Recent Trends in Climate Change Litigation: Colombia’s Amazon and Juliana v U.S
On April 4, 2018, the Colombian Supreme Court handed down an important ruling (Tutela, a rights-based injunction) on climate change. The plaintiffs in the case are twenty-five children who argued...
U.N. Framework Principles on Human Rights and the Environment: A Catalyst for Grassroots-Centered U.S. Reform?
John H. Knox, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and the Environment, recently issued a final report to the U.N. Human Rights Council. The report, which contains 16 Framework...
The Hidden Cost of the Death Penalty in India
The death penalty needs to have significant social benefits, not attainable with the next most severe form of punishment, life imprisonment, for it to be justified. Existing arguments already show...
A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing: The Promise and Reality of U.S. Tax Reform
The U.S. tax reform law is dangerous for poor and lower middle-class families. Superficially, this legislation may seem to benefit low income workers – that is exactly why it is...
President Trump’s Recognition of Jerusalem: A Legal Analysis
In a proclamation signed on Wednesday, US President Donald Trump unilaterally recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, departing from the policy of successive US administrations which recognized the status of Jerusalem...
Litigating for the Right to Education in the United States: Part 2
In yesterday’s blog post, I reviewed US right to education litigation at the federal level, and at the state level in New York and New Mexico. In this post, I...
Litigating for the Right to Education in the United States: Part 1
Although the U.S. Supreme Court held in 1973 that there is no right to education in the federal constitution, over the past 40 years, dozens of state courts have ruled...
Trinity Lutheran v. Comer: Does The U.S. Supreme Court Now See Separation of Church and State as a Kind of Religious Discrimination?
The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Trinity Lutheran v. Comer seems modest on its facts, but it moves the Court one step closer to a complete reversal of the “separation...
U.S. Senate Unveils Health Care Bill Designed to Dismantle the ACA
On May 4, 2017, the United States House of Representatives voted in favor of the American Health Care Act of 2017 (“AHCA”) in an effort to repeal and replace the...
Transforming the Law-Transgender Rights in the US (with Corey Stoughton)
In May of 2016, the Obama administration issued federal guidance that stated transgender people are protected according to United States civil rights law preventing sex discrimination in schools. It was...
About Abortion (with Carol Sanger)
Since the 1973 Supreme Court ruling on Roe v. Wade, abortion has been legal in the United States. But terminating pregnancy remains a controversial issue, and it plays a surprisingly...
The Travel Ban as Religious Discrimination: Judges’ Engagement of Political Discourse and Recent History
On March 15, 2017, two federal district courts, in Hawaii and Maryland, enjoined the enforcement of President Trump’s second executive order restricting travel from six predominantly Muslim countries. In both...
