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Santa Clara Law Review


DON’T BREATHE IN: THE DANGERS OF SSM EVENTS AND WHY REPEALING AFFIRMATIVE DEFENSES FALLS SHORT
From the Louisiana and Texas Gulf coasts to Wilmington, California, communities face disproportionately high cancer risks linked to excess hazardous emissions. This article examines the longstanding regulatory gaps that allow industrial facilities to emit excess levels of hazardous air pollution during startup, shutdown, and malfunction (SSM) events. Despite the Clean Air Act’s enacted framework for controlling emissions, the EPA has created exemptions and affirmative defense
Gillian Spring


WHAT AI CAN’T SAY: ORAL COMPETENCE IN LEGAL EDUCATION
This Article brings together two critical conversations rarely considered in tandem – generative AI’s impact on legal education and the need for more practical skills – and argues for a shared solution centered on oral communication skills. Law schools have historically devoted substantial attention to teaching students how to write like lawyers, but not how to speak like one. Although this is a long-standing imbalance, the widespread use of generative AI in written work prov
Cynthia Ho


CONSTITUTIONAL STRUCTURES IN PRIVATE LAW AND THE EXAMPLE OF WASTE LAW
This Article proposes three criteria for when a private law mechanism performs a structural constitutional function: when it constrains present authority in the name of future stability, when it disperses enforcement to avoid centralized authority, and when it has structural entrenchment to avoid ordinary displacement. While many private law doctrines contain constitutional resonances or echo rights, the core of constitutional law is the power structure—a precondition for the
Jill Fraley
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