Marshall Thompson A year ago, it seemed to me that the Defense of Marriage Act, or DOMA, wasn’t going anywhere despite some challenges to it in federal court. Then the Obama administration announced that it would not defend the law, which it considered to be unconstitutional. Now a bankruptcy court in California has struck down the law, stating that DOMA violates the 5th Amendment. Some have speculated that a bankruptcy case might move up faster than the other challenges. With five other cases …
California Teacher Tenure
By Tom Watts A California trial court judge decided in Vergara v. California today that California’s teacher tenure system violates the state constitution. This is a big deal: teacher tenure has been a political controversy for years, and, while anti-tenure advocates have repeatedly won legislative victories, this is their first judicial victory. However, I want to suggest that overheated rhetoric around the decision is exactly that: overheated. The decision probably does not herald the end of …
Can Playing with a Barbie Doll Impact a Young Girl’s Career Aspirations?
By Tharuni Jayaraman In a recent study that has created some buzz (The Guardian, The Boston Globe, and The Atlantic), researchers Aurora Sherman and Eileen Zurbriggen investigated whether playing with a Barbie doll for just five minutes could affect a girl’s belief in the type of career she could pursue. To test their hypothesis, they recruited a pool of 37 girls between the ages of four and seven. 59% of the girls studied had at least one Barbie doll at home and 57% reported having two or …
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Net Neutral?
By Noah Marks Last week, the Wall Street Journal broke the news that the FCC’s third attempt to regulate “in defense” of net neutrality would allow “commercially reasonable” agreements between content providers and Internet service providers. The “commercially reasonable” test aligns with the January DC Appeals Court decision striking down the FCC’s previous attempt but affirming their right to regulate broadband. Net neutrality is based on the premise that all Internet traffic is treated …
Jonathan Peters on the Constitutionality of Prosecuting Wikileaks
HLPR Online editorial staff Writing for the online edition of the Harvard Law and Policy Review, Jonathan Peters argues that the Justice Department should proceed carefully in any prosecution of Wikileaks or Julian Assange due to serious constitutional concerns: [T]he standard the Court used for prior restraint in the Pentagon Papers case could be roughly the same standard the Court would use in a criminal prosecution of WikiLeaks or Assange for publishing classified information. In other …
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The “Pen and Phone”: Executive Action in Immigration Reform
By Ana Choi The comprehensive immigration reform package passed by the Senate last year has yet to be taken up by the House of Representatives, due to partisan disagreement over issues such as the path to citizenship and reinforcement of border security. Meanwhile, President Obama has come under increasing pressure to use his executive power to unilaterally suspend deportations. There have been about 2 million deportations under this administration—a number that exceeds that of previous …
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