The Real People Behind Lawrence v. Texas
...read moreThat’s the punch line: the case that affirmed the right of gay couples to have consensual sex in private spaces seems to have involved two men who were neither a couple nor having sex. In order to appeal to the conservative Justices on the high court, the story of a booze-soaked quarrel was repackaged as a love story. Nobody had to know that the gay-rights case of the century was actually about three or four men getting drunk in front of a television in a Harris County apartment decorated with bad James Dean erotica.
Goodbye, Rev. Shuttlesworth
October 5th was a rough day for civil rights leaders: Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, who not only helped establish and lead non-violent anti-segregation actions and the civil rights movement as we know it but also took the right to protest right up to the Supreme Court, passed away yesterday. He stared the devil in the face [...]
...read moreMeaningful Enforcement in the War Against Domestic Abuse
By Madeline Lee Bryer, cross-posted at On The Issues Magazine *Trigger warning* The war against domestic violence is heating up. In a decision released publicly on August 17, 2011, an international human rights tribunal has determined that the U.S. authorities paid insufficient attention to domestic violence and violence against women in violation of the nation’s [...]
...read moreCut Prison Populations in California
Good good good. Conditions in California’s overcrowded prisons are so bad that they violate the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment, the Supreme Court ruled on Monday, ordering the state to reduce its prison population by more than 30,000 inmates. Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, writing for the majority in a 5-to-4 decision that [...]
...read moreWestboro Baptist Church protests are protected speech
Look, I hate these guys so so so much, but this is the right decision. And it makes me nervous that any Supreme Court justice (here, Alito, who was a one-man minority) would think otherwise. Free speech cases have often come down to speech that is unpopular, or, here, the definition of cruel and evil. [...]
...read moreGood News
Juvenile offenders — other than those found guilty of murder — cannot be sentenced to life without parole. This is great news, but I wish that the court had gone further and held that no juveniles can be sentenced to life without the possibility of parole. After all, this decision doesn’t apply to people like [...]
...read moreElena Kagan and banning military recruitment on campus
I’m not sure if Peter Beinhart is being intentionally intellectually dishonest in this column, or if he just doesn’t actually understand the issues involved in the decision of several law schools to ban military recruiters from campus. He takes Elena Kagan to task for her role, as Dean of Harvard Law School, in “banning” the [...]
...read moreElena Kagan and Harvard Law School
Our own guestblogger Diane Lucas is interviewed in an article about Harvard Law students’ reactions to Elena Kagan’s Supreme Court nomination. Diane talks about some of the racial issues at Harvard, and Kagan’s response (or lack thereof): “It was blatantly sexist and racist,” Lucas said. “They depicted a number of women of color in the [...]
...read moreObama picks Kagan as Supreme Court nominee
Well, there’s that. I will write about this more in-depth in the coming days, as time allows. Suffice it to say that I think Kagan is a perfectly fine nominee; she’s very intelligent, she seems like a team player and she surely will be more than a competent Supreme Court justice. But my perception of [...]
...read moreWho should replace John Paul Stevens?
You have probably heard by now the completely unsurprising news that John Paul Stevens, the leader of the liberal wing of the Supreme Court of the United States, is retiring. Slate solicits the opinions of some legal experts for who should replace him, and there are some good options (Bryan Stevenson is one of my [...]
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Three favorite things
The New Yorker. Lauren Collins. Sonia Sotomayor. Of course it’s a great article. And the description of this cartoon made me tear up a little bit.
...read moreDemocracy, it was fun while it lasted.
Dear Democracy, It’s been nice knowing you, it really has. We had some good times, didn’t we? Remember when Howard Dean rose to prominence because of internet donations and grassroots efforts? And when Barack Obama was elected in part because a ton of people gave $5 or $10 or $20 to his campaign? Heck, even [...]
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