Cuban-born A.M. Hernandez traveled to the United States in the late 1840s and performed in various US blackface minstrel troupes from the 1850s through the 1870s. His movements across Cuban and US borders show how his participation in blackface minstrelsy reflected global logics of race and antiblackness, pushing existing studies of blackface to consider subjects whose lives exist transnationally.

This commentary is part of a series of responses to Michele Goodwin’s 2025 LSA presidential address.

Commenting on Cargill’s article, this Commentary examines how gene therapy research is regulated in the United States and how oversight of the field has developed. It discusses recent applications of gene therapy technologies and their implications for oversight, and of the impact of ordered cuts to NIH-funded research on gene therapy developments more broadly. Ultimately, it underscores the need for adaptive oversight frameworks for research involving emerging biotechnologies that balance scientific innovation, safety, and ethical considerations, and for effective public engagement on the acceptable use of these technologies, notwithstanding the discontinuation of NIH’s advisory mechanism established for this purpose.

Political pressures and institutional constraints have shaped a reactionary regulatory system that unduly preferences industry interests over public health. Breaking the reactive cycles that have long shaped device regulation will involve more than standard technical or incremental reforms. Congress would instead need to revisit more foundational values of device regulation to better align policy with the interests of patients and public health.

Commentary on “ERISA and the Failure of Emplloyers to Perform Their Fiduciary Duties: Evidence from a Survey of Health Plan Administrators.”

Dantuluri examines the ongoing prescription stimulant shortage driven by the Drug Enforcement Administration’s quota restrictions and an ineffective and fragmented system of drug governance. We extend this analysis to carceral health systems, which operate under similar logics of control in managing risks, diversion, and liability around medications for opioid use disorder. In drawing these parallels, we explore how perceptions of risk, suspicion, and restrictive oversight can produce scarcity, reinforce stigma, and elicit judgments around “deservingness” that may ultimately widen treatment gaps. We conclude with actionable recommendations that align with public health ethics to promote equitable access to evidence-based treatment.

What does it mean to be a citizen? To be equal in birth and stature as others born in the same land? How does law answer these questions and are the answers satisfying? Have the goalposts of citizenship shifted such that old, exlusionary notions of citizenship based on wealth, race, and sex now dangerously infect our society? These questions and this Essay are derived from the 2025 Presidential Address given at the Law and Society annual meeting.

What does conducting law and society scholarship have anything to do with wilting blooms? In this essay, Lynette J. Chua makes the connection between the two through her reminder to law and society scholars to study the taken-for-granted, an intellectual project that has become all the more urgent as politicians and activists contest concepts such as citizenship, gender, territories, religion and rights. She also calls upon fellow law and society scholars to be humble – for the significance and impact of our research, like flowers, could come and go with the seasons.

Frank Knight’s work is examined through the lens provided by the posthumous publication of his essay “Economic History” in the Dictionary of the History of Ideas in 1973. Knight identified pivotal ideas in economics from Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations until the time of his retirement from the University of Chicago, with some recognition of earlier contributions. The priority he gave to liberty within economics shows in the connection between Adam Smith and American independence. He then worked his way chronologically through a consideration of eight “moments” from classical economics, almost all declared errors. After identifying marginalism with the turn to economic science in three moments, he identified fifteen more moments that led to the development of a science focused on entrepreneurs and enterprises. Knight’s conclusion provides brief mention of six movements that claimed to conflict with economics, although Knight argued that none of them actually conflict.

Employer complaints about rising health care costs have been ubiquitous for a number of years. Survey evidence, though, finds widespread employer shortcomings in the processes they use to select and monitor health plan service providers. The evidence provides a data-driven basis to assess whether employers meet their fiduciary obligations, leading to the conclusion that employers need to increase their diligence or face the possibility of significant liability. The increased diligence may also mitigate health care costs.

This essay compares and contrasts the disciplines of sociology and law and society. I then outline how sociology can enrich law and society with stronger theory-building and better linkages of theoretical frameworks to empirical data. I next consider how law and society can enrich sociology, including by encouraging sociologists to take seriously law’s constitutive nature and to engage more directly with their work’s normative implications. Throughout, I draw primarily on research on U.S. immigration enforcement, which is both my area of study and a site of rich cross-pollination between the two fields.

The present work investigated changes in well-being during the transition out of upper secondary education (i.e., from shortly before graduating from upper secondary education to approximately one year later). The motivation for a post-school pathway (e.g., starting university or vocational training) was examined as a potential predictor of between-person differences in well-being trajectories. German-speaking high school graduates (N = 874 between ages 16 and 20; 69% female, 95% born in Germany) reported on their affective well-being in up to four surveys and indicated their motivation for their post-school pathway. At three measurement occasions, participants also participated in a three-week experience sampling phase, in which they reported on their daily well-being. Latent change models revealed an initial increase in well-being after graduation, but mixed evidence for subsequent trajectories, as both positive and negative affect decreased on average. Changes in well-being were more pronounced for global than for daily assessments of affective well-being. We did not find associations between the motivation for a post-school pathway and well-being trajectories. Overall, these findings highlight the complexity of well-being trajectories during the transition out of upper secondary education and the importance of using multiple time points and assessment methods to understand these dynamics.

We report on a first-principles numerical study of magnetic reconnection in plasmas with different initial ion-to-electron temperature ratios. In cases where this ratio is significantly below unity, we observe intense wave activity in the diffusion region, driven by the ion-acoustic instability. Our analysis shows that the dominant macroscopic effect of this instability is to drive substantial ion heating. In contrast to earlier studies reporting significant anomalous resistivity, we find that anomalous contributions due to the ion-acoustic instability are minimal. These results shed light on the dynamical impact of this instability on reconnection processes, offering new insights into the fundamental physics governing collisionless reconnection.

This article deals with late antique Jewish and Christian discourse on social hierarchy, martyrology, and attitudes toward the law and the commandments. I place Jewish and Christian attitudes to martyrdom in late antiquity within the larger system of the commandments. Beyond the circumstantial connections between martyrdom and the affirmation or violation of laws, I argue that martyrdom constitutes an important lens for the examination of the rule of the law and for the negotiation of socio-religious hierarchies. I argue that the elevation of martyrdom creates inner tension vis-à-vis the idea of life-long righteousness based on adherence to the law. I discuss the construction of martyrdom as the final and ultimate commandment, necessary for reaching a state of perfection. Through addressing a case where martyrdom is presented as competing with, if not substituting, a life according to the law, I discuss the theme of an upside-down world, which appears in both Christian and Rabbinic literature, concerning martyrs. In this framework, I discuss the view of martyrdom as a kind of stairway to heaven—an instrument for rapid advancement allowing to overtake those who lived according to the law—and the unique perception of law and martyrology in the fourth-century Syriac-Christian Book of Steps, which places the martyrs below the perfect.