2025 was a busy year for legal scholars as many worked to respond to emerging developments in the US and globally — from the impacts of policy changes made by the Trump administration to questions surrounding corporate governance amid rapid technological advances.
Are you curious which topics were most prevalent among law reviews this past year? We’ve got you covered!
In this blog post, we highlight the top 25 keywords added to submissions accepted via Scholastica from January 1st, 2025, to present in order of appearance. This post builds upon the top law review keyword roundups we’ve done over the last four years. In previous editions, we organized the keywords in alphabetical order. After hearing from editors and authors that they’d like to see the keywords organized in descending order, we decided to take that approach this year.
Please note that this list is not intended to be a ranking of any kind, but rather a window into some of the many and often interrelated topics that law reviews were publishing about in 2025 and incorporating into their forthcoming issues for 2026.
If you’re curious how this list compares to the most-used keywords in 2024, check out our “What Legal Scholars Are Writing About” roundup from last year.
25 most-used keywords for articles accepted via Scholastica in 2025
The keywords are organized in descending order
- constitutional law
- criminal law
- administrative law
- first amendment
- civil rights
- intellectual property
- technology
- international law
- regulation
- artificial intelligence
- supreme court
- corporate law
- immigration
- federal courts
- federalism
- legal history
- civil procedure
- race
- human rights
- privacy
- corporate governance
- democracy
- antitrust
- climate change
- copyright
Connections in the recent literature
Below, we highlight examples of new and forthcoming law review articles on topics that correlate with the most-used keywords for submissions accepted via Scholastica in 2025.
This is just a sampling of noteworthy pieces we found. What would you add? Let us know in the comments!
The state of democracy and states’ rights
“Constitutional law” has been among the top 25 keywords added to law review articles accepted via Scholastica each year since we started doing look-backs in 2021. However, this is the first time it was the most-used keyword. As was the case in previous years, numerous articles analyzed constitutional cases taken up by the Supreme Court. This year, we also found that many articles explored the constitutionality of rapid and far-reaching executive orders and actions issued by the Trump administration, as well as the current and future scope of state constitutional law. Examples include:
Is the Supreme Court Contributing to the Erosion of Democracy? (Shiv Narayan Persaud, Syracuse Law Review Vol. 75): Persaud’s article explores the normative and constitutional implications of a series of Supreme Court decisions that he argues have weakened core democratic structures and public trust in the Court. By examining controversial rulings on voting rights, campaign finance, abortion rights, affirmative action, and LGBTQ+ rights, Persaud contends that a pattern of decisions over the past two decades has eroded democratic participation.
State Court Adherence to Decisions Incorporating Federal Constitutional Law (Elizabeth Bentley, Iowa Law Review Vol. 110): Bentley provides a comprehensive analysis of how state courts treat their prior decisions that adopted the “lockstep” method of interpreting state constitutional provisions in alignment with U.S. Supreme Court federal constitutional doctrine — especially in the wake of significant shifts in federal constitutional law, such as Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.
The New Substantive Due Process (Leah M. Litman, Texas Law Review Vol. 103): Litman argues that reports of substantive due process’s demise after Dobbs are premature and that “The Supreme Court has seemingly transposed aspects of substantive due process onto other areas of law.” The article goes on to explore three possibilities for “the new substantive due process.”
A Right of Peaceable Assembly (Tabatha Abu El-Haj, Columbia Law Review Vol. 125): Abu El-Haj delivers a constitutional argument for revitalizing the Assembly Clause of the First Amendment as an independent doctrinal foundation distinct from free speech law. The article contends that contemporary First Amendment jurisprudence has subsumed assembly under speech-focused frameworks that privilege expressive content over the distinct democratic value of collective gathering, and that this shift has left those who physically assemble without meaningful constitutional protection.
Barriers to Vindicating State Constitutional Rights in Civil Litigation (Julie A. Murray and Bridget Lavender, Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review Vol. 60): Murray and Lavender examine persistent procedural and doctrinal obstacles that often hinder effective enforcement of state constitutional rights through civil lawsuits, even amid a renewed interest in state constitutions as independent sources of rights protection.
Corporate law and governance in the age of AI and big tech
Once again, AI was a hot topic for law reviews (it’s made the list of top-25 keywords added to articles accepted via Scholastica every year since we started keeping track in 2021), as well as the impacts and implications of new technology and big tech in general. Looking back on AI-related articles we highlighted in previous years, it’s been interesting to see the progression of topics covered from authors focusing on the trustworthiness of emerging AI solutions (a focus in 2021) to AI ethics and privacy rights amid increasing corporate surveillance (a focus in 2022) and intellectual property rights in the AI era (a focus in 2023). In 2025, as was the case in 2024, we see a seeming uptick in articles discussing the future of big tech and AI in relation to corporate governance and regulation. Examples include:
Toward Digital Corporate Law: Revisiting Corporate Law’s Responses to Technology (Chen Wang & Ke Xu, William & Mary Business Law Review Vol. 17): Wang and Xu take a comparative approach to examine how corporate law in the U.S. and China is adapting to digital transformation, including the rise of AI and data-driven business models. They analyze whether traditional corporate doctrines — such as fiduciary duties, shareholder rights, and governance mechanisms — are adequate for a world where AI systems increasingly drive strategic and operational decisions. The article argues for rethinking foundational corporate law principles to align with technological realities, calling for doctrinal and regulatory reforms that can effectively govern digital enterprises.
