II. Legal Writing
Constitutional cases, close-read.
Essays on juvenile justice, compelled speech, and the boundary between regulatory science and legal authority — written with attention to doctrine and to the people the doctrine reaches.
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Roper v. Simmons and the Evolving Science of Juvenile Brain Development
When the Supreme Court banned juvenile executions in 2005, it did something unprecedented: it leaned on neuroscience. This essay examines that move — what the science actually showed, what it couldn’t show, and what it means for a legal system to use brain scans to answer moral questions.
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The FDA’s Antidepressant Black Box Warning: Law Meets Medicine
In 2004 the FDA required a black box warning on antidepressants after clinical trial data suggested elevated suicide risk in young patients. Prescriptions fell. Some evidence suggests outcomes worsened. This essay asks what happened when a regulatory instrument entered a clinical space it did not fully understand.
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Masterpiece Cakeshop: Where Compelled Speech Meets Civil Rights
The Supreme Court ruled for the baker on narrow procedural grounds and left the harder question unanswered: when a First Amendment compelled-speech claim collides with a Fourteenth Amendment dignity claim in the public marketplace, which one yields? This essay argues the Court owed both sides more than it gave them.
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Juvenile Life Without Parole After Miller v. Alabama
Miller held that mandatory juvenile LWOP was unconstitutional. Jones quietly walked that back. This essay traces the arc from Miller to Montgomery to Jones — and argues that the question the doctrine has so far failed to answer is not about what juveniles deserve, but about what it means for a society to permanently foreclose the possibility of change.
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