April 23, 2019
The incident that gave rise to Mitchell v. City of Cedar Rapids, recently decided by the Iowa Supreme Court, should sound familiar by now. In November 2016, a Cedar Rapids white police officer, Lucas Jones, stopped a black motorist, Jerime Mitchell, for a minor traffic violation. When Mitchell attempted to drive away, Jones shot him,…
April 18, 2019
A tactic known as “snap removal” has divided federal district courts. Can a defendant remove a suit filed in its home forum (or the home forum of another defendant) after the plaintiff filed the suit but before service of process? At first blush, 28 U.S.C. § 1441(b)(2) –– the forum defendant rule –– would seem…
Criminal Procedure, Cyberlaw / Internet, Fourth Amendment
April 16, 2019
United States v. Wanjiku is one of many recent Fourth Amendment cases that have come before circuit courts regarding border searches of cell phones. This batch of litigation sprung in part from the Supreme Court decision in Riley v. California, which held that officers generally need a warrant to conduct incidental searches of cell phones…
April 15, 2019
This past year, I published the product of years of historical research in Habeas Corpus in Wartime: From the Tower of London to Guantanamo Bay (Oxford University Press 2017). In the months since, I have been asked two questions more than any others: first, why I wrote the book, and second, what, if anything, modern…
Civil Rights, Eighth Amendment, Gender Identity
April 12, 2019
Transgender rights are facing a backlash. Scientific knowledge of the impacts of gender dysphoria (GD) has grown immensely, and medical care for transgender people is increasingly accessible. These developments have not been paralleled in the courts. Recently, in Gibson v. Collier, the Fifth Circuit held that a state policy that does not permit gender affirmation…
April 11, 2019
“[E]very generation or so a case comes along when this Court needs to say enough is enough,” Chief Justice Roberts wrote in 2012, “if the Equal Protection Clause is to retain any force in this context.” The context he was referring to was the extreme discretion given to state and local governments to vary the…
Eileen Connor is the Director of Litigation of the Project on Predatory Lending, situated at the Legal Services Center of Harvard Law School, and a Lecturer of Law at HLS.…
Fatma Marouf is a Professor of Law and Director of the Immigrant Rights Clinic at Texas A&M University School of Law, where she has taught immigration law, legislation-regulation, and the…
Steve Vladeck (@steve_vladeck) is the A. Dalton Cross Professor at the University of Texas School of Law, co-editor-in-chief of Just Security (@just_security), co-host of the National Security Law Podcast (@nslpodcast),…
