In Perry v. Brown, the Ninth Circuit ruled that California’s Proposition 8 violates the Equal Protection Clause. Reacting to the state supreme court’s recognition of marriage equality for lesbian and gay couples, Proposition 8 was a 2008 voter initiative that altered the state constitution to “restore” the “traditional” understanding of civil marriage to exclude same-sex…
Sports in 2011 was synonymous with labor-management relations, which became contentious in two of the three sports in which collective bargaining agreements expired—football and basketball. The National Basketball Association (NBA or the owners), for its part, made it clear that it would utilize a lockout as a means of economic pressure to obtain the kind…
When the last American combat troops departed Iraq in December, they left behind a disordered democracy that may not survive, along with a great deal of ethical confusion. The invasion of Iraq in 2003 represented the apotheosis of “anticipatory” self-defense—the theory that the use of armed force can be justified to prevent an attack that…
Although the Supreme Court has agreed to hear three suits challenging the 2010 health care reform legislation, it is not at all clear that the Court will resolve the constitutional questions at stake in those cases. Rather, the Justices may decide that a Reconstruction-era statute, the Tax Anti-Injunction Act (TA-IA), requires them to defer a…
Two bills now pending in Congress—the PROTECT IP Act of 2011 (Protect IP) in the Senate and the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the House—represent the latest legislative attempts to address a serious global problem: large-scale online copyright and trademark infringement. Although the bills differ in certain respects, they share an underlying approach and…
Associated today with the theatre of war, the widespread domestic use of drones for surveillance seems inevitable. Existing privacy law will not stand in its way. It may be tempting to conclude on this basis that drones will further erode our individual and collective privacy. Yet the opposite may happen. Drones may help restore our…
In the next few weeks, the Supreme Court will decide whether to review the constitutionality of Arizona’s high-profile immigration enforcement effort, known popularly as S.B. 1070. Arizona’s law is simply the tip of the iceberg. State legislatures have passed immigration enforcement laws over the last few years at breakneck speed, and, generally speaking, have attempted…
On November 4, 2011, Lehman Brothers’ creditors voted on Lehman Brothers’ liquidation plan, with approval from the bankruptcy court to follow on December 6, 2011. In the three years since the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, which was the largest bankruptcy filing in U.S. history, Congress enacted the Dodd-Frank Act to prevent the failure of another…
The December 2010 self-immolation of 26-year-old Tunisian Mohamed Bouazizi, a desperate response to the debilitating lack of economic opportunities for Tunisia’s youth and the pervasive sense of humiliation engendered by the state’s corrupt and degrading treatment of its citizens, tapped into deep popular frustration in Tunisia and throughout the Middle East. It sparked a series…
The concept of a sentencing commission as a mechanism for governance of a jurisdiction’s criminal justice system has achieved great prominence in recent years and been the subject of much important commentary. In light of California’s recent passage of A.B. 109, legislation that drastically overhauls the state’s sentencing and correctional systems, now is an ideal…
