Publications
2023-2024
Human & Economic Development
The study of human development spurred from the desire to evaluate a nation based on indicators such as the quality of human health and well-being, rather than solely the condition of one’s economy. While the discipline of human development initially arose as an alternative to economic development, both approaches are complementary and rely on each other.
“Freedoms are not only the primary ends of development, they are also among its principal means.” Amartya Sen argues for a different perspective, emphasizing that freedom should be viewed as both the goal and instrument of development. For most countries the economy is the key factor when a country is evaluating their development, overshadowing other factors that could be taken into account. But what is the cost of a country prioritizing the economy over freedoms?
Economic growth can bring benefits to a country while also posing risks. Power plants that provide energy and financial prosperity to a neighborhood can simultaneously generate severe environmental harm within that community. Such increases in economic growth can exacerbate existing inequalities nationwide. There exists a critical need to prioritize job creation and resource allocation, but are the benefits of economic development worth the significant downsides that often follow? What strategies should a nation employ to effectively navigate this dilemma?
In our 2023-2024 issue, Human & Economic Development, readers can explore the complex causal relationship between economic development and human development by analyzing social conditions across the United States. Human & Economic Development examines scenarios where economic growth has adversely affected living conditions and quality of life analyzing how exactly certain laws or cases have allowed for these consequences to happen.
Human & Economic Development explores how prioritizing economic growth has contributed to rising inequalities across various fields. Ultimately, Volume VI of the Illinois Undergraduate Law Review strives to find a path toward inclusive growth when the values of economic growth and human well-being find themselves in conflict.
2022-2023
Wealth & Power
Money is a medium of exchange, a unit of account, and a store of value. In Politics, Aristotle attributes two natures to money: money as a means and money as an end. Through what means can money achieve a given end? More pressingly, what ends ought money aspire to? In examining this question, Aristotle defines a form of wealth called ho alêthinos ploutos, or “true wealth.” In colloquial use, wealth is typically defined as the abundance and/or accumulation of capital resources such as money, gold, or oil. In contrast, “true wealth” is the idea that “wealth as a whole consists in using things rather than owning them; it is really the activity – that is, the use – of the property that constitutes wealth.” However, can the use of wealth really be distinct from the ownership of wealth? Ownership is a concept that nearly all modern-day societies legally acknowledge – to use a given property, you must either own that property or have permission from the owner to use that property. If wealth is inseparable from ownership, is our ability to act conditioned on the quality and quantity of the property we own? On the other hand, is the quality and quantity of the property we own conditioned on our ability and freedom to act? In other words, does wealth constrain power, and does power constrain wealth? Our 2022 - 2023 publication issue, Wealth and Power, examines and defines this complex relationship between wealth and power by critically analyzing the legal frameworks governing private and public institutions in the United States. Wealth and Power assesses the extent to which monetary wealth has become synonymous with political power, how the law has governed and guided this relationship, and how the actions of institutions and individuals have affected the expression of this relationship. In doing so, Wealth and Power aims to answer the following questions. Through what means can and does money achieve a given end? More pressingly, what ends can and ought money aspire to?
2021-2022
Regulation & Coercion
This year, the review chose “Regulation and Coercion” as its publication theme. Each team of authors approached this theme from a unique angle, analyzing a particular realm of the law and pinpointing the moments when its regulations become coercive. A central objective of the law, we contend, is to strike an appropriate balance between the preservation of individual liberty and the protection of public interests. The struggle between regulation and coercion directly underlies this objective, and it raises questions of personal freedom, government authority, public health, and more which the review explores in this volume. The UIUC Undergraduate Law Review’s fourth volume contains four articles.
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Our first article covers food and drug safety within the United States. The authors concentrate on critical power relationships in food and drug regulation, from federal regulatory agencies and private corporations to Congress and consumers. By providing a historical overview of food and drug regulation and analyzing key players like the FDA and Big Pharma, the authors provide insight into how America’s food and drug regulatory framework may be improved.
The second article in this volume concentrates on modern technology regulation. This team of authors researched a range of major tech issues, from cryptocurrency and data privacy to the influence of Big Tech and antitrust. The article is divided into two parts, each containing sub-sections that provide historical background, legal analysis, and prescription where appropriate.
Our third article discusses the legality, efficacy, and public perception of vaccine mandates. The authors employ a legal-historical analysis featuring important case law and international comparisons to determine how vaccine mandates can be applied in modern society, and how they may be used to combat COVID-19. As social media plays a crucial role in determining public opinion, it constitutes a major focus of the article’s public perception section.
Our final article concerns abortion regulation in the United States. Published just over a month after the leaked Supreme Court draft opinion signaling a potential reversal of Roe v. Wade, this article is especially salient. The authors provide a historical overview of abortion case law in the US, analysis of racial disparities in abortion regulation and provision, and a discussion of the impact losing the precedents of Roe and Planned Parenthood v. Casey would have on abortion access.
