Throughout his thirty-year service on the United States Supreme Court, Justice Antonin Scalia questioned whether criminal defendants who maintained their innocence should be entitled to a second chance. Indeed, in...
UNHRC Working Group on discrimination against women in law and in practice country mission to the United States
In December 2015, the UN Working Group on the issue of discrimination against women in law and in practice (WGDAW) issued its end-of-mission statement regarding the status of women’s equality...
Antonin Scalia’s Voting Rights Legacy: Weakening the Franchise for Minorities
The death of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia has provoked numerous discussions about the future direction of the Supreme Court and Justice Scalia’s impact as a jurist. While many...
Same-Sex Foster Parents Face Discrimination from U.S. State Court Judge
In the wake of the Obergefell decision, it can be easy to forget that the fight for LGBT rights is far from over in many parts of the U.S. Just...
Justifying Deadly Force in the American Supreme Court
The case of City of Los Angeles v. Contreras, currently up for first-round consideration before the Supreme Court of the United States, centres on an important question of criminal procedure:...
United States Labor Relations Board Cowardly Punts its Duties
Earlier this month, the United States witnessed a major setback for freedom of association. The National Labor Relations Board (the Board)– the U.S. agency charged with “encouraging the practice and...
Glossip v Gross: Taking Up Justice Breyer’s Call to Question the Death Penalty
Last month the United States Supreme Court ruled in Glossip v. Gross 135 S. Ct. 2726 (2015) that the use of midazolam in Oklahoma’s injection protocol was not unconstitutional under...
Constitutional Reasoning About Same-Sex Marriage
By including same-sex couples within the constitutional right to marry, the decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in Obergefell v. Hodges (26th June 2015) is of great practical significance. It...
Will Obergefell Stifle Growing Support for LGBTQ Rights?
In his recent post The Beginning Rather Than The End, Karl Laird discusses the potential policy backlash that may result from the recent Obergefell decision. In analyzing Obergefell, however, it...
Empathy, Craft and other Lessons to Learn from the US Same-Sex Marriage Decision
Three narratives provide the human face to the text of Obergefell v. Hodges, the landmark US Supreme Court decision recognizing the right of same-sex couples to participate in the institution...
Glossip v. Gross: SCOTUS Affirmation of Underdeveloped Science for the Lifeline of the Death Penalty
On 29 June 2015, in Glossip v. Gross 576 U. S. ____ (2015), Justice Alito gave the majority opinion (joined by Roberts C.J., and Scalia, Kennedy and Thomas, J.J.), which...
US Disparate Impact Law: A View From Across the Pond
In the set of (relatively) liberal recent pronouncements from the United States Supreme Court features its judgment in Texas Department of Housing v Inclusive Communities Project (2015). The Court, by...
