Postscript Archives – Southern California Law Review

Between Juveniles and Adults: Commonwealth v. Mattis and its Role in Redefining Legal Standards for Emerging Adults

May 2026May 2026Isabella Flaherty*

The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court’s 2024 decision in Commonwealth v. Mattis marked the first time any state has categorically banned life without parole beyond the juvenile context, applying that ban to individuals aged eighteen to twenty. In doing so, the court recognized that these individuals—known as “emerging adults”—share key developmental traits with juveniles, including heightened impulsivity, greater susceptibility to peer influence, and a diminished capacity to assess long-term consequences. These developmental differences make emerging adults more similar to juveniles than to fully mature adults, undermining the justification for life without parole—the harshest punishment available short of the death penalty.

This Note argues that the reasoning underlying the Mattis decision does not end at age twenty. Developmental science generally recognizes “emerging adulthood” as extending through age twenty-five, and the characteristics identified in Mattis persist throughout that period, undermining any meaningful distinction at twenty-one. The age-crime curve likewise shows that criminal behavior peaks in late adolescence and early adulthood before declining sharply, while recidivism data further challenges the assumption that individuals who commit serious offenses during this period remain permanently dangerous. Together, this evidence weakens retributive and deterrence-based justifications for life without parole and supports sentencing approaches that preserve the possibility of rehabilitation.

Situating Mattis within a broader national context, this Note argues that the decision reflects—and accelerates—a shift toward development-informed sentencing. Courts, legislatures, and prosecutors increasingly recognize emerging adults as a distinct category warranting individualized and rehabilitative approaches. Building on these developments, this Note contributes to the growing legal discourse on emerging adulthood by showing how Mattis provides a framework for extending categorical protections through age twenty-five, aligning sentencing law with developmental science, principles of proportionality, and modern understandings of culpability.

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Yikes! The Bluebook’s Generative AI Rule is Flawed

April 2026April 2026Jessica R. Gunder*

Criticism of The Bluebook is not new.¹ The Bluebook is an arguable form of hazing, with a long and storied history of making first-year students cry.² Judge Posner’s denouncement of the text is perhaps the most famous; he wrote: “I have not read the nineteenth edition. I have dipped into it, much as one might dip one’s toes in a pail of freezing water. I am put in mind of Mr. Kurtz’s dying words in Heart of Darkness—‘The horror! The horror!’—and am tempted to end there.”³

The fact that the text is widely disliked makes it an easy scapegoat. That is not to say, however, that the criticism is undeserved.

Past criticism has typically focused on aspects of the book that relate to its usability, not whether the citation format it prescribes is appropriate.⁴ A notable exception to this pattern was the widespread condemnation of the sixteenth edition of The Bluebook, which changed the meaning of the signal “see” and the absence of a signal.⁵ The response to this change “was so vehement that the House of Representatives of the Association of American Law Schools (AALS) passed a resolution at its January 1997 meeting condemning [the] changes . . . and encouraging its members, and law reviews, to use the signal rules in the Fifteenth Edition.”⁶

Despite its unpopularity and the availability of other citation manuals,⁷ The Bluebook remains widely used at many law schools to teach legal citation format to law students, and it is relied on by law reviews and courts.⁸

The twenty-second edition of The Bluebook was released in May 2025.⁹ This new edition includes a new rule—Rule 18.3—that crafts a citation format for legal writers to use when citing generative artificial intelligence (“AI”). This Book Review focuses on The Bluebook’s new generative AI rule, and it concludes that the citation format that The Bluebook prescribes within Rule 18.3 is deeply flawed.¹⁰

This Book Review proceeds in three parts. First, it examines the purpose of citations in legal writing and identifies circumstances in which the citation of generative AI output is appropriate. Second, it considers what The Bluebook requires of authors using generative AI technology and why The Bluebook’s requirements are inappropriate, focusing on: (1) errors within Rule 18.3 itself; (2) the unreasonable burden Rule 18.3 imposes; (3) Rule 18.3’s incompatibility with how generative AI technology is actually used; and (4) how the requirements imposed by Rule 18.3 violate attorney-client confidentiality requirements and work product protections. Third, and finally, it discusses why The Bluebook’s flawed approach matters and how it might be addressed.

