Author name: branden

Amicus, Courts & Judicial Interpretation, Criminal Justice

Supreme Court Needs To Answer Questions Dodged In U.S. v. Jones

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Reviving the trespassory model of the Fourth Amendment, the Court in U.S. v. Jones has raised more questions about data privacy than it answered. If the mere existence and transmission of data can signal a lack of a reasonable expectation of privacy, the only way to demonstrate a subjective interest in privacy will be to go off the grid. There has to be a better way.

Amicus, Education & Youth, Labor and Employment

Teacher Professionalization Is Good For Students And Teachers

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If teachers are paid well, which in Chicago they are, then they should expect to perform their work the same way other professionals, e.g., lawyer, doctors, engineers, financial professionals, perform theirs. Teachers should expect to be hired to perform to a certain expectation of success, to be compared to the success of their peers at achieving those expectations, and to be fired if they consistently fail to meet them. The ultimate result would be the achievement of the one thing that all sides in this fight seem to agree that they are working, the best possible education for Chicago’s public school students.

Amicus, Courts & Judicial Interpretation, Freedom of Expression, Labor and Employment, Reproductive Rights, Sex Equality

Obamacare Injunction Dodges Question of Corporate Religious Freedom

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Hercules Industries, a Denver company that provides heating and air conditioning equipment recently won a preliminary injunction against the imposition of the preventive care requirement adopted pursuant to the Affordable Care Act. Predictably, conservatives lauded the decision as a victory for religious freedom, because, at least for the moment, this family-owned business that employs around 300 people has the religious freedom to tell their employees they’re on their own to pay for reproductive health services. Don’t expect it to last.

Amicus, Courts & Judicial Interpretation, Criminal Justice, Human Rights

[Update] First Circuit Says Feds Can Pursue Capital Prosecution Over Governor’s Objection

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United States v. Pleau raises legal questions that deserve more attention than the case is likely to receive. The case can actually be seen as being about the location of the primary police power in the American system of constitutional federalism, and it exposes the increasing strain that the modern conception of federal power is placing on the founding era experiment in dual sovereignty. Pleau should challenge progressives to think critically about the desirable scope of the federal government’s power under the Commerce Clause.

Courts & Judicial Interpretation, Criminal Justice, Human Rights

[Update3] SCOTUS Fails to Intervene to Prevent Execution of Mentally Ill Defendant

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[Update3 – 10PM February 8] Edwin Hart Turner was executed at 7:21PM EST after receiving a lethal injection at the Mississippi State Penitentiary. Turner, represented by attorneys from the Louisiana Capital Assistance Center, had filed a petition for a writ of certiorari to the Supreme Court arguing that the execution would violate the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishments because at the time of his offense Mr. Turner suffered from a serious mental illness.

Amicus, Voting and Elections Rights

The Problem Isn't Partisanship, It's Redistricting

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Arizona was back in the news last week with Governor Jan Brewer’s highly controversial move removing the chairwoman of the state’s “independent” redistricting committee. Seeing the process now corrupted by an ideologically aligned governor and legislature, what can the voters in Arizona to make the process more independent and more immune from partisan influence?

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