While the Supreme Court’s 2025 decision in Glossip v. Oklahoma was heralded as a victory for the defense, this Essay argues that the case is actually a road map to many of the problems faced by the ...

For over a century, the Yale Law Journal has been at the forefront of legal scholarship, sparking conversation and encouraging reflection among scholars and students, as well as practicing lawyers and ...

For over a century, the Yale Law Journal has been at the forefront of legal scholarship, sparking conversation and encouraging reflection among scholars and students, as well as practicing lawyers and ...

This Essay argues that President Donald Trump’s 2025 executive order and subsequent actions challenging the Smithsonian Institution’s curatorial and organizational autonomy exemplify executive ...

Conversation about Masterpiece Cakeshop has focused on the Court’s holding that decisionmakers must treat those seeking religious exemptions with respect. This Essay brings to light the case’s broader ...

Articles and publications by Dean Harold Hongju Koh in the Yale Law Journal.

This Article argues that the laws of war only became “humanitarian” in the 1990s. Centering the contributions of three international lawyers, it reexamines this transformation through the regulation ...

This Note analyzes the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 as a federal administrative regime that adjudicated core private rights—liberty and property—outside of Article III courts. This history challenges ...

abstract. This Note reconstructs a historical regime that empowered inferior officers to decide matters of life, liberty, and property without judicial oversight. The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 ...

abstract. The nation’s “mandatory” immigration-detention laws sustain its largest civil-imprisonment system—and just radically expanded in scope and breadth. These laws consign broad swaths of ...

Since Obergefell, same-sex couples have spent years litigating when, precisely, their marriages began. This Note explores state courts’ different answers to that “backdating” question. It explains how ...