In This Issue

Letter From the Editor

“The future of this publication should remain rooted in the voice of a law stu dent—curious, thoughtful, ambitious, and hopeful. It should continue to be a place where law students can write beyond the memo and beyond the brief. A place where legal analysis can sit beside personal reflection, where commentary can sit beside art, where disagreement is not treated as a problem to solve but as proof that people are still engaged enough to care. Having been part of Decisive Utterance since 2022, I have seen firsthand how important it is to protect that space.”

Op-Ed | Political International Affairs

“Overthrowing U.S. imperialism, expropriating oligarchs, and nationalizing the economy to lift millions out of poverty are all unforgivable sins in the eyes of U.S. capitalism. And for those sins, the U.S. has been continually and explicitly punishing the Cuban people.”

Book Review

“American law is built on a collective assumption: that legal rules constrain power. Statutory limits, procedural safeguards, judi cial review, and democratic accountability are understood to prevent the concentration of au thority in any single actor. So long as officials act within the bounds of law, the system assumes that power remains legitimate, accountable, and controlled.”

Op-ed | International Affairs

“While most honest members of the inter national community can rightfully condemn illegal actions by states such as Russia, Iran, and China; when the same actions are un dertaken by Israel, they suddenly become too politically complicated to condemn or even to discuss honestly. While international bodies such as the UN still struggle to find their voice and protect the sanctity of their own organizations and representatives, it falls on the people of those states complicit in the genocide to take action to prevent it. Regardless of how that moral obligation to prevent a genocide may manifest itself.”

Op-Ed | Disability Rights

“We need to ensure that our laws keep pace with our modern understanding of disability advocacy, and Congress’ repeal of Section 14(c) is long overdue considering the costs of maintaining this archaic statute.”

Fiction

“He snapped another square of chocolate off the gridded bar and popped it into his mouth, trying to find some kind of enjoyable quality in the stale and tasteless chocolate whose packaging claimed to be nearly a decade away from its expiration date. He raised the gaze of his eyes from his downward tilted head, pausing for a second in awe of possi bly the worst chocolate he had ever consumed, and then a sudden grin of perfectly aligned teeth let out a hearty yet childish laugh, “This is horrendous! I would never wish this upon anyone!”

Fiction

“Your shoulder hits the ground first, and hard. The rest of your body follows. Injured but not badly enough, you grab your bag and race out the door covered in ash. You wipe blood from your nose. You stumble backwards as you begin coughing up dust. A missile rests in between the wooden shingles of your bar rack, creaking and groaning as the structure slowly collapsed into flames. The glowing embers circled around your head like a halo.”

Commentary | Politics

“As Prine’s song and life attest, it would be far from the first time the alleged servants and representatives of the people sold out their constituents to the moneyed interests of the country. The results of Democratic strategy, whether pursued due to a betrayal of the constituents or just plain incompetence remain the same: fear, oppression, the death of privacy, state--sanctioned murder, genocide, the denial of rights, and a paltry quality of life in decline. The question of why is largely irrelevant, the only question worth asking is how many more crimes by compromise the people of America, and the world, will allow themselves to be subject to before, like the hero of Prine’s “Great Compromise” we turn away from the false beauty promised by these compromises and seek to build something real.”

Op-Ed | Economic Policy

“Nationalizing guarantees genuine human and community needs are served by regaining public infrastructure from supermanagers and C-suite executive boards. Without control of the levers that place political sovereignty into the hands of ordinary workers, we will continue to observe how an informed electorate trying to wrest control of their own destiny is incompatible with Amazon’s anti-democratic monopoly.”

Commentary | Constitutional Law

“Selective constitutionalism poses several long-term risks: executive aggrandizement without crisis; asymmetric interpretation of constitutional limits and powers; erosion of institutional norms; and substitution of delay and procedural maneuvering for substantive restraint.”

Fiction

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6th Amendment Rights Comic