The United States Supreme Court has had its share of shameful rulings. The great Erwin Chemerinsky wrote that we should “appreciate the powerful case against the Supreme Court for the choices it has made throughout history.” Another scholar wrote that the “list is so long, so infamous, and so disturbingly regular—recurring consistently over time—that one must seriously question whether the Supreme Court has been, on balance, a positive or negative force in our nation’s constitutional history.”
Continue reading “The Supreme Court’s Worst Decision in Recent Years – Garcetti v. Ceballos, the Dred Scott Decision for Public Employees”Month: January 2021
Jurisprudence and Recommendations for Tribal Court