Oct 26
Although Occupy Wall Street is not focused on the power of the ballot, given the focus on increasing economic equality, the movement could be used to mobilize the young people involved in the movement to add voter enfranchisement into their agenda, as efforts to disenfranchise voters disproportionately affect the economically disenfranchised.
Last week the Ninth Circuit addressed whether police officers could invoke the protection of qualified immunity in defense of an excessive force suit for tasing a woman who was seven months pregnant. Did the court’s ruling stretch the meaning of the objective reasonableness standard beyond recognition?
Oct 24
The European Court of Justice has recently stated that no patent may be given for research which involves the destruction of human embryos. This post considers the consequences of the ruling for law and for science in the European Union, and looks to the possible opportunities it may create for lawyers, researchers and industry in America.
Video footage depicting a two-year old girl in China being run over twice by the same mini-van driver, and then once again by a light truck – while as many as 18 passersby ignored her plight – has sparked off the latest round of moral outcry and introspective reflection on modern societies’ lack of a sense of community. What role can the law play in structuring a more compassionate society?
Qaddafi’s death today marks a turning point in the Arab Spring.
The concept of a “democratic legitimacy deficit” is well known to European lawyers. Now, two professors from Columbia University are questioning whether there is a similar deficit in American policy-making. This post compares the discussion in both legal systems, focusing particularly on the role which “accountability” has played in creating tension between the Union and its citizens.
Without the ability to coordinate and share information, campaigns and powerful independent groups must pay twice over to acquire the same information through online services. While this disincentive will not stop secretly funded groups from continuing to play a role in elections, it does at least reward campaigns that base their strategy around direct funding and disclosure rather than reliance on outside organizations that lack transparency and accountability.
There’s been much talk about diversity on the bench, but there’s one kind of diversity that doesn’t exist: No truly poor people are appointed as federal judges.
It looks like October will be a bad month for those of us hoping for a little more government transparency in the War on Terror. As Billy Corriher of this blog has already noted, in the context of the secret OLC memo justifying the assassination of Anwar al-Aulaqi, that it would be unfair to criticize the OLC without having actually seen its legal reasoning. However, it is also worth nothing that this month has also seen two important developments in how we might get to (or not get to) see what the government is actually doing.
A Harvard Law School Student Journal
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