The June 2026 issue of Boston College Law Review is now available. The issue features three articles, two student notes, and eight student comments. Summaries of the thirteen pieces can be found below. The full texts are also available on the BCLR website.
Values Privacy & Total Governance Through Activism by Carliss N. Chatman & Sergio Alberto Gramitto Ricci
This Article explores how stakeholder power is already embedded in corporate governance through interlocking initiatives grounded in shared values. Stakeholder activism—boycotts, proxy votes, viral campaigns—is not merely expressive; it is an overlooked form of governance. Drawing on fiduciary doctrine, collective action theory, law and political economy, and governance models, this Article blurs the boundary between private enterprise and public governance. It shows how Total Governance enables ordinary individuals to coordinate across roles. Employees, consumers, investors, community members are able to exert influence regardless of whether they contribute capital.
Buyer Be Well by Leah R. Fowler
As cutting-edge consumer wellness products and services increasingly assume the functions of healthcare, courts may be quietly replacing the complex legal protections of health law with contract law’s logic of buyer beware. Analysis of case law reveals how courts uncritically enforce terms in wellness contracts that could be deemed impermissible in traditional healthcare settings. The result is a potential blind spot where courts fail to directly account for the qualities that warrant health’s special legal treatment. Companies can thus mimic healthcare’s aesthetics and replicate its risks without assuming its obligations. By centering contract law in the governance of a subset of health-affecting consumer transactions, this Article challenges the myth that wellness is always meaningfully distinct from healthcare. It argues that as care migrates from public to private ordering, contract law not only facilitates the erosion of health protections but also holds underused tools that courts can leverage to restore them. It proposes a factor-based test to determine when wellness products functionally substitute for care. Ultimately, it warns that wellness is becoming a deregulatory tool, calling on courts to respond with modest doctrinal interventions that protect consumers and preserve some of the safeguards afforded to contracts in healthcare.
Reverse Discrimination and Other Racial Projects by Osamudia James
The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Ames v. Ohio Department of Youth Services abandoned historical context when assessing discrimination allegations, thus clearing remaining obstacles to reverse discrimination lawsuits. Reverse discrimination claims challenge equal protection jurisprudence, presenting whites as victims of racial subordination in claims that can be difficult to adjudicate if historical context is no longer a litmus test. Reverse discrimination claims also function as a white racial project—an attempt to represent and explain white racial identity in ways that redistribute societal resources to reflect a racial hierarchy that still benefits whites. A white racial project, however, is not unique. Rather, all racial groups are engaged in racial projects that interact and negotiate racial positioning in the United States. Neither inherently good nor bad, racial projects can move us closer to or further from a multiracial democracy depending on whether they disrupt or further embed racial hierarchy. Examination of reverse discrimination suits must interrogate them as white racial projects, while also considering the benefit of explicitly recognizing and engaging the multiple racial projects operating in American society. Explicit engagement makes it easier to identify the interests of some racial groups that are vindicated at a cost to other racial groups, to facilitate consensus on what can and cannot be defended in terms of those tradeoffs, and to identify the proper forums, if not courts, for re-solving the competing claims of racial projects.
A Deficit of Trust: Assessing Congressional Insider Trading Reforms by Peter Ruimerman
It is an open secret that members of Congress make abnormally large returns trading on the stock market, oftentimes making trades with clear conflicts of interest. Although some reforms have taken place—namely the STOCK Act of 2012—more comprehensive, bipartisan reforms are currently under consideration in Congress. Though not a panacea for corruption or activity that visibly violates the public’s trust in democratic institutions, putting restrictions on what elected officials can do in financial markets is a critical step toward governmental accountability. The ETHICS Act, which lawmakers originally proposed in 2024 (and reintroduced in 2025), has been viewed by some as a step forward—or at least in the right direction. This Note analyzes the effectiveness of the proposed ETHICS Act by assessing the values underlying congressional insider trading reforms and the real-world cases such an Act is supposed to help address. The Note concludes by proposing a cooling-off period between authorizing sales of allowed investments and the actual sales. It also recommends making insider trading charges against members of Congress easier to prosecute.