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Beyond Words: The Risks of Generative Interpretation

March 2026March 2026Jonathan Scher*

Judges are beginning to use large language models like ChatGPT to interpret legal texts. This Note examines whether they should do so. Prior studies testing LLMs as legal interpreters use survey responses as benchmarks for performance. I offer the first study comparing LLM interpretations to real-world judicial decisions. Across eight Ninth Circuit cases, I test whether GPT-4 Turbo (a model of ChatGPT) correctly identifies legal text as ambiguous or unambiguous. I find that ChatGPT’s assessments diverged from the court’s determinations 50% of the time. I then advance a novel argument: judicial reliance on LLMs may constitute improper ex parte communication under current judicial ethics rules.

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Broken Records: Evidentiary Failures in Expedited Removal and Credible Fear Reviews

February 2026February 2026Luna Gibbels*

Expedited removal, a process allowing for the swift deportation of noncitizens without a full hearing, has become a central mechanism in U.S. immigration enforcement. Although the process was designed to expedite removals, it is riddled with evidentiary and procedural deficiencies that undermine asylum seekers’ rights. This Note examines how systemic flaws in record development during initial “credible fear” screenings—such as officer misconduct, language barriers, and trauma—skew credible fear determinations, leading to erroneous deportations. It further critiques the limited reviewability of negative credible fear findings, highlighting inconsistencies among immigration judges regarding the admission of new evidence, credibility assessments, and access to counsel. Additionally, it argues that the “entry fiction” doctrine, which purports to justify the lack of due process protections in expedited removal, is fundamentally incompatible with U.S. asylum law, due process, and non-refoulement obligations. To address these deficiencies, this Note proposes key reforms to credible fear review: (1) requiring immigration judges to allow new evidence and testimony; (2) utilizing a framework adopted by the Seventh Circuit in Jimenez Ferreira v. Lynch for assessing credibility; and (3) guaranteeing a right to counsel during review proceedings. These changes are necessary to align expedited removal with U.S. asylum law, safeguard due process, and prevent the wrongful deportation of bona fide asylum seekers.

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Can States Force ICE to Take Off the Masks?

January 2026January 2026Noah C. Chauvin*

As the federal government has pursued President Donald Trump’s aggressive immigration policy, images of masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents seizing people off of the streets have become a potent symbol of the administration’s disregard for democratic and legal norms. While government officials claim that ICE agents must mask to protect themselves from violence and harassment,¹ critics maintain that the practice helps immigration officials dodge accountability and actually makes them less safe.² Responding to these concerns, lawmakers across the country have introduced legislation intended to prevent ICE agents from covering their faces while on duty.

Four of these bills, introduced by congressional Democrats,³ are unlikely to advance through a Republican-controlled Congress. Indeed, some congressional Republicans are attempting to provide ICE agents with greater anonymity.⁴ Legislative efforts in several Democrat-controlled states and localities, however, are much more likely to bear fruit (one such bill has already been signed into law⁵)—but could be quickly struck down by the courts as violations of the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause.⁶ But that does not mean that states are entirely powerless to confront this problem.

This essay proceeds in four parts. Part I provides a brief summary of the Supremacy Clause and the ways in which it has been used to strike down state laws purporting to regulate federal activity. Next, Part II details the efforts by state lawmakers to prohibit federal law enforcement officers from masking and explains why those bills, if enacted, would be unconstitutional. Part III outlines five alternative steps state and local officials can take to discourage ICE from masking. Finally, Part IV provides best practices for state and local lawmakers seeking to legislate in this area.

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Towards Defensible Judge-Made Democratic Process

October 2025October 2025Jacob Eisler*

What is the function of judicial review? By the stated lights of Article III (“cases” and “controversies”),¹ to individual judges resolving cases, and to litigants asserting they have suffered an injustice, courts must fairly resolve particular disputes. Yet thanks to the wide-ranging consequences of common law decision-making and the hunger of ambitious law professors to advance novel and transformative scholarly claims, doctrine tends to be evaluated by its purported systemic effects. In election law—which explicitly bears on terms of collective participation—this contrast is especially sharp. Yet contemporary election law scholarship so thoroughly emphasizes systemic accounts that it neglects the foundation of legitimate collective self-governance: the participation and consent of individuals in politics.

The Law of Freedom aspires to return attention to this foundation. Professor Yunsieg Kim’s wonderfully insightful review draws out this point while clearing the path for the challenging but urgent analysis that future jurisprudence and scholarship must undertake. Reconciling judge-made law and constituent autonomy is an endeavor of intimidating analytic and normative complexity. An “operationally useful framework”² will require courts to engage with how personal autonomy is translated into valid collective action through representation, all while diligently respecting the norms of rule of law that ameliorate the counterpopular dilemma.

