Faculty Commentary

This week the Supreme Court gave the green light to stemming the tide of dark money being pumped into our political system. Last month the United States District Court for the District of Columbia made a sound and rational decision to help protect our democracy from an onslaught of dark money as we approach the [...]

On September 17, 2018, the U.S. Senate voted overwhelmingly (99-1) in support of the Opioid Crisis Response Act (OCRA) of 2018. OCRA proposes a series of measures addressing the devastating, long-term impacts of opioid addiction and abuse nationally. Building on efforts previously authorized in 2016 via the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act (CARA) and the [...]

For the first time ever, on September 12, the European Parliament (EP) launched Article 7 TEU (Lisbon Treaty) proceedings against Hungary’s government. The Parliament began the action by adopting a report by Judith Sargentini, a member from the Netherlands. The report lists 12 major concerns from the functioning of the constitutional and the electoral system [...]

People like me, who believe we should have tighter regulation of firearms, like to use the word “reasonable.” We support reasonable gun control measures, steps that would preserve gun rights but keep guns out of the wrong hands and reduce the risk of harm from improper use of firearms. Those who support reasonable gun control must be willing to acknowledge [...]

Very conspicuously, Israel’s Palestinian foes regard “martyrdom” as among the highest expressions of religious sacredness. Nonetheless, there are distinctly prominent disjunctions between the pertinent obligations of faith and those of international law. In essence, only the latter set of obligations can have a properly authoritative place in assessing Palestinian resorts to international force. This is [...]

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 [...]

Since the 1960s, most plaintiffs challenging state restrictions on voting rights have relied primarily on the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. The 1966 case of Harper v. Virginia Board of Elections in particular played a key role in the rise of equal protection claims by aggrieved voters. In Harper the U.S. Supreme Court [...]

From degrading disabled people, women, LGBT individuals, and other minorities to the forsaking of the United Nation Human Rights Council, and from separating migrant families to the coddling of authoritarians and racists, this presidency consistently ridicules human rights. It follows that the State Department’s first international conference to Advance Religious Freedom might trigger a collective [...]

A recent Philippine Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) Advisory reiterated its message to those conducting Initial Coin Offerings (“ICO”) of security tokens within the country: register your security tokens or be prepared to face penalties. Just this month, the SEC declared that the Ploutos Coin is a kind of security which must be registered first [...]

President Donald Trump’s recent nomination of Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh as Associate Justice to the U.S. Supreme Court from a list of potential candidates has ignited immediate support and criticism from conservatives and liberals respectively. An undergrad and law alum at Yale University, Judge Kavanaugh clerked for the departing Justice Anthony Kennedy, practiced law privately [...]