Princeton Legal Journal, Law Review
The Princeton Legal Journal’s Law Review regularly publishes long-form legal scholarship from staff writers and outside contributors alike. Currently, the Review publishes issues at the end of the Spring and Fall semesters.
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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Food or Friends? A Critical Look at the Rights of Farm Animals in American Law
By Mikhail Perminov — As the agricultural industry expands, 62 percent of the world’s mammal biomass is made up of animals used for farming, while humans make up 34 percent and wild mammals make up only four.[1] According to the…
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The (Im)permanent Fund Dividend: Understanding the Law of Alaska’s Universal Basic Income
By Dane Lester — In 1976, voters in Alaska ratified Proposition Two in the state’s general election by over a thirty percent margin, redefining the state’s resource allocation to accommodate the then-lucrative oil development proceeds rapidly flowing into its economy.…
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FTO Fallout: The Corporate Risks of Labeling Mexican Cartels as Terrorists
By Daniel Zayas — In February 2025, the war on drugs that the United States has prosecuted since the Nixon administration reached a new degree of fervor with the designation of several Mexican drug cartels as Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs).…
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Are We All Americans?: Elk v. Wilkins and Native American Citizenship Before, During, and After Reconstruction
By Carolina Pardo — When Robert E. Lee went to negotiate his terms of surrender at the Appomattox Courthouse on April 9, 1865, he stopped at the sight of a brown man amongst the Union generals. Everyone held their breath…
