Donald Trump is President: What are the Implications for the Death Penalty?
Prior to the election of Donald Trump, death penalty abolitionists were quietly confident that capital punishment was nearing its inevitable end in the United States. The number of executions has...
Foreign Legal Assistance applications: a strategy to advance accountability for transnational human rights abuses
In 2014, 40 million liters of toxic mining waste spilled from the Buenavista del Cobre copper mine into the Bacanuchi and Sonora Rivers, contaminating the water source of over 25,000...
Food Deserts In Appalachia: A Socio-Economic Ill and Opportunities for Reform
Food deserts constitute a public health phenomenon in which communities lack sufficient access to nutritious whole foods. The U.S. Appalachian region currently faces a food desert crisis of problematic proportions:...
US Sanctions on North Korean Human Rights Violators: Exploring the Impact
On July 6, the US State Department released its report on North Korean human rights violations pursuant to its requirements under the North Korea Sanctions and Policy Enhancement Act of...
Whole Women’s Health: A Call for Evidence-Based Regulation of Abortion
Decades ago, the medical profession helped build the public-health case for decriminalising abortion, and the Supreme Court of the United States appealed to medical science in deciding Roe v Wade....
Killing Time: A Comment on the Case of Brandon Astor
On 3 February 2016, the State of Georgia executed a 72 year old man – Brandon Astor – by lethal injection. Astor was convicted of killing a convenience store manager...
Two Kinds of Pluralism and the Future of Affirmative Action
Fisher v. Texas II, decided this week in a startling opinion by Justice Kennedy for a 4-3 majority of a short-handed Court, will not end the controversy—or the litigation—over affirmative...
LGBT Equality in the US: Despite Obergefell Victory, the Fight Continues
One year ago today, on June 26, 2015, the US Supreme Court decided Obergefell v. Hodges, in which the Court held that the US Constitution’s Fourteenth Amendment requires States to...
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...
