The judgment in Anjali Guru Sanjana Jaan v. State of Maharashtra gives rise to a deep interpretational incoherence of Article 19(1)(a), i.e. right to freedom of speech and expression. This doctrinal disarray stems from the fact that the Court inadequately interpreted the jurisprudential basis of pluralism set in Nalsa v. UOI. The facts of the [...]
Among the Executive Orders that President Joe Biden issued mere hours after being inaugurated as the nation’s forty-sixth president was one repealing former President Donald Trump’s so-called Muslim ban that had placed stringent restrictions on travel to the United States for citizens of a number of majority Muslim countries. The opening sentence of President Biden’s [...]
The Kansas Board of Regents recently voted to endorse a policy making it easier to terminate tenured faculty members. Under existing policy, a Kansas state university first must recognize a “financial exigency.” If implemented, under the new policy a university could reduce tenured faculty positions without that declaration. This would make termination of a tenured [...]
On January 8, 2021, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) took the extraordinary step of publicly revealing she had talked with Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Mark A. Milley, about “available precautions for preventing an unstable President from initiating military hostilities or accessing the launch codes and ordering a nuclear strike.” [...]
Photo Caption: In the early 60’s Ben and Dorothy Davis integrated the all-white Brookside Elementary School in Montclair, New Jersey I watched the debates in the House with respect to impeachment. I was struck by all the citations to Lincoln’s Second Inaugural by all sides in the debates, with his emphasis on healing of the [...]
As outlined below, the structure of objections to the November 2020 Presidential election often bear a similarity to arguments made in a court of law to defend a person accused of a crime. Senators with legal training (such as Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley, among others) should be well familiar with this standard. This observation, [...]
I. Introduction Much of U.S. governance is held together by goodwill, unwritten norms, and the ideals that “that would never happen” and “no one would ever do that.” Every hope of continued reliance on these norms was “shattered” on January 6, 2021, when armed insurrectionists invaded the U.S. Capitol. Under the direction of the President, [...]
President Trump’s incitement of the frightening assault on our Capitol, our Congress and our Constitution on January 6 should force us to confront some uncomfortable truths about our aspiration toward a “more perfect union.” First, no minimally aware person can any longer deny that white supremacy is a fundamental organizing principle of American policing. We [...]
Claims of fraud figure prominently in the fallout from last November’s Presidential election. Some claim that voting machines actually manipulated votes and vote counts. These claims are sufficient widespread that Senators Catherine Cortez Masto (D Nevada) and Senator Tom Carper (D Delaware) refuted those claims on the Senate floor during the Electoral College debate. Nevertheless, [...]
Americans were shocked by Wednesday’s storming of the US Capitol by the Proud Boys and other rightwing mobs and militia. International observers and some U.S. politicians began referring to the country as a “banana republic” – a derogatory statement referring to banana-producing countries in Central America with histories of unstable and corrupt governments. Latin Americans [...]