Commander's Indiscretion, Incompetence, and a Failure of Accountability: Why Congress Must Relieve Commanding Officers of UCMJ Authority by Justin Sells
Under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, commander’s discretion allows military commanders to investigate, prosecute, and adjudicate alleged criminal and non-criminal offenses within their own units. Military commanders, however, are not subject to prosecutorial ethics or the rules of professional conduct for lawyers, and most of them lack the legal education and training to bring criminal charges against any person. Furthermore, commanders’ discretion poses a conflict of interest: commanders could be implicated in the alleged criminal or non-criminal offense. Thus, commanders are incentivized to protect themselves and their careers instead of administering fair and equal justice. This Note proposes three reforms to remediate these issues. First, prosecutorial discretion for all alleged crimes must reside exclusively with each military service branch’s Office of Special Trial Counsel. Second, Congress must create an independent commission to supervise, review, and adjudicate equal opportunity and inspector general complaints and investigations, and must grant servicemembers the right to sue their commanders under the Federal Tort Claims Act for resulting damages. Third, a commander’s use of nonjudicial punishment and administrative reprimands must be recorded and publicized to ensure uniform treatment of all servicemembers within the commander’s own unit.
A Defendant's Guide to Burden-Free Living: Tobien and the Motion to Dismiss for Improper Venue by Bennett G. Demsky
On April 2, 2025, in Tobien v. Nationwide General Insurance Co., the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit held that when a defendant moves to dismiss for improper venue, the plaintiff bears the burden of proving that venue is proper. In doing so, the Sixth Circuit joined a plurality of federal circuits that shift the burden to plaintiffs, departing from a minority of circuits that place the burden on the defendant. Although the Supreme Court declined to resolve the split, this Comment argues that the minority approach is correct. Defendants who challenge a plaintiff’s chosen venue should bear the burden of proof on their own motion because venue is a personal privilege that defendants may invoke to avoid the inconvenience of litigating in an improper forum.
Putting the At-Risk At Risk: United States v. Mississippi and Disability Discrimination by Lucy T. Hanson
In 1999, the U.S. Supreme Court decided Olmstead v. L.C. ex rel. Zimring, providing the test for unjustified institutionalization required for claims under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). On September 20, 2023, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit held in United States v. Mississippi that the Olmstead test does not establish claims for those merely at risk of institutionalization. This decision created a split between the Fifth Circuit and all other circuits that have ruled on the issue and included those at risk within Olmstead’s scope. This Comment argues that given other circuits’ interpretations of Olmstead and principles of injury, the Supreme Court should resolve the circuit split at the next opportunity in favor of including at-risk individuals within Olmstead.
Working This Hard: Internet Use and Federal Nexus Requirement by Sergey Javadyan
This Comment examines whether internet use alone is sufficient to establish that messages traveled across state lines for the purposes of federal criminal statutes containing a federal nexus requirement—a showing of connection between the matter and the federal government to bring the matter under the federal jurisdiction. The Comment focuses on the First Circuit’s decision in United States v. O’Donovan holding that the use of the internet alone is sufficient to meet the jurisdictional element. In doing so, the First Circuit reaffirmed its adherence to the so-called Per se Rule, followed by the Second, Third, and Fifth Circuits, and opposed by the Ninth and Tenth Circuits. This Comment argues that the most optimal resolution of the jurisdictional split is to create a rebuttable presumption that a message has traveled across state lines when there is evidence of internet use, shifting the burden on the defendant to produce credible evidence to the contrary.
Not With a Bang But a Whimper: Barclift, Intangible Harms, and the Struggle for Standing After TransUnion by Christine K. Lenahan
On March 30, 2024, in Barclift v. Keystone Credit Services, LLC, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit held that a plaintiff lacked Article III standing to bring a Fair Debt Collection Practices Act claim because her alleged intangible harms did not bear a sufficiently close relationship to harms traditionally recognized at common law. In reaching this conclusion, the Third Circuit attempted to align itself with other circuits that apply a broader kind-of-harm approach to standing, deepening a split with courts that use a narrower element-for-element analysis. This Comment argues that the Third Circuit misapplied Supreme Court precedent and that the element-for-element approach improperly constricts Article III standing, undermines the congressional intent underlying the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, and threatens to erode access to justice for plaintiffs asserting intangible harms.
