Whether the issue is redistricting, affirmative action, voting rights, abortion, presidential immunity, or any of the other country-defining questions that the Roberts Court has decided over the last two decades, there can be no doubt that the justices dramatically changed our nation’s politics and national identity. But the Roberts Court is not unique in its [...]
In mid-June, 17-year-old Shakiba* was arrested by the Taliban’s morality police (the Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice) along with dozens of other women. Her alleged crime was “improper hijab.” Shakiba was fully covered in a chadar namaz—a full-body prayer veil—but she was wearing a little eye makeup, and that was [...]
An aggravating circumstance is any factor surrounding a criminal act that increases the severity of the harm or the culpability of the offender. When present, an aggravating circumstance elevates the charge to a higher classification. The result is a harsher penalty at sentencing. The International Criminal Court should consider designating evidence of drugged action (combatants [...]
A hot afternoon, a stifling café, the hum of talk around us. A companion nodded toward a woman nearby and asked me: “Who comes to a café wearing skin-tight leggings and carrying an aggressively feminine fake Gucci bag? It doesn’t match, does it, Malek? There’s something aesthetically incoherent about the whole composition—something excessive, almost irritating: [...]
The United States once stood as the principal architect of modern international criminal justice, from Nuremberg and Tokyo to the ad hoc tribunals for Yugoslavia and Rwanda, the Special Court for Sierra Leone, and the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia. Today, however, it finds itself in the disquieting position of actively undermining the [...]
Berkeley Law recently announced a new artificial intelligence policy that, absent a professor’s decision to opt out, bans almost all AI use in students’ coursework and exams. Other law schools may soon follow suit. These bans teach the wrong lesson and should not become the standard policy at law schools. Berkeley’s policy explicitly recognizes that [...]
You are reading the words of a criminal. Yes—I am a criminal. Why? Because in order to connect to the free global internet, I violated the law of my own country. I purchased a VPN, crossed the digital borders imposed upon me, and entered a world my government had declared forbidden. In the eyes of [...]
The International Olympic Committee’s provisional reinstatement of the Russian Olympic Committee is not a procedural footnote. It is a capitulation. By clearing the way for ROC athletes to compete at the 2028 Los Angeles Games, the IOC has once again chosen accommodation over principle — and in doing so, it has repeated one of the [...]
As debates over gender-affirming care intensify across many countries, lawmakers, physicians and human rights advocates risk becoming trapped in the wrong question. Public discussion often revolves around whether there is enough evidence to justify treatment, as though medicine can proceed only once certainty has been achieved. But as a physician, I know that certainty is [...]
I once said it almost as a joke, but already with a seriousness I did not yet understand: “Be careful, I will kill you and say you were mahdūr al-dam (a person placed outside legal protection of life through judicial determination).” At that moment the phrase sounded like an excess of language, a fragment of [...]
