Nicholas Acklin is on death row in Alabama, our home state where we both have practiced law for almost 50 years. As past presidents of the Alabama State Bar, and together with former members of Alabama’s appellate courts, we have urged the U.S. Supreme Court to review Mr. Acklin’s case and ensure that he receives [...]

In the 2018 elections, women played a larger role than in any other election in American history. The record-breaking number of women running for US senate, house, and gubernatorial seats motivated media outlets to label 2018 another “Year of the Woman.” The first “Year of the Woman” was in 1992, when an unprecedented influx of women entered [...]

When the Delhi High Court sentenced a former parliamentarian to life in prison for his role in the 1984 anti-Sikh pogrom in December, it ended an excruciating 34-year ordeal for victims of the hate crime that shook India’s national conscience and threatened to tear apart its social fabric. Spurts of sectarian violence are not uncommon in [...]

The cornerstone of military justice is ensuring that commanders at all levels, called convening authorities, do not influence the lawful carrying out of investigations and prosecutions of service members who violate the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ). Developed through customs of the service over two centuries and codified by Congress in the early 1950’s, [...]

Why was there so little support for Chief Justice Roberts in his exchange with President Trump? After the President attacked a recent decision by Federal District Judge Jon Tigar as having been rendered by an “Obama Judge,” Roberts responded to an inquiry by the AP with a short, but clear rebuke: We do not have [...]

While transgender people have existed since the dawn of time, the last decade has seen an increasing spotlight on the community and transgender people’s right to recognition and protection. While this has taken on many different angles, federal and state administrations have come under scrutiny in the last few weeks for choices to exclude transgender people [...]

When considering the comments in the wake of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, with the perspective of thirteen years since their landfall, I’ll paraphrase Mark Twain’s comment about an erroneously pre-mature 1897 obituary: “the reports of death are greatly exaggerated.” The perspective of time and the restoration of many services to the Hurricane Katrina and Rita-stricken Gulf Coast reveal that matters [...]

One of the year’s most-watched Supreme Court controversies, Masterpiece Cakeshop, Limited v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission , was never likely to deliver the full faceoff between Religious Free Exercise and Anti-Discrimination Rights that many people expected.  As I’ll explain more fully below, cake baker Jack Phillip’s claim to avoid administrative sanctions despite refusing on religious grounds to sell [...]

“Where will it end? When will it all be lulled back into sleep, and cease, the bloody hatreds, the destruction?” -Aeschylus, presenting the conclusion of Agamemnon If US President Donald Trump should sometime manage to re-start the cancelled nuclear summit talks with Kim Jung Un, his core focus should be on achieving stable nuclear deterrence, [...]

JUIRST Guest Columnist Oday Talal Mahmood of the University of Pittsburgh School of Law discusses the potential implications of judicial review in Iraq....In Iraq's Constitution of 2005, more than 67 of the 144 Articles include the language: "shall be regulated...