Content Culpability in the Age of Algorithms: Anderson and the Future of Section 203 by Jake Olson
In 2024, in Anderson v. TikTok, Inc., the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit held that an algorithm may become sufficiently expressive as to constitute an internet service provider’s (ISP) first-party speech. The historical context, purpose, and text underlying Section 230 suggest that Congress’s sole aim was to bar strict publisher liability for the presence of harmful third-party content on a provider’s platform. Congress did not intend to bar plaintiffs from pursuing claims under a distributor liability framework, such that ISPs acting by omission to promote third-party content they know to be causing harm may be held liable for failing to act upon learning of such harm. This Comment argues that Congress should amend the statute to clarify what liability should be imposed for ISPs that knowingly promote harmful content, or, in the absence of congressional action, the Supreme Court should resolve the existing circuit split by finding that distributor liability is not barred by Section 230.
Unfit for Trial, Barred from Review: Competency and Procedural Default After Yang by Katherine R. Queally
Competency to stand trial is a fundamental requirement of due process, yet federal courts remain divided on whether competency claims raised for the first time on collateral review may be procedurally defaulted. Some circuits exempt substantive competency claims on fairness grounds, while others subject all competency claims to default in the name of finality. Still, other courts distinguish between procedural and substantive claims. The Supreme Court has not resolved the question, leaving a fractured doctrine on an issue central to the legitimacy of criminal convictions. In 2024, in Yang v. United States, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit held that all competency claims are subject to procedural default and declined to recognize a distinction between procedural and substantive competency. This Comment argues that Yang is correct: a categorical rule better aligns competency with habeas doctrine, preserves systemic values of finality and efficiency, and still permits review of meritorious claims through established exceptions.
Solicitude for Property in the Fourth Amendment: Correcting a History of Misconstruction by Jonathon Strang
On August 9, 2024, in Asinor v. District of Columbia, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit held that the Fourth Amendment requires that law enforcement’s retention of an arrestee’s property seized pursuant to a lawful arrest be reasonable. In doing so, the D.C. Circuit rejected the seizure-excludes-retention approach adopted by five sister circuits in favor of the seizure-includes-retention approach. Unlike the seizure-excludes-retention approach, the seizure-includes-retention approach treats a property seizure as a continuing event that requires the government’s retention to be reasonable beyond the initial act of dispossession. This Comment argues that the seizure-excludes-retention approach is unconstitutional. It urges the U.S. Supreme Court to resolve this circuit split by adopting Asinor’s seizure-includes-retention approach, which aligns with the Framers’ intent, the Court’s precedent, and the Fourth Amendment’s plain text. This Comment further argues that the Asinor approach could be strengthened by recognizing that retention falls within the Court’s definition of seizure.
Prove It Or Lose It: First Circuit Requires But-for Causation For False Claims Under the AKS by Ashleigh Corieri White
In 2025, in United States v. Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, Inc., the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit interpreted “resulting from” in the 2010 amendment to the Anti-Kickback Statute (AKS) strictly, requiring but-for causation for false claims under the AKS. Aligning with the Sixth and Eighth Circuits, the First Circuit joined a majority of circuit courts that interpret the statutory language as requiring the government to show actual causation, meaning that the AKS violation must be the but-for cause of the false claim in order to pursue criminal and civil damages under the False Claims Act (FCA). This Comment critiques the Third Circuit’s reliance on legislative history and instead advocates for courts to join the First, Sixth, and Eighth Circuits in construing “resulting from” strictly. Furthermore, this Comment argues that but-for causation follows Congress’s intent to link AKS violations to the FCA without expanding the AKS and FCA so broadly that enforcement implicates both good and bad actors.