Beginning in 1981 and continuing into the mid-1990s, The Alledger was the student newspaper of the Boston College Law School. The Alledger published both serious and satirical articles on topics related to student life at the law school. Frequent topics include the arrival and departure of faculty members, profiles of candidates for leadership positions in student government, and previews of lectures given by noteworthy speakers.

The publication consistently poked fun at the law student experience, making professors and classmates alike the targets of good-natured parody. The Alledger featured an annual April Fool’s Day issue which consisted entirely of satirical articles.

The Alledger is a record of the school’s history, offering evidence of an increasingly competitive environment for law schools in the form of extensive coverage of a 1995 dispute related to the U.S. News and World Report law school rankings. The newspaper also recorded changes in the demographics of the student body, as well as frequent discussion of tuition increases and the financial relationship of the law school to the university. Moreover, the humorous and frank tone of The Alledger provides real insight into the lives of law students in the 1980s and 1990s.

The Alledger was digitized from the collection of the Boston College Law School Library. Issues missing from this collection are not owned by the law library; due to frequent inconsistencies in the numbering of issues, the law library is not sure how many issues are missing from this collection.

The Alledger

Boston College Law Review is Boston College Law School's flagship scholarly publication.

The Review, ranked in the top 25 law journals by Washington & Lee, publishes eight issues each year featuring articles and essays by prominent authors addressing legal issues of national interest.

In addition to articles written by outside academics, the Review prints the work of its student staff, many of whom publish notes during their third year. The Review’s second-year staff members also prepare short comments on recent federal circuit court decisions, which may be published in the Review's Electronic Supplement.

Visit the Boston College Law Review website at <a href="http://bclawreview.bc.edu">bclawreview.bc.edu</a>.

Boston College Law Review

Boston College Law Library collects the publications of Law School faculty, and, when possible, makes them available through this collection. Organized by year and tagged with authors and subject areas, this resource reflects the school and the library’s commitment to open access while at the same time serving as a valuable institutional record.

Boston College Law School Faculty Papers

Boston College Law School Lectures and Presentations

Front Matter

This Note advocates for congressional and state action to remedy the Supreme Court’s flawed 2022 decision in Ruan v. United States. This approach includes a modified return to the objective good faith defense established by the Controlled Substances Act of 1970 (CSA) and United States v. Moore, the 1975 seminal case that established that physicians could be prosecuted under 21 U.S.C. § 841. Ruan requires that the government show a defendant physician subjectively knew their conduct in issuing controlled substances was unlawful. This permits the substitution of an individual physician’s conception of acceptable medical practice in place of a generally agreed upon standard when a jury decides whether the physician prescribed in good faith. The Ruan decision is inconsistent with the text and intent of the CSA and the objective good faith defense standard established in Moore. Further, it is incongruous with the Supreme Court’s 2006 decision in Gonzales v. Oregon, which delegated authority to the states, not individual physicians, to determine the bounds of acceptable medical practice. Additionally, Ruan had the unintended consequence of exacerbating a treatment disparity between low-level drug couriers and physicians charged under the CSA. This Note argues that a comprehensive, uniform amendment to the CSA, state prescribing statutes, and federal agency prescribing guidelines clearly defining what constitutes lawful prescribing would fulfill the Ruan Court’s aims and maintain consistency with the CSA and the Supreme Court’s prior holdings. Simultaneously, it would prevent the inequity between drug couriers and physicians from intensifying.

Ruan's Hippocratic Hegemony: Physician Idiosyncrasy Should Not Determine Criminality

The Supreme Court’s 1969 decision in Brandenburg v. Ohio introduced a new paradigm for evaluating incitement by looking at whether the speech was intended to induce imminent lawless action by third parties and whether such action was likely to occur. The tripartite test offered by the Court, however, is arguably overprotective of speech that may cause legitimate harm, including coded speech, or speech whose true meaning is not facially obvious. In particular, coded speech—including dog whistles, or speech designed to elicit a specific reaction from certain listeners—may escape the requisite scrutiny under Brandenburg by giving the speaker plausible deniability, despite contextual clues known to all or part of the audience as to the words’ true meaning. Applying speech-act theory, this Note argues that the Court should adopt a more uptake-sensitive approach to incitement, which would allow audience response to assist in determining intent and better capture the veiled manner of such speech.

Words Not Said: Can the Brandenburg Incitement Test Cope with Coded Speech?

