Volume 4, Issue 2, Fall 2025
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Hencely and Boyle: Reconsidering Tort Immunity for Government Contractors
By Kent Heo — Since Boyle v. United Technologies Corporation in 1988, courts have understood that sovereign immunity from tort claims must extend to private contractors under the federal government. So long as the party is executing the terms of its contract, in other words, it is immune from liability. Now a slightly different case…
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The Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Guilty of War Crimes: The False Positives Scandal and Doctrine of Superior Responsibility in International Criminal Law
By Carolina Pardo — The transitional justice body in Colombia, the Special Jurisdiction for Peace, or the JEP, found that between 2002 and 2008, the Colombian military murdered at least 6,402 civilians and passed them off as armed insurgents. Being the birthplace of magical realism, it is haunting how the False Positive scandal seemingly belongs…
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The Court as Historian: Washington v. Glucksberg and the Right to Die
By Bryson Jeppesen — In 1997, Supreme Court Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist proclaimed in the Court’s Washington v. Glucksberg majority opinion that “[t]he Court’s established method of substantive-due-process analysis has two primary features: First, … the Clause specially protects those fundamental rights and liberties which are, objectively, deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and…
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Tariff Wars—And Who Gets to Declare Them
By Grace Im — When a president can unilaterally reprice nearly every imported good in the United States with a stroke of the pen, the line between emergency management and ordinary governance begins to disappear. In a political atmosphere that is growing increasingly polarized and discordant, can the authority of the executive branch be stretched…
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The Erosion of Smith: Mahmoud v. Taylor and its Implications for the Free Exercise Clause
By Daeun Kim — Mahmoud v. Taylor marks a significant erosion of Employment Division v. Smith and signals a doctrinal shift toward revitalized, pre-Smith Free Exercise protections. By relying on Wisconsin v. Yoder rather than Smith, the Court reframed parental rights as integral to religious exercise and grounded strict scrutiny in the “character” of the…
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Beauty, Decency, and the Constitution: Analyzing the Constitutionality of Federal Funding of the Arts in National Endowment of the Arts v. Finley
By Sophia Zuo — Upon examining the recent headlines covering the current Trump Administration, the arts emerge as a surprising topic of intense presidential interest. President Trump has been vocal in his efforts to eradicate major federal programs such as the National Endowment of the Arts (NEA), National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), and the…
RECENT FORUM ARTICLES
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Schoolhouse Rocked: State-Created Dangers and Substantive Due Process
By Tarun Iyengar — On April 17th, 2024, a student, using a stainless steel Stanley cup, brutally struck a classmate in front of a crowded lunchroom at Pennbrook Middle School in the suburbs of Philadelphia. The victim of this attack…
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Silencing the Skies: The Attack on Journalistic Drone Rights
By Jaylee Witcher — Amid his revitalized campaign of immigration enforcement, Donald Trump has intensified pressure on the actors he views as obstructing his agenda: Democratic-led cities. One of the most prominent targets is Chicago, where Mayor Brandon Johnson’s immigration…
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Insider Trading in Washington and the “Restore Trust in Congress Act”: The Case to Ban Congressional Stock Trading
By Jason Seo — On February 7, 2020, Senator Richard Burr—the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee and member of the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee at the time—co-authored a Fox News opinion article with Senator Lamar Alexander…
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Who Owns the Future? The Copyright Clash Shaping Generative AI
By Cheick Sy — In the last year alone, OpenAI, Meta, and other AI developers have been hit with a cascade of copyright lawsuits, ranging from The New York Times, to prominent novelists, and even stock-photo companies. These cases have…
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Paid in Full: Restructuring Termination Clauses and Contract Laws for NCAA Coaches
By Danielle Williams — The 2025 college football season’s headlines were dominated by the firing of several prominent head coaches. Power-conference schools owed almost $170 million in buyouts, which are “the liquidated damages stipulated in a coach’s contract if they…
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The Price of Snitching: Holding Informers Liable in Domestic Contexts
By Elaine Gao — An informer network was the modus operandi of totalitarian states in the 20th century, but its legacy presents a legal challenge that remains unresolved. During World War II, the Gestapo relied on more than 100,000 informants…
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The Designation of Cartels as Foreign Terrorist Organizations and Its Implications for Immigration Law
By Jaden Yun — In an unprecedented move, the Trump Administration designated a number of cartels as Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs), including Tren de Aragua (TdA), MS-13, Cártel de Sinaloa, Cártel de Jalisco Nueva Generación (CJNG), Cártel del Noreste (CDN),…
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Is being homeless a choice?: Status vs. conduct in Grants Pass v. Johnson?
By Jillian Ascher — During the 2023-2024 Supreme Court cycle, amid a docket full of other high profile court cases, like Loper Bright v. Raimondo and Trump v. United States, a ruling that should’ve been reported on in the news…
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Punishing Recovery: The Legal Contradictions of Relapse in the Americans with Disabilities Act
By Patrick Huaman — The American Medical Association and many other major medical organizations have recognized addiction as a chronic medical condition since 1987, yet many employers still terminate workers for the most predictable symptom of that condition: relapse. A…
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Who Gets the Access? Government Overreach in Accessing Encrypted Communications
By Preston Lieu — Imagine living in a world where your personal information is no longer confidential: a society in which the United States federal government has access to almost everything about you, ranging from your healthcare information to your…
About the Princeton Legal Journal
Founded in 2021, the Princeton Legal Journal is Princeton University’s premier student-run law review. The PLJ strives to provide both Princeton University and the wider academic community with impactful and thoughtful contributions to legal discourse. The Journal recruits new students for its Review and Forum ever semester by application. Although the majority of the Journal‘s articles are written by Princeton students, outside submissions are occasionally considered.