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2025 | Spring Issue

Strive

Horseracing regulators. Baseball stadiums built on stolen land. Title IX changing college campuses. These are stories about what happens when the government meddles in sports.

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featured articles

A New Horse in the Race

Frank Garrison, Attorney

Disqualified.  Four days after a 2024 horse race in New Mexico, Oscar Ceballos, the jockey who’d placed second, got bad news: He’d been disqualified, suspended, and fined $800. The horse he’d ridden, Alotaluck, would be recorded as “unplaced” in the race and disqualified from the $85,360 purse (the prize money).   Ceballos had apparently broken a […]

When the Government Takes Private Property for Sports Stadiums

James S. Burling, Vice President of Legal Affairs

Willie Mays was out at home plate.  It was August 10, 1955, and the New York Giants were playing a night game against the Brooklyn Dodgers at Ebbets Field, the Dodgers’ worn-down stadium in Flatbush. The bases were loaded at the top of the fifth with Mays, the Giants’ star centerfielder, on first. The Giants […]

Sorry, the Gym Is Closed

Jon Houghton, Attorney

Brittany Hunter, Editorial Writer

Helping Americans stay fit and healthy has always been a passion for Yvette Franco-Clark and her husband Randy Clark. Few people are fortunate to take what they love and turn it into a profitable business. But in 2019, the couple had a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to buy their own local gym in Alma, Michigan.   Owning a […]

The Strange Story of Title IX 

Alison Somin, Senior Legal Fellow

The newspaper quote is surprisingly diplomatic for a man named Moose.  “We have no desire to discriminate against women,” Edward “Moose” Krause, the longtime athletic director at the University of Notre Dame, told The New York Times in 1979. “But we’re not sure exactly what we’re supposed to do to comply with the new Title […]

A Surfer Caught Inside a Legal Nightmare 

Caleb R. Trotter, Attorney

When a surfer gets trapped between an incoming wave and the shore, it’s said he’s been “caught inside.” Surfers dread being caught inside. You can’t escape—you can only try not to panic—as the wave comes toward you. It’s inevitable. You’re going to be pushed down by a force far bigger than you are.  In a […]

The MMA Fighter Who Loves the Constitution 

Joseph Kast, Creative Manager

I’ve never been athletic. My only team sports experience was the crucial role of waterboy for my high school rugby team. A few years ago, I was with my wife en route to a Fourth of July party. We stopped by a 7-Eleven to pick up some drinks. A heavy-set and heavily inebriated man was […]

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Stories of liberty and justice

Sword&Scales is a quarterly magazine with in-depth stories about liberty, equality, and justice. Published by Pacific Legal Foundation, a public interest law firm with a winning record at the Supreme Court, Sword&Scales features narratives from history, courtroom showdowns, and the real experiences of people fighting for their rights.

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