Charity’s Limits

"Charity law’s most pressing contemporary problems are almost uniformly diagnosed by policymakers and scholars as isolated, doctrinal issues. This Article argues that this consensus is mistaken. Seemingly disparate developments—the increasing commercialization and hybridization of tax-exempt organizations, and renewed governmental efforts to revoke charitable tax exemption for violations of “public policy”—reflect a single underlying phenomenon: the erosion of the legal and conceptual limits that historically separated (and protected)charities from both the market and the State."

Pigou Goes Abroad, UC Davis Law Review (with Mitchell Kane)

Is Multiracial Democracy Constitutional? Reflections from the Eye of the Storm

"Ultimately, the Article is a plea for the 60-year-old Voting Rights Act, as well as a reflection on the law of race in redistricting penned from the metaphorical eye of the storm. Its analysis is particularly timely as the nation commemorates its semiquincentennial and, more soberingly, the passage of one hundred and fifty years since the end of the first Reconstruction that marked the triumph of the Redemption."

Making America Hungry Again: How MAHA’s SNAP Food Restrictions Exceed Section 17 Authority

"In May 2025, the United States Department of Agriculture approved Nebraska's request to restrict soda and energy drinks from SNAP purchases — marking the first time in the program's sixty-year history that the agency permitted a state to narrow the statutory definition of eligible foods. Within months, twenty-one additional states received similar approvals. This Article argues that these waivers exceed statutory authority, violate the Administrative Procedure Act, and exemplify a broader pattern of executive overreach this Article identifies as corporate conscription: the mechanism by which the executive coerces private entities to act antithetical to their stakeholder obligations in service of the administration's policy objectives."

The Modern Corporation and the Ghost of Partnerships Past

"Much corporate law theory is premised on the separation of ownership and control, and the agency costs - the risk that the corporation’s managers will mismanage and misappropriate the corporation’s assets - that follow from it. A central assumption of this setup is capital lock in: once stockholders commit their capital to the corporation, they can’t unilaterally withdraw it. But capital lock in only applies to financial and physical capital (like cash and equipment), not human or reputational capital (like skill and expertise). And the contemporary corporation is rife with human or reputational capital - such as visionary CEOs, venture capitalists, and secured lenders, who simultaneously contribute cash, guidance, and reputation - that can credibly threaten to walk away from the firm. Corporate law theory thus needs an account of how it can harness capital inputs that it can’t lock in. This Article argues that to understand how the contemporary corporation can harness those capital inputs, we must look back to the common law general partnership. That business form was famously fragile; a partner could dissociate from the partnership and cause it to dissolve at nearly any time. Yet the partnership form compensated for its fragility by privileging cash flow rights, control rights, and the partners’ mutual trust and confidence."

Property, Slavery, and Illegality

"This Article challenges the assertion that transatlantic chattel slavery (TCS) was lawful until its abolition in the nineteenth century and therefore that countries that practiced and profited from it bear no liability for reparations. This claim, which is invoked by European powers to dismiss demands for reparations, rests on a narrow, ahistorical, and Eurocentric focus on treaty law. This Article takes a different approach. Drawing on the general principles of law recognized as a source of international law in Article 38(1)(c) of the Statute of the International Court of Justice, the piece surveys laws governing slavery across early modern societies and within the metropolitan laws of Britain and France. This comparative approach demonstrates that transatlantic chattel slavery as it was practiced in the New World colonies granted enslavers unfettered ownership rights: complete rights of possession, use, and alienation that were historically and legally unprecedented."

Vaccines, Religious Liberty, and the GVR as Doctrinal Signal

"In Miller v. McDonald, the Supreme Court vacated a decision upholding a vaccine mandate for lacking religious exemptions, remanding for reconsideration in light of Mahmoud v. Taylor—a case about parental opt-outs from public school curricula. This Essay argues that the GVR signals a doctrinal shift. By treating Mahmoud as relevant to a paradigmatic public-health mandate, the Court has invited lower courts to extend religious exemption claims from what children are taught to what the state requires to keep them safe, quietly inverting a century-old premise in free exercise jurisprudence. The Essay also examines the GVR as a vehicle through which the Court communicates consequential doctrinal directions through orders that lack the reasoning lower courts need to carry them out."

Revisionist Religious Liberty, Minnesota Law Review 

The Causation Conundrum in Hostile Environment Doctrine: Anti-Zionism as a Case Study, American Journal of Law and Equality

Property Rights v. Taxpayer Rights: The Battle Over Tax Foreclosures

"In Tyler v. Hennepin County, the Supreme Court held that the constitution’s takings clause entitles a defaulting taxpayer to surplus proceeds generated by a tax foreclosure sale. In Pung v. Isabella County, the Court will consider whether the takings clause entitles the defaulting taxpayer to the fair market value of the foreclosed property, even if the foreclosure sale never generated that value for the municipality. Awarding the defaulting owner compensation based on fair market value would jeopardize municipal efforts to collect property taxes -- with adverse consequences for those property owners who do pay their taxes on time."

More from Stewart Sterk (2026):

Internal Affairs Revisited, Cardozo Law Review  

Structural Bias in Patent Adjudication

"Drawing on the Supreme Court’s longstanding jurisprudence on pecuniary interest and structural temptation, the Article situates PTAB adjudication within a broader Due Process tradition attentive to objective risks to impartial judgment. Rather than advocating doctrinal expansion or judicial displacement of agency expertise, the Article advances a design-based response. It proposes an intra-agency reallocation of authority that decouples threshold screening from merits adjudication through the creation of a dedicated Petition Review Team outside the PTAB. This institutional redesign preserves efficiency, expertise, and administrative flexibility while reducing constitutional risk. More broadly, the Article offers a framework for addressing structural bias in administrative adjudication through internal governance choices rather than constitutional confrontation."

Public, Private, Acquired

with Alexander I. Platt

"For the last quarter-century, IPOs have been declining. SEC officials usually attribute the decline to startups’ choices to stay private. But that explanation is incomplete. As startups grow, they face a three-way choice between going public, staying private, and being acquired, and they have increasingly chosen the third option. In this Essay, we show how securities regulation pushes startups towards acquisitions by increasing the cost of raising capital and accessing liquidity in both public and private markets. We consider how the trend towards acquisitions could reduce competition, innovation, opportunities for diversification, and transparency. And we offer suggestions for how the SEC could create conditions for independent companies to thrive while preserving safeguards that protect investors."

Regulating Remote Driving, Harvard Journal of Law & Technology

A Remedy for Third-Party Pricing Algorithms

with Joseph E. Harrington Jr.

"Antitrust law can address the most egregious of these risks: using a third party to orchestrate a hub-and-spoke price fixing conspiracy or an unlawful information exchange agreement. But if a third party unilaterally recommends supracompetitive prices, antitrust law will not protect consumers. Such is the risk of third-party pricing algorithms that federal, state, and city governments have proposed laws strictly regulating them. Some jurisdictions already have enacted such laws. But third-party pricing algorithms also deliver efficiencies to businesses. Regulations that eliminate those efficiencies will favor big firms that can provide their own pricing solutions and disfavor their smaller competitors. This article recommends a more nuanced approach. It proposes a concrete solution that would protect consumers from algorithmic pricing abuses but retain this technology’s legitimate benefits."