How do U.S. Supreme Court justices use legal scholarship? In recent landmark decisions like Trump v. CASA (2025) and Loper Bright v. Raimondo (2024), the justices cited several pieces of legal scholarship in their opinions. Yet little is known of how and how often the members of the Court engage in this practice. In this article, I provide new data on the Court’s citation to legal scholarship under the Roberts Court from 2005 to 2023. I find that there is a strong upward trend in the number of citations to legal scholarship, with large increases in more recent years. Further, there is an increase in the percentage of opinions by the Court that cite legal scholarship. Also, the justices are using the most legal scholarship in some of the Court’s most recent salient decisions. Additionally, the justices overwhelmingly cite legal scholarship published in the most elite law review journals, with Harvard Law Review and Yale Law Journal emerging as the preferred outlets. Lastly, the data shows that the distribution of law professors cited by the justices is highly skewed, with a small number of individuals accounting for a disproportionately large share of citations, to which most share an association with the Federalist Society. The data is clear that the justices have altered the way in which they use legal scholarship in their opinions. This article sets the foundation for future theoretical work on the Court’s use of legal scholarship in its opinions.

Public policies contribute to structural racism and health inequities. To dismantle structural racism and advance health equity, methods aligning scientific evidence, community priorities, and political will are needed to implement equity-focused interventions. This study combined community-based participatory research and legal epidemiology methods to inform local policy in East Point, Georgia. The community informed a comprehensive policy approach to address social determinants of health (SDOH) and advance health equity and identified East Point’s Comprehensive Plan Update as an opportunity to advance health equity through policy. Key findings informed a legal epidemiology study to assess variation in including equity and health equity in comprehensive plans across 32 jurisdictions. Limited adoption of equity and health equity provisions were found, revealing opportunities to inform the East Point policymaking process. Research findings were summarized and disseminated to the community and policymakers. In 2023, East Point adopted equity, health, and health equity into its comprehensive plan for the first time. This case study demonstrates that collaborative, multi-sector, community-centered approaches can support policy interventions that address historical race-based, health-harming policies, and thereby dismantle structural racism. Inclusion of health equity in East Point’s comprehensive plan provides a foundation for future implementation of policies that address SDOH and health inequities.

How do European Union (EU) fiscal allocations affect the electoral performance of corrupt incumbent governments? While existing research links EU funds to governance quality and corruption, less is known about how these resources interact with domestic political incentives to shape electoral outcomes. This article advances a theory of corruption compensation, arguing that EU transfers provide politically vulnerable incumbents with discretionary resources that can be redirected to consolidate electoral support. Using data on EU fiscal allocations and electoral outcomes in twenty-six member states between 2000 and 2015, the analysis shows that higher levels of EU funding are associated with larger electoral margins for governing parties in countries with high executive corruption. These effects are absent in less corrupt contexts. The findings suggest that, under weak domestic accountability and limited enforcement, EU fiscal instruments unintentionally reinforce illiberal governance and weaken the regulatory objectives of cohesion policy. The article highlights the need to integrate political risk considerations more systematically into the design and implementation of EU spending conditionality.

Since the early centuries of Christianity, the pope has had help in governing the universal church. Throughout history, the power of the Roman Curia has been centralized in a curia of cardinals—at the expense of diminishing the role of the college of bishops. The Second Vatican Council’s contributions to the episcopate and the role of the laity inspired, if only in part, the reforms of Paul V and John Paul II. Praedicate Evangelium, the apostolic constitution authored by Pope Francis, emphasizes the pastoral dimension of the curia, the participation of the bishops, and the co-responsibility of all the faithful. It recognizes, for the first time in church history, the possibility that lay people can, in some cases, direct dicasteries. This historic statement is, however, a starting point for reform. Synodality and decentralization may require further changes both in the Roman Curia and at the diocesan level. In addition, there is an urgent need for the institutions and individuals involved in the central governance of the Catholic Church to ensure respect for the law, transparency, accountability, and anything that could constitute an abuse of power.

The efficacy of the “future-proof” Unfair Commercial Practices Directive against dark patterns is undermined by the fragmented regulatory landscape introduced by the Digital Services Act. Article 25 DSA creates four weaknesses: a general prohibition that is vague compared to the UCPD’s detailed framework; a narrow subjective scope that excludes many online traders; an exclusion clause in Article 25(2) that replaces cumulative application with an opaque hierarchy; and slow soft-law mechanisms for updating the law in response to new dark patterns. To resolve these contradictions, this article proposes four targeted reforms: first, repurposing Article 25(1) DSA as an institutional gateway for DSA authorities to apply substantive UCPD rules using the stronger DSA sanctions and enforcement regime; second, extending the prohibition’s scope to all intermediary service providers; third, the repeal of Article 25(2) DSA; and fourth, granting the Commission the power to update the UCPD blacklist via delegated acts for a swift response to emerging dark patterns. These reforms, particularly in combination, offer a coherent, future-proof regulatory framework that restores the centrality of the UCPD, preserves the innovations of the DSA, and equips EU law to address both current and emerging forms of dark patterns.

Mutual recognition is a cornerstone of European integration, enabling cooperation across diverse policy fields while allowing the Union to pursue unity without uniformity. Yet, the Posted Workers saga – widely framed as a tale of tension between social rights and economic freedoms – exposes some of its limits. This paper uses the Posted Workers saga as a case study of mutual recognition. Empirically, it draws on the legislative negotiations behind the 1996 and 2018 Directives and case law from Rush to Laval, to examine legislative intent. The analysis shows that the 1996 Directive was not primarily concerned with protecting workers but with regulating the cross-border provision of labour via the freedom to provide services, through a mutual recognition mechanism. The mechanism was asymmetrical by design: it privileged certain Member States’ labour rules over others to address social dumping. The Directive was intended to create a ceiling – rather than a floor – of standards under Article 3(1), subject to narrow exceptions. Conceptually, the paper argues that mutual recognition operates as a generative yet fragile mode of integration. It is generative, fostering coordination between Member States and enabling free movement. Yet it remains fragile where the interpretations of the ‘content’ of such rules diverge. In the Posted Workers context, such divergence is evident via the conflicting understandings of ‘minimum rates of pay’. The paper concludes that while mutual recognition can facilitate diversity, it cannot indefinitely substitute for substantive political engagement in defining the content and scope of shared rules.