I am a native Tampanian, and in 1992 I graduated from Vanderbilt University Law school. Because I spent my last year of law school studying abroad, a novel idea back then, the law school registrar would not certify my graduation for me to sit for the July bar exam in 1992. This was the first [...]
Faculty Commentary
Susan Sorella is in her last year at Suffolk Law School in Boston. When she began clerking for criminal defense lawyer Bobby Coughlin, Susan had no idea she would become a central figure in a murder case that pitted the mob against corrupt FBI agents. Or that she would be compelled to take the lead [...]
Amid the COVID-19 crisis, the City of Joy has recently witnessed a spike in bicycle sales, as the commuters are opting for a safer and pocket-friendly alternative to public transport. To accommodate these emerging cyclists, the Chief Minister of West Bengal has urged the traffic police to give them, more access to the urban roads [...]
How do you ask a person to be the last person to die for a mistake? That is the question American law school deans and their supervisors must consider as the fall term approaches. I pose this question to advocate for law schools to teach fully online in fall 2020 because a law school might [...]
“It must not be forgotten that it is perhaps more dangerous for a nation to allow itself to be conquered intellectually than by arms.” – Guillaume Apollinaire, “The New Spirit and the Poets” (1917) In his commencement address at West Point on June 13, 2020, US President Donald J. Trump presented a narrowing view of [...]
The Supreme Court created quite a stir recently when it held in Bostock v. Clayton Country, Georgia that Title VII, the major federal anti-employment-discrimination law, protected gay and transgender employees on the same basis as heterosexual employees. Deciding three companion cases involving different employees, the Court filled a major gap in employee protection – most [...]
Wednesday’s decision by the D.C. Circuit granting General Mike Flynn’s petition for mandamus is a dangerous precedent. In directing US District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan to grant DOJ’s motion to dismiss the false statement charges against Flynn, the court disrupted orderly court proceedings. While I believe DOJ would have ultimately prevailed in due course, the [...]
On Juneteenth, the United Nations Human Rights Council adopted a resolution requesting the High Commissioner for Human Rights, with the assistance of relevant Special Mandate Holders, to prepare a report on systemic racism and violations of international human rights law against Africans and people of African descent by law enforcement agencies, especially those incidents that [...]
When we talk about defunding the police, we focus on what we can see. We imagine hiring fewer cops to flock in subway stations and wander sidewalks. We picture fewer high-priced tanks and military-grade tools of war in our communities. But today’s policing infrastructure also spends millions of dollars on an invisible, sprawling data surveillance [...]
In the weeks since Derek Chauvin killed George Floyd in Minneapolis, protests have spread across the United States. An endless stream of online videos shows officers pushing, beating, pepper spraying, tear gassing, and shooting “less lethal” munitions at protestors and journalists, alike. These displays of police violence, like the murder of Floyd, are horrifying. But [...]