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The Care Act: A System of Coercion Masquerading as One of Compassion

September 2025September 2025Julia Beauchemin*

Against the bleak backdrop of a cold November afternoon in San Francisco, Erica Stone faces a heart-wrenching dilemma. Her twenty-eight-year-old daughter, Monica, has been battling schizophrenia-induced psychosis since she was sixteen. Homeless and living just north of Market Street, Monica adamantly rejects her mother’s offers of psychiatric hospitalization, as she has done on many past occasions. Gripped with anxiety over her daughter’s safety, Monica’s refusal to seek treatment weighs heavily on her mind.

In years past, Erica would have been forced to return home after leaving Monica food and a sleeping bag, heart heavy with her daughter’s continued refusal to accept treatment, yet without any available recourse. However, a recent development in California’s mental health legislation has reshaped this narrative. As of December 1, 2023, the Community Assistance, Recovery, and Empowerment (“CARE”) Act grants Erica the ability to petition Monica into court-ordered treatment.¹ Now fully implemented across all fifty-eight California counties, the Act establishes a network of civil CARE Courts that can order those suffering from schizophrenia and related psychotic disorders into treatment programs at the community level.²

Once Erica submits a petition on Monica’s behalf, affirming her eligibility for the CARE program as an individual with untreated schizophrenia, the petition undergoes evaluation by a CARE Court.³ For Monica to qualify for assistance through the CARE Act, the court must find that Monica is unlikely to survive safely in the community without supervision or that she is a threat to herself or others without support.⁴ If the court finds either of these to be true, the Act empowers the court to create a “Care Plan” for Monica that lasts up to twelve months, with the possibility to extend the plan for an additional year.⁵ This Plan may include provisions necessitating Monica’s relocation to emergency housing, mandatory participation in behavioral health treatment, and court-ordered stabilization medications.⁶

Created with the goal of connecting Californians suffering with schizophrenia and other related psychotic mental illnesses with treatment “before they end up cycling through prison, emergency rooms, or homeless encampments,” the CARE Act promises to advance upstream diversion from more restrictive conservatorships or incarceration.⁷ However, if Monica fails to comply with her CARE program, she may be referred to conservatorship proceedings with a new factual presumption that no suitable alternatives to conservatorship are available.⁸

This Note explores the implications of the CARE Act on California’s existing mental health landscape, while also pointing out certain deficiencies in the Act as it exists today. Part I of this Note explores the inner workings of the CARE Court framework, as well as the grounds for challenging a law as “vague” under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Part II argues that the CARE Act’s current eligibility criteria are unconstitutionally vague and are thus likely to result in arbitrary and discriminatory court enforcement. Part III goes on to propose possible amendments to the CARE Court framework that aim to protect against these potentially speculative and arbitrary judicial determinations. Part IV acknowledges the inherent limitations of these proposed amendments within the broader context of systemic change while underscoring the short-term necessity of these amendments in defending individuals’ due process rights.

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Reviving Public Nuisance as a Vehicle for Reducing Gun Violence

May 2025May 2025Jackson Kushner*

This Note defends the viability of state public nuisance statutes that seek to hold gun industry members liable for gun violence. This goal is based on a least cost avoider theory: gun industry members are in the best position to avoid the significant costs of gun violence; thus, subjecting them to liability is the best chance we have to effectively mitigate the problem (short of an outright ban, which, under the Court’s Second Amendment jurisprudence, is unconstitutional).

Public Nuisance Firearm Laws (“PNFLs”) face both a statutory and a constitutional challenge. The statutory challenge comes from the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (“PLCAA”), which shields gun industry members from most “general” tort claims. However, the PLCAA expressly provides an exception for “predicate statutes”—that is, state statutes creating a cause of action that specifically targets gun industry members for the purpose of reducing gun violence. I argue that PNFLs count as predicate statutes under this exception, and thus they avoid the statutory challenge.

The second challenge is the Second Amendment, which, under the most recent Supreme Court decision in Bruen, requires states attempting to regulate firearms to show an analogue for their regulation in the historical tradition of American gun regulation. I make two arguments that PNFLs can withstand Second Amendment scrutiny. First and most importantly, the Supreme Court has unequivocally held that the Second Amendment protects an individual’s right to keep and bear arms for purposes of self-defense, not any rights of gun industry members. Thus, at least under the current jurisprudence, the Second Amendment does not directly apply to PNFLs. My second argument is that, regardless of whether the Second Amendment applies, PNFLs can pass the historical analogue test because there is a long tradition of using public nuisance against the use, sale, and storage of firearms and firearm-related materials.

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