Determinants of Socially Responsible AI Governance (Daryl Lim, Duke Law & Technology Review Vol. 25): Lim articulates a theory of ethical AI governance within corporate and institutional settings, integrating principles of justice, equity, and the rule of law into frameworks for AI use. Focusing on how AI impacts access to justice, structural bias, and accountability, this article critiques corporate governance models that prioritize efficiency over fairness and calls for legal standards that ensure transparency and inclusivity. It also examines aspects of intellectual property, such as trade secrets and data rights, that can obscure AI system behavior, suggesting legal mechanisms to balance innovation with accountability.
Copyright’s Latent Space: Generative AI and the Limits of Fair Use (BJ Ard, Cornell Law Review Vol. 110): This article interrogates the adequacy of the traditional fair use doctrine when applied to generative AI systems, which ingest massive copyrighted datasets to learn and produce new content. Ard argues that copyright’s latent assumptions falter in this context: fair use tests (e.g., transformative purpose, market effects) were designed for human creators, not for AI training regimes whose purposes are indeterminate at the point of data ingestion. The article develops a theoretical framework distinguishing between authorial market value and non-authorial value and argues that courts should recalibrate fair use analysis to account for how AI affects both markets and creative incentives.
No Cookies For You!: Evaluating The Promises Of Big Tech’s ‘Privacy-Enhancing’ Techniques (Kirsten Martin, Helen Nissenbaum & Vitaly Shmatikov, forthcoming in Georgetown Law Technology Review Vol. 9): This article critically assesses techniques big tech companies promote as “privacy-enhancing,” such as differential privacy and federated learning, evaluating whether these tools actually protect user data or primarily serve corporate interests while maintaining control over proprietary algorithms. The analysis engages with regulatory debates about whether self-described privacy technologies should count toward compliance with data protection laws and how such technical measures intersect with intellectual property norms when algorithms and training data are shielded from scrutiny.
Immigrant rights and civil procedure
“Immigration” made its way back onto the top-25 keywords list for law review articles in 2024 (it appeared on the lists in 2021 and 2022, but not in 2023). In our 2024 lookback, we found many articles on immigration concerning international and human rights in relation to global conflicts and climate change. Looking back on articles published in 2025, we see, perhaps unsurprisingly, an influx of content concerning immigration rights in the US and immigration enforcement under the Trump administration. Examples include:
The Immigration Subpoena Power (Lindsay Nash, Columbia Law Review Vol. 125): This article provides a comprehensive account of the immigration subpoena power, a relatively opaque authority that federal agencies use to elicit information from individuals, subfederal agencies, and private entities to assist in enforcement and deportation. Nash draws on previously undisclosed agency records and a novel dataset of subpoenas to show how this tool has expanded into everyday immigration enforcement, often forcing local governments and others to become unwilling participants in arrests and deportations.
Immigration Federalism in the Second Trump Administration (Stella Burch Elias, Idaho Law Review Vol. 61): Based on a keynote at the 2025 Idaho Law Review Symposium, this Article analyzes the interplay between federal immigration rulemaking and state and local responses under the Trump administration’s 2025 policies. Elias discusses the expansion of state immigration enforcement initiatives, federal preemption doctrine, and the constitutional implications for individual rights as state initiatives collide with federal priorities. The article highlights how these multilevel governance efforts affect due process, equal protection, and immigrant communities’ access to relief.
The Migrant Family Separation Crisis: The Multifaceted Approach to End the Practice, Obtain Redress, and Prevent its Return (Mariela Olivares, Mercer Law Review Vol. 76): Olivares delves into the ongoing family separation crisis by surveying legal strategies to end the practice, secure remedies for affected families, and prevent regression into past policies. The article illustrates how multiple legal fronts, including constitutional claims under due process and equal protection, class-action suits, and international human-rights norms, intersect to challenge separation policies.
The Migration of Abolition Theory (Matthew Boaz, North Carolina Law Review Vol. 103): This article brings abolitionist theory into conversations about U.S. immigration enforcement. Drawing on abolitionist critiques from criminal law scholarship, it interrogates whether policing and punishment have permeated immigration enforcement in ways that render removal a form of state violence rather than a neutral regulatory function. The piece suggests that abolitionist frameworks can shift legal debates about detentions, family separation, and deportation toward more transformative visions of justice.
Wrap up
That’s a wrap on our lookback at the most-used keywords for law review articles accepted via Scholastica in 2025! As noted, this blog post highlights only a small sample of the many notable law review articles published this past year, and it barely scratches the surface of connections between the top keywords in the recent literature. This post is intended as a launch point for exploring current law review content and considering what to expect in 2026.
What would you add? We encourage you to share legal reading suggestions related to the keywords discussed in this post and other research topics that stood out to you this year in the comments section below.
