Jotwell

Jotwell is a legal blog published by Jotwell that features scholarly commentary and reviews on recent legal scholarship across diverse areas of law. It covers topics including copyright law and its application to natural objects and AI-generated works, legal issues in healthcare such as primary care access and liability, historical and contemporary family law focusing on parental rights and family regulation, the intersection of law and food policy addressing food waste and structural inequalities, and empirical studies on constitutional law matters like Fourth Amendment search and seizure practices. The blog highlights emerging legal debates and interdisciplinary approaches to understanding law's role in society.

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Native people’s citizenship is in the news.  In its attacks on birthright citizenship, the Trump administration argues that because “Indians in tribal relations” were not citizens under the original understanding of the Citizenship Clause, children of undocumented or temporarily present…

Andrew Perlman, Generative AI and the Future of Legal Scholarship (June 2026 edition), available at SSRN (June 9, 2026).

Crisis claims, especially around disruptive technological innovation, tend to sell well, but are often overstated. This is true in general (the…

There is a renewed wave of scholarship in constitutional law emphasising cooperation and trust rather than conflict and distrust. The latter, associated with American-style constitutionalism, has long dominated our imagination alongside American political and social supremacy, but it now seems…

In his rich and carefully argued book, Rights and Right-Holding: A Philosophical Investigation, Matthew Kramer seeks to articulate the essence of any entitlement (whether legal or moral) that can be classified as a right and the essence of an entity’s…

In Do Nothing Preemption, Professor Lauren Roth takes on the legal thicket of preemption—the all-too-familiar hornet’s nest within the federalism-dominated landscape of health law. Roth’s project is particularly timely. Considering policy goals by the Trump administration as well as the…

How many uninjured plaintiffs are too many? The question–which arises across class action litigation, from consumer to employment cases–sounds simple. But as Tom Flesher demonstrates in his student note, federal courts cannot agree on an answer.Flesher’s note centers on Olean…