As you may know, SSRN is discontinuing its Research Paper Series, a platform through which UW Law School and many other academic institutions shared new faculty scholarship with readers.

This is our final issue, and it’s a good one. It seems fitting to close with a selection of papers that captures so much of what has defined scholarship at the University of Wisconsin Law School: a tradition that joins rigorous legal analysis with close attention to how law actually works in people’s lives.

Before we get to the papers, a quick note on what comes next: We are developing a new distribution service to take the place of our UW Law Research Paper Series on SSRN. To continue receiving updates on Wisconsin Law scholarship, sign up for our new distribution list. Or continue to watch for updates here on WisBlawg.

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And now for the latest UW Law faculty scholarship…

Wisconsin has long been a home for the study of law in action. It is the school of Willard Hurst and of the law and society movement, and it has always understood legal rules not as abstract constructs but as forces woven into social, political, and economic life. That commitment runs throughout this edition.

• Emily Cauble examines how tax information actually reaches people, using a survey of professional preparers to show how informal IRS guidance shapes the positions they take, and asking why consumer protection law does so little when businesses mislead consumers about tax consequences. Emily Cauble (UW Law), Consumer Protection from Tax Misinformation, 62 Wake Forest L. Rev. (forthcoming 2027) and Emily Cauble (UW Law), Guiding Tax Return Preparers Informally, Fla. Tax Rev. (forthcoming)
• Lisa Washington reframes the carceral state around the family regulation system, showing how its surveillance of hospitals, schools, and homes produces distinct harms that a criminal-law lens misses. S. Lisa Washington (UW Law), Intimate State Power: The Carceral State Through the Family Regulation Frame, N.Y.U. L. Rev. (forthcoming)
• And William Clune, a pillar of Wisconsin’s law and society tradition, traces how overlapping jurisdictions, unsettled definitions, and political resistance stand between proposed policing reforms in Brazil and real institutional change. Isabela Ruiz (University of São Paulo) and William H. Clune (UW Law), Reforming Public Security in Brazil: Federal Coordination and Institutional Change

This edition also reflects the school’s deep strengths in studying the law of democracy and the structures of government.

• Daniel Tokaji looks back on a quarter-century of election administration and litigation to argue that elections remain one of democracy’s strongest links, and that the graver threats lie in inequality, polarization, and eroding institutional trust. Daniel P. Tokaji (UW Law), Elections Aren’t Failing, Democracy Is, 48 U. Ark. Little Rock L. Rev. 329 (2026)
• Miriam Seifter identifies governors’ underappreciated capacity to resist presidential overreach, a phenomenon she calls “oppositional gubernatorial administration.” Miriam Seifter (UW Law), Oppositional Gubernatorial Administration, U. Chi. Legal F. (forthcoming)
• Bryna Godar maps how states and localities wield their traditional authority over property to push back on federal action, and warns courts against expanding intergovernmental immunity to shut that resistance down. Bryna Godar (UW Law), Property, State Power, and the Unfolding Federalism Fight, 102 Wash. L. Rev. (forthcoming 2027)

Several contributions carry that same bridging of theory and practice onto the global stage.

• Mark Sidel shows how civil society organizations facing restrictive regimes can turn compliance itself into a strategy of resistance. Mark Sidel (UW Law), Compliance as Resistance, Stanford Social Innovation Review
• Alexandra Huneeus, meanwhile, explores how moral conservative movements’ growing engagement with the inter-American human rights system may help it weather the region’s rightward turn, though at a cost, and she introduces a symposium on one of international law’s most ambitious frontiers: whether nature itself should hold rights. Jorge Contesse (Rutgers Law School) and Alexandra Huneeus (UW Law), Moral Conservatives and the Future of Human Rights in Latin America, 120 Am. J. Int’l L. (forthcoming 2026) and Alexandra Huneeus (UW Law) and John H. Knox (Wake Forest University School of Law), Introduction to Symposium: Should International Law Recognize Rights of Nature?, 120 AJIL Unbound (2026)
  

Across these papers, and across the many Research Paper Series editions that came before, Wisconsin Law scholarship has asked not only what the law says but what it does, and for whom. We are grateful to every reader who has followed this series over the years.

We hope you will continue to engage with our faculty’s work through our new distribution list, our Wisconsin Law in Action podcast, on our website, and on Bluesky.