The Trump administration argued to both the First Circuit Court of Appeals and Supreme Court in recent days that its new postal restrictions on election ballots are not electoral regulations at all. They are packaging regulations akin to those placed on “cremated remains and replica explosives.” The authority of the US Postal Service, President Donald [...]
By the seventh day of deliberations in Lindsay Clancy’s murder trial, the courtroom dispute had shifted away from her mental state and toward the conduct of a single juror. The jury foreperson had sent Judge William Sullivan notes indicating that one juror had acknowledged doubt but, in the foreperson’s account, was refusing to apply the [...]
Scrolling on my phone, I happened upon a video so violent that it seemed to cross the threshold at which ordinary language begins to fail. In it, a man was seen walking down a street in Ahvaz carrying the severed head of a young woman. She was Mona Heydari, 17, killed in 2022 by the [...]
The United States committed two acts of aggression in 2026—first against Venezuela, then against Iran—and no amount of political spin, strategic framing, or patriotic rhetoric changes that fact. If the world is willing to call Russia an aggressor state, it must be willing to say the same about the United States. In January and March [...]
Lately, I have been asking myself: at what point do citizens start to doubt not just individual rulings, but the competency and consistency of a court itself? Pursuant to Article 125(3) of the 1992 Constitution of Ghana, “The judicial power of Ghana shall be vested in the judiciary; accordingly, neither the President nor Parliament nor [...]
Canada is deporting people at a record pace, and the political story being used to justify that pace does not hold up. The Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA), the federal agency that enforces immigration law and carries out deportations, removed 23,160 people in 2025, the highest number in a single year in Canadian history, and [...]
The black flag—history’s stark symbol of no quarter—is rising again on the battlefields of the 21st century. It is not raised openly, as in the age of pirates or medieval siege warfare. Instead, it appears in battlefield orders, intercepted communications, and the grim aftermath of combat where surrendering soldiers and unarmed civilians are found executed. [...]
I was born into a family where law was not merely a profession; it was the ordinary language of everyday life. Around our dinner table, conversations rarely drifted far from litigation. Someone was always recounting a difficult case, a stubborn judge, an ingenious defense, an unexpected verdict, or a client whose fate had become inseparable [...]
Law does not exist only in statutes, regulations, and court decisions. Before law reaches courts, it already exists in society through the decisions people make every day. Legal scholars have long recognized this social dimension of law. Law is not experienced only through courts and legal institutions; it is also shaped by how ordinary people [...]
I remember that when I was a child, a platform had been built on a barren piece of land for executions. On nights when fog passed beside it, I would look at it with fear. I was afraid of it, yet I stared at it from a distance until we had passed it. Sometimes I [...]
