Appalachia in Crisis: A Human Rights Approach to Environmental Justice in the U.S.
The natural resource extraction industry has long wrought environmental, social, and economic devastation in Appalachia—a U.S. region historically defined by a deeply exploitative coal extraction mono-economy. However, in tandem with...
Animus and Unequal Dignity: The Purpose and Effect of North Carolina’s New Anti-LGBT Law
On March 24, 2016, lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (“LGBT”) North Carolina residents woke up to a new and hostile legal reality. Just one day prior, Republican lawmakers convened a...
Scalia’s Record on Labour Rights as Human Rights – Justice Denied
During Justice Scalia’s nearly thirty-year term, the Court decided nineteen private-sector labour cases in which the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) was a party. Three cases concerned whether the Court/NLRB/President...
Justice Scalia’s Terribly Few Words on Education Rights
Justice Scalia was a wordsmith whose informal, pithy style and wit forced smiles from even his staunchest critics. His influence on the Supreme Court came through the sheer effect of...
Blog: Scalia’s Influence on the Religion Clauses: Part II
During the last thirty years, Justice Scalia was a key figure in the Supreme Court’s steady movement away from separationist readings of the Establishment Clause in state funding of religious...
Justice Scalia and the Fair Housing Act: A Textualist Approach Honed in Oral Argument
Justice Antonin Scalia’s output in the area of housing rights, and Fair Housing Act (FHA) law specifically, is deceptively sparse, if judged by authored opinions. Assessing his impact on these...
Justice Scalia, Challenges to the Affordable Care Act, and a Missed Opportunity to Meaningfully Engage the Right to Healthcare
Justice Antonin Scalia was known for his polarising opinions on fundamental issues in American policy. Yet, his recent dissents in major legal challenges to the Affordable Care Act (ACA) are...
A Tale of Two Treaties: The Clean Power Plan
World leaders met near Paris almost a century ago promising to cooperate to end the scourge of war. U.S. President Woodrow Wilson touted his country’s contributions to international cooperation leading...
Justice Scalia’s Legacy on Gender Equality: No Need to “Remember the Ladies”
Despite Justice Scalia’s well-known friendship with the most feminist Justice on the United States Supreme Court, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Scalia was no friend to feminist legal efforts. Indeed, he was...
Justice Scalia’s Repudiation of Women’s Health and Reproductive Rights
Throughout the three decades that Justice Antonin Scalia served on the United States Supreme Court, he was invariably viewed as one of the Court’s staunchest opponents of sex equality and...
Abortion in Texas: Does Casey Still Have Content?
On March 2, 2016, the U.S. Supreme Court heard much awaited arguments in Whole Women’s Health v. Hellerstedt, the most important abortion case since the Court decided Planned Parenthood of...
Justice Scalia’s Influence on the Religion Clauses Part I: Free Exercise Law
The “big three” issues in Religion Clauses jurisprudence are: (1) whether and how judges should decide claims to free exercise exemptions from generally applicable laws; (2) when government religious speech...
