Jotwell: The Journal of Things We Like (Lots)

Jotwell is taking a short summer break. We’ll be back on Monday, August 31. However, even while we’re on break, we’ll be accepting submissions, editing them, and updating various technical parts of the site. Meanwhile, this is good time to ask you to please help support Jotwell; your donation, however small, helps demonstrate the breadth of support for the enterprise.

Michael L. Schler, The State of the Federal Income Tax System: Poor, Tax Notes, (May 30, 2025). Michael Schler thinks the prognosis for the federal income tax, at least as it is currently administered, is not good. In The State of the Federal Income Tax System: Poor, he outlines many of the problems federal tax administration currently faces. Most of these problems are worsening as the foundations of administrative law more generally are challenged in the federal courts and in Congress.

Haiyun Damon-Feng, Agency Fact-Making, 135 Yale L. J. 2525 (2026). In Gundy, Justice Gorsuch reminds us that one of the traditional roles of the agency is “filling up details and finding facts.” (Dissent, P. 33.) Indeed, “fact-finding” appears in the title of at least eighty law review articles on agencies and in the text of several thousands more.

Jeremy Bearer-Friend & Sarah Polcz, Sharing the Algorithm: The Tax Solution to Generative AI, 17 Colum. J. Tax L. 1 (2025). Most legal responses to generative artificial intelligence ask familiar questions. Who may copy? Who may sue? Who should regulate? Who should pay? Jeremy Bearer-Friend and Sarah Polcz ask a more basic, and more corporate, question: who should own AI? Their answer: the public should own a piece.

Ryan H. Nelson, Work Law’s Domain, 47 Berkeley J. Emp. & Lab. L. 59 (2026). In Work Law’s Domain, Professor Ryan Nelson reveals our general “blindness” about who and how many people are really covered by work law generally and employment discrimination law in particular. (P. 60.) As Professor Nelson notes early in the piece, “this Article begins with a frightening claim: no one actually knows how illegal employment discrimination is in the United States.” (P.

Kevin Bennardo, Natural Objects and Testamentary Freedom, 51 Fla. St. U. L. Rev. 993 (2024). Does the United States only pay lip service to testamentary freedom? When compared to other countries, it does not appear that way. That is, by providing a substantial degree of testamentary freedom, the United States is actually in the minority among nation-states. Most countries have family maintenance or forced succession rules that allow estate plans to be modified by judges after the death of the testator.

Ani B. Satz & Liza Vertinsky, Customary Corruption, 66 Wm. & Mary L. Rev. 693 (2025). The professional standard for medical malpractice, traditionally set by custom, has come under scrutiny. The most common concern is that custom may not reflect actual best practices, and health care providers may be reluctant to adopt those newer, better methods because the custom standard will not protect them.

Doni Bloomfield, How Science Grantmakers Govern (Mar. 25, 2026) (unpublished manuscript), available at SSRN (Mar. 13, 2026). Who regulates the physical and informational risks of scientific research? Who makes sure that researchers keep intensely personal data secret, or lock their dangerous chemicals away safely, or don’t haphazardly create superviruses that could kill us all?

K-Sue Park, Property and Sovereignty in America: A History of Title Registries & Jurisdictional Power, 133 Yale L.J. 1487 (2024). In K-Sue Park’s Property and Sovereignty in America: A History of Title Registries & Jurisdictional Power, it is the near-invisible, mundane title registry that is at the center of the early American settlement and dispossession of indigenous landholders.

Matthew H. Kramer, Rights and Right-Holding: A Philosophical Investigation (2024). 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 holding that right (P. 5).