To separate kids from their parents is an act that is so deplorable and so inhumane, it speaks to a complete corruption in morality of this administration. . . – Jagmeet Singh, Canada’s New Democratic Party Leader The US is violating its own human-rights obligations through some of its recent immigration-related actions, most shockingly its [...]
Among several noteworthy and interrelated Helsinki summit policy derelictions – most obviously, Vladimir Putin’s still unpunished aggressions in Crimea – US President Donald Trump chose to ignore America’s binding legal obligations regarding Russian war crimes in Syria. This sorely evident disregard reflects not “merely” willful antipathy to pertinent international law, but also a concurrent indifference [...]
Our phones are constantly searching for the greatest connection, updating our location, and often connect to multiple cell towers on any given day, divulging our whereabouts to service providers with relative ease. In recent years, the accuracy of this method to pinpoint a person’s current and past location has increased significantly. And given that there [...]
An inherent feature of democracy is majority rule. And with that, as you may recall from civics, comes the risk of tyranny of the majority—the danger that a controlling popular viewpoint will oppress opposing views in society. Foreseeing this, the Framers set up a number of constitutional mechanisms to protect minority interests. Among these early institutional protections [...]
In a bombing, the dust settles slowly over the strike zone. What emerges are grey images, living beings neutralized to monochrome. Bleeding from the ears, deaf, and dumb from the concussions the survivors walk about in a haze. These zombies are the first things you see staggering down the street away from the rubble behind [...]
Despite the fact congress seems uncomfortable with funding President Trump’s wall on the southern border, the administration has constructed a legal wall against asylum seekers. First, there was the announcement of the ‘Zero Tolerance’ policy of criminalizing any individuals who comes to America in ways not considered correct. While it is intended to apply only [...]
In Janus v. AFSCME, the Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision, overturned a 41-year old precedent and held that all union security clauses in public-sector labor contracts violate the First Amendment. A union security clause is provision in a contract between a union and an employer that obliges members of the union bargaining unit to [...]
The retirement of Justice Anthony Kennedy this week represents the end of an era and the beginning of the entrenchment of a more conservative Supreme Court, probably for years to come. That much seems clear. But there are actually many more sides to Justice Kennedy’s retirement than that simple statement implies. Justice Kennedy was nominated [...]
June 26th is the United Nations’ International Day in Support of Victims of Torture. Its purpose — to denounce the crime of torture and proclaim solidarity with its survivors — is in stark opposition to the policy of my government. As a former Chief Prosecutor of an international war crimes tribunal in West Africa, I walked [...]
US President Donald Trump traveled to Singapore to negotiate urgent nuclear matters, and not to discuss North Korean violations of basic human rights. Nonetheless, any such willful US indifference to these violations in another country, especially when they are as stark and egregious as they are in North Korea, represents a sorely grievous disregard for [...]
