Collection
Eighth Annual Student Essay Competition
This Collection features the winners of the annual Yale Law Journal Student Essay Competition. This year’s topic was “Emerging Issues in Criminal Law.” The three winning Essays explore a range of timely criminal-law matters, including honest services fraud, racial discrimination in jury selection, and habeas corpus.
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Guaranteeing Honesty: Rewiring Honest Services Fraud Under the Guarantee Clause
Honest services fraud is a vital anticorruption statute used by federal prosecutors to police state and local corruption. However, the statute’s undefined terms and perceived intrusions on federalism have invited scrutiny from the Supreme Court. To redress these concerns, courts should interpret the…
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Equal Standards for Equal Protection: Revisiting Race Discrimination in Jury Selection After SFFA
In its decision in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard, the Supreme Court appeared to take a new approach to what constitutes a Fourteenth Amendment violation. This Essay argues that the new standard should be applied to reduce race discrimination in jury selection…
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Scalia and the King: The Ancient Writ of Habeas Corpus and the Missing Legitimacy Core of Modern Habeas Law
This Essay argues for reconceiving habeas corpus as a meaningful avenue for judicial power to push back against arbitrary executive power, and proposes a surprising source for this revival: Justice Scalia’s attack on the Sentencing Guidelines. Texas’s capital murder statute is proposed as ripe for s…