Civil Rights, Immigration, Separation of Powers, Supreme Court
April 23, 2018
The third version of the Travel Ban (“EO-3”)—also known as the Muslim Ban—added two non-Muslim countries to the list, but that by no means immunized it from legal challenge. The Supreme Court is set to hear oral argument tomorrow in Trump v. Hawaii and will ultimately determine whether the Travel Ban is a lawful exercise…
April 18, 2018
On April 10, 2018, President Trump signed the euphemistically titled “Executive Order Reducing Poverty in America by Promoting Opportunity and Economic Mobility.” The executive order highlights “principles that are central to the American spirit — work, free enterprise, and safeguarding human and economic resources” but notably leaves out other principles, such as charity, kindness, and…
Criminal Law, Due Process, Federal Courts
April 17, 2018
Today, the Supreme Court decided Sessions v. Dimaya and struck down the federal definition of “crime of violence” as unconstitutionally vague. The statute, section 16(b) (along with its very analogous cousin, section 924(c)), has meaningfully contributed to mass incarceration, racial disparities in sentencing, and excessive sentencing at the federal level. Dimaya recognized that section 16(b)…
Constitutional Law, Election and Voting Law
April 11, 2018
Recently the Supreme Court heard oral argument in Benisek v. Lamone, the second partisan-gerrymandering case this term (Gill v. Whiftord was the first). Clearly the Court intends to act. But the Justices also seem to have run aground on some fairly central questions: settling on a legal theory and a manageable standard to define the…
Environmental Law, International Law, Space Law
April 11, 2018
On a sunny Tuesday in February, SpaceX, the privately held rocket company of billionaire Elon Musk, launched a 23-story tall rocket, known as the Falcon Heavy, into space. Bolted into the second stage of the rocket was a luxurious, cherry red Tesla roadster. If you somehow missed this news, it’s actually worth going back and…
In her seven years in office, Chief Justice Tani G. Cantil-Sakauye has emerged as one of the country’s leading advocates for equal access to justice, transparency, and the reformation of…
Lisa Graybill oversees the SPLC’s work to reverse the “new Jim Crow” and eliminate the structural racism entrenched in the policing, sentencing, imprisonment, and post-conviction practices of states in the…
Cass R. Sunstein is the Robert Walmsley University Professor at Harvard Law School. He clerked for Justice Benjamin Kaplan of Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court and Justice Thurgood Marshall of the…
