The year is 2024. Congressional maps in the political battleground states of North Carolina and Pennsylvania have been invalidated, and legal fights are ongoing to determine what maps will take their place. State high courts are hesitant to act because their normal powers of judicial review have been curtailed. Entire bodies of election rules, developed [...]
Last Sunday was Transgender Remembrance Day, the day the LGBTQ community and its allies mourn trans people lost to violence and vow to erase transphobic hate. In the runup to Sunday, people were talking about how Transgender Remembrance Day was particularly important this year, given the push for anti-trans legislation in many states. Tragically, another [...]
We the peoples… …reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small, …establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained [...]
This commentary proposes that a high-profile political leader, such as former prime minister Imran Khan, who recently suffered an assassination attempt at a public rally, should be declared a “permanent protectee” of Pakistan’s State Security. The notion of the permanent protectee, borrowed from U.S. security laws, empowers secret security services to seize and whisk away [...]
In 2002, when President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP) came to power in Turkey, defeating Kemalist hegemony, there was a glimmer of hope in the West for the overwhelmingly Muslim country. However, the experience of Turkey over the past 20 years is one descending into an authoritarian regime with clampdowns [...]
I am tired of watching my students suffer. Every year I have law students tell me they are afraid to seek counseling because they think it will hurt their chances of being admitted to the bar. Their fears derive from two questions on the bar application that ask about mental health and substance abuse. All [...]
International travel in child custody matters is often complicated. On June 15, 2022, the US Supreme Court ruled in Saada v. Golan that a court need not consider ameliorative or safety measures when assessing if a child should be returned to a country where there is a grave risk. The Supreme Court analyzed the application [...]
For nearly a century, many progressives have seen the Constitution, and especially the Supreme Court, as allies in the effort to make our political and economic life more democratic. For a long time, this trust seemed warranted. The initially reactionary New Deal Court came to embrace the power of the national government to limit corporate [...]
We have all seen the firestorm of controversy over US Attorney General (AG) Merrick Garland’s approval of a warrant application to search the home of former President Donald Trump. I personally have no doubts about Garland’s commitment to evenhanded justice and the rule of law. But these events demonstrate, more than ever, the urgent need [...]
During the Barack Obama presidency, the Justice Department prepared a 16-page unsigned, undated “White Paper” that outlined the administration’s legal reasoning justifying unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-targeted killings of terrorism suspects if an informed high-level official decided that the target was a high-ranking al-Qaida figure or affiliate who posed an imminent threat of violent attack against [...]
