In the Halls of Brazil's Senate: Unpacking the Legacy of the US Constitution
To date, America’s greatest contribution to the world has been its Constitution. The importance of this document far surpasses such other cultural achievements as the Moon landing, the telephone, GPS, rubber vulcanization, and Henry Ford’s mass production lines. It is more important, even, than Gone With the Wind, and the hamburger — even though this [...]
The United States Constitution was signed by the members of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia on September 17, 1787. We have entered the 237th year of our national Constitution, which continues its legacy as the oldest written constitution in the world. Yes, we have the immense good fortune to live in the oldest constitutional democracy [...]
Sandra Day O'Connor, first woman on US Supreme Court, dead at 93
Sandra Day O’Connor, the first woman to sit on the US Supreme Court, died Friday. According to an announcement from the court, O’Connor died of “complications related to advanced dementia, probably Alzheimer’s, and a respiratory illness” at the age of 93. O’Connor was appointed to the court in 1981 by then-president Ronald Reagan. During her [...]
Recent concerns about leaks of US Supreme Court decisions and Justice Clarence Thomas’s refusal to recuse himself in a case that might involve connections to his wife, Virginia Thomas, have spurred calls for a code of ethics for US Supreme Court justices. Although the Judicial Conference of the United States promulgated a Code of Conduct [...]
Marisa Wright is a US National Correspondent for JURIST, and a 2L at Harvard Law School. The US Supreme Court heard oral arguments on Monday morning in two cases challenging the validity of race-conscious affirmative action programs in college admission. Through their questions to the parties, the justices signaled how they may ultimately vote in [...]
Going Back to Zero: How the Afghan Legal and Judicial System is Collapsing Under the Taliban Regime
The international community and the United States spent billions of dollars on rebuilding the Afghan legal and judicial system and improving the rule of law and governance over the past two decades. However, after the Taliban takeover, any such progress and achievements quickly disappeared and the foundations for the Afghan legal system that had been [...]
RBG’s ghost is stirring. When the US Supreme Court added a Mississippi case to its docket this term challenging a state law banning most abortions after 15 weeks, alarms went up that the Court’s new 6-3 conservative majority was coming after Roe v. Wade. Many believe the Court tipped its hand this week by declining to [...]
US Supreme Court agrees to consider abortion case that could affect Roe v. Wade
The US Supreme Court agreed Monday to hear Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Association, a case that presents the issue of “hether all pre-viability prohibitions on elective abortions are unconstitutional.” The case, which concerns Mississippi’s ban on non-emergency abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy, will allow the Supreme Court to reconsider its rulings in Roe [...]
As a rabbi who has not attended an indoor prayer service since March, I still would have been happy if the Supreme Court had held that draconian restrictions on indoor religious services are unconstitutional. However, what the Court’s liberal and conservative justices actually evaluated in Roman Catholic Diocese v. Cuomo was whether New York’s coronavirus [...]
Consideration of blockchain legislation is a growing trend amongst state legislatures. Blockchain, which is essentially a more secure form of internet, has been expanding into new markets. This has increasingly caught the attention of legislators, who hope to capitalize on the potential economic gains by allowing for the implementation of the technology within the state. [...]