<h2 id="abstract" class="e15eboeo8 jnl-1puxxm3 e1kn9lbh0">Abstract</h2>In 2022, in Vega v. Tekoh, the U.S. Supreme Court held that individuals interrogated without knowledge of their Miranda rights cannot seek remedy under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. The Supreme Court’s rationale for this decision was that the right provided in the 1966 Miranda v. Arizona decision, which ensures that those facing the criminal legal system are provided information on their privileges, was not a constitutional right, and it would therefore be impermissible to seek remedy for a right that does not exist. Instead, the Court labeled Miranda rights as a prophylactic rule: a practice that exists to help protect constitutional rights but is itself not constitutionally required. With this decision, the Court is positioned to soon overturn Miranda. The job of the American judiciary is to create rulings that adhere to and uphold rights afforded under the U.S. Constitution. Prophylactic rules are no different. This Note argues that the decision in Vega v. Tekoh will hinder people—especially those from marginalized communities—from attaining the justice to which they are entitled. This disenfranchisement should be addressed through congressional action or initiatives taken by state legislatures to protect marginalized people from the injustices of the criminal legal system.

“My Mirandas Don’t Stand a Chance, with Cops”: The U.S. Supreme Court’s Impending Destruction of Miranda Rights Under the Pretense of Prophylaxis in Vega v. Tekoh

We are living in a time of labor unrest, and the National Labor Relations Board’s (“NLRB” or “the Board”) ability to address new sources of strife in the modern workplace is imperiled. The U.S. Supreme Court’s major questions doctrine has already struck down agency actions involving the environment and student loans—and labor could be next. As articulated in West Virginia v. EPA and Biden v. Nebraska, the Court’s robust version of the major questions doctrine jettisons Chevron deference. Instead, it requires clear congressional authorization before an agency addresses “extraordinary” economic or politically significant matters that the agency has not previously regulated under its statute. The malleable indicia on which the Court has relied to determine the existence of a major question—history, breadth, economic significance, and political controversy—often occur in NLRB policy making. Congress, however, granted the NLRB broad power to eliminate obstructions to economic productivity caused by strikes, violence, and other disruptive forms of worker protest, well-aware that the Board would confront sources of conflict that did not exist in 1935. If the new major questions doctrine prevents the NLRB from exercising the powers Congress conferred upon it to help quell the current spate of labor unrest, the Court will undermine legislative intent and economic stability in one fell swoop.

This Article proposes that courts should apply the major questions doctrine to federal agencies modestly and to the NLRB rarely, if at all. The NLRB and its sister agencies should incorporate major questions concerns into their processes to avoid triggering the doctrine unintentionally. And the courts should find major questions only when indicia exist conjunctively and are qualitatively major. Further, the NLRB’s distinct history, adjudicative structure, and statutory entitlement to judicial deference demand that the courts respect the Board’s policy making, even if it implicates so-called major questions. In this way, courts will honor Congress’s decision to empower an expert adjudicative agency, rather than the judiciary, to protect labor peace.

The National Labor Relations Act, the Major Questions Doctrine, and Labor Peace in the Modern Workplace

Qualified immunity is a judge-made doctrine that offers immunity to state actors sued for violations of constitutional rights. In recent years, the doctrine has received increased scrutiny for its application to cases claiming police use of excessive force, but the doctrine’s application is broader: qualified immunity can defeat a broad array of constitutional claims. This Article proposes a new ground to question qualified immunity, arguing that the narrative and epistemic effects of qualified immunity provide strong reasons for reconsideration of current doctrine. Using narrative and epistemic lenses, the Article reveals that qualified immunity doctrine systematically disadvantages civil rights plaintiffs and ultimately undermines civil rights law and the commitment to rights enforcement. Current qualified immunity doctrine excludes plaintiffs’ stories and denies their knowledge, diminishing their stature in the law. Further, qualified immunity doctrine deprives courts of the very narratives that develop the law, deepening injustice by rendering a range of civil rights-related experiences essentially unknowable in the law. Qualified immunity thus dangerously slows the growth of the law and widens the distance between people’s lived experience and the law. The Article argues that any effort to recalibrate qualified immunity must consider the narrative and epistemic values at risk, complementing other doctrinal arguments for re-examining qualified immunity and adding to the debate on the doctrine’s future.

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Boston College Law School Faculty Papers

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Front Matter

Ruan's Hippocratic Hegemony: Physician Idiosyncrasy Should Not Determine Criminality

Words Not Said: Can the Brandenburg Incitement Test Cope with Coded Speech?

“My Mirandas Don’t Stand a Chance, with Cops”: The U.S. Supreme Court’s Impending Destruction of Miranda Rights Under the Pretense of Prophyl...

The National Labor Relations Act, the Major Questions Doctrine, and Labor Peace in the Modern Workplace

Qualified Immunity, Legal Narrative, and the Denial of Knowledge

Welcome to LIRA@BC Law!

Featured Collections

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The Alledger