2020-2021
Separation of Powers
Our theme for the 2020-21 publication issue was “Separation of Powers” as we were interested in examining the structural and ideological forces behind the division of authority on multiple levels of public governance. The intent to prevent concentration of power and to limit entities from exercising power outside of their scope is an important feature of the protection of human rights as it safeguards against abuse of power. Broadly speaking, the federal government, local governments and individual citizens are recognized as separate entities that hold certain rights that cannot be infringed upon.
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Each of our articles delves deeper into the convoluted relationship between power and the protection of rights by analyzing the dynamics between actors and the institutions they represent.
The executive order is best understood as a federal directive mandated by the President of the United States with the effect of law. Our first article explores the scope of the authority of an executive order when it comes to its overarching influence into many facets of an individual’s life. The issuance of executive orders is often colored by the context of the administration in office, and this article provides a comparative analysis across various policy areas in order to demonstrate the consequential ramifications of executive orders when employed in different situations.
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The American tradition of investing millions in a national defense fund can be attributed to the remnants of militarism that values the presence of a large military force in order to defend national rights and interests. Our second article highlights the conflicts that arise alongside a commitment to militarism, as the United States currently embodies. Military involvement bleeds over into multiple aspects of the political and social sphere — from education to the economy to protecting individual freedoms. This article presents an analysis of military impact on college universities as well as its implications on larger society.
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The history of voter suppression in the United States has long been recognized as a political tool aimed to deter people of color and other minorities from participation in elections. The right to vote was, and remains, conditional based on attributes deemed acceptable by local governments to withhold the opportunity for certain citizens to express their vote, their voice. Our third article delves into the complicated history of voter suppression before presenting an examination of current legislation that remain an obstacle for equal and fair election law. On a national level, felon disenfranchisement and voter ID laws continue to be pervasive forces of suppression while lack of accessibility and disinformation during a pandemic further contribute to this issue.
2019-2020
Privacy & Transparency
Our theme for this year’s issue was “Privacy & Transparency”. We chose to focus on the interrelation of these two legal issues and how they affect various areas of legal inquiry. While each article’s specific topic addresses problems unique to their area, there was a broad focus on understanding who privacy and transparency laws work for in various situations.
Our first article revolves around privacy and transparency laws regarding policing and its relationship to technology, with a specific focus on the strategies and tactics used by the intelligence community. The article assessed the ways that policing systems have adopted intelligence-led tactics in post-9/11 America,
and the inherent issues of private data and transparent tactics that go along with it. In addition, the article seeks to establish forward-looking outlines for responsible, transparent behavior regarding intelligence and private data.
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As part of a larger student body, our organization is conscious of the tumultuous, complicated relationship between campus policing and student privacy. Our second article seeks to address this relationship, laying out broad trends and factors that play into privacy and transparency within it, as well as aiming to craft a path forward for a more open and safe campus community
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Immigration has long been one of the foremost areas of debate concerning privacy and transparency laws, and thus our third article concerns undocumented immigrants and the legal procedures they face. This article’s broad focus revolves around what rights and liberties exist for undocumented immigrants, and how the legal processes that concern them vary in thresholds of privacy and transparency across different levels of government. In addition, the article seeks to establish the points of legal inquiry that represent the largest capacity for change, as well as how these points can see change, and who that change should work for.
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Our final article’s topic concerned privacy and transparency laws and policies surrounding access and use of genetic information. Due to the constraints of COVID19 and the numerous changes brought to the life of our campus, our student body, and our writers, this article did not see full completion. However, our writers provided a brief summary of portions of the work and research that had been done, and this summary is published to exhibit some of the points of inquiry regarding genetic information and the complex questions of privacy and transparency that exist.
2018-2019
Access
Our inaugural issue’s theme was access. We chose to focus on two issues: access to education funding and access to student bargaining rights. We sought to explore the underlying legal issues that determine Illinois residents’ ability to obtain the necessary resources to provide for themselves and their families.
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As public school students in a state whose government had failed to pass a budget from 2016 through 2018, education funding is an issue that has directly affected all of our lives. Our first writing bloc chose to focus on the legality of Illinois’ property tax-funded education system. The article assessed the ways the system exacerbates inequality between school districts and debated whether those funding inequities could reach an unconstitutional level as determined by Brown v. Board of Education.
Nearly all of us on the Review also saw student labor organizing in action when the Graduate Employees’ Organization (GEO) went on strike in the spring of 2018. We heard firsthand about the obstacles facing student-employees seeking bargaining power when negotiating with their university employers. Our second writing bloc sought to dive deeper into the legal implications of unprotected student labor, looking at case studies within Illinois and without. They examined the GEO negotiations for a stronger contract at UIUC; the University of Illinois at Chicago’s graduate student union strike; and Northwestern’s student-athlete union’s negotiations with the NCAA.