While the world watches and waits for news on Davis, Lawrence Russell Brewer was put to death in Texas. Brewer is one of the men who, in 1998 in Jasper, Texas, dragged James Byrd, Jr. behind his truck. As easy as it is to hate Brewer, to hate the terrible crime that he committed, to hate his hate, his victim’s son, Ross Byrd, doesn’t want to see him die. “You can’t fight murder with murder.”
Today, D.C. District Court Judge John Bates dismissed a facial challenge to the constitutionality of Section 5 of the Voting
This year in May, Georgia passed “one of nation’s the toughest immigration measures.” It is one of the many copycat laws modeled after Arizona’s severe immigration legislation. A month after its passage, a federal judge blocked provisions of the law that required police officers to check the immigration status of suspects without an identification card and that punished people who knowingly harbor or transport illegal immigrants. The judge found that the law reflected a misinterpretation of federal law and could violate civil rights.
Last week, a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled unanimously that a California school district did
The national debate over illegal immigration has been dramatically altered since 9/11. In his book The Latino Threat, Leo R. Chavez argues that Latina/o immigrants—including those U.S. populations that physically resemble them—have been socially constructed as grave risks to the United States. Arizona Senate Bill 1070 typifies the aggressive backlash that recently occurred in response to this perceived threat.
Many fear that lobbyists corrupt our government. For those concerned, a new study by LegiStorm will prove alarming. According to
While driving with his family in March 2005, Albert Florence was arrested on a bench warrant for failing to pay a court fine. Florence had, in fact, paid the fine years before and the matter was eventually resolved – but not before Florence had been repeatedly strip-searched by prison officials during a six-day stay in county correctional facilities. The invasiveness of the facility’s intake procedures is jarring, especially in light of the inconsequentiality of Florence’s purported offense. But are the procedures constitutional?
The Supreme Court has declined to take the case of a Texas high school cheerleader who was kicked off the squad after refusing to cheer for the basketball player whom she alleges raped her. The Fifth Circuit ruling not only upheld the school’s right to punish her for refusing to cheer, but dismissed her suit as frivolous, requiring her family to cover the school’s legal fees.
In a relatively little-noted decision last term, the Supreme Court favored a particular vision of federalism over the protection of religious freedom. The 6-2 ruling, in Sossamon v. Texas, barred money damages in private actions brought by prisoners against state and local governments under the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act of 2000 (RLUIPA). Sossamon continues a trend of denying prisoners any effective opportunity for the enforcement of their rights.
In October, California will become the first state in the country to implement a publicly-funded pilot program that provides appointment of counsel to very low-income persons in certain civil proceedings where basic human needs are at stake. While the Supreme Court ruled in Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U.S. 335 (1963), that criminal defendants have a right to counsel based on the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments, that decision does not extend to civil cases. California’s Sargent Shriver Civil Counsel Act (AB 509), signed by Governor Schwarzenegger in October 2009, marks a trend in a number of states to address this need for counsel in cases where basic human needs are on the line.
Following on New York’s legalization of gay marriage at the end of June came another encouraging development for same sex couples in
