University of Richmond School of Law.

Over the past few years, a turf war has been brewing between the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (“CFTC”) and the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) over which agency should regulate cryptocurrencies. Both agencies have pursued numerous enforcement actions over the cryptocurrencies they believe to be within their jurisdiction. This turf war has many moving components, but the focus always comes back to one question: which cryptocurrencies are commodities, and which cryptocurrencies are securities? The distinction is important because the CFTC has statutory authority to regulate commodities, whereas the SEC has statutory authority to regulate securities. This Comment rejects the pursuit of defining cryptocurrency and instead proposes a regulatory framework where the two agencies regulate jointly and where the firms can self-designate and register with either the CFTC or SEC.

Taylor Anne Moffett *

*J.D. Candidate, University of Richmond School of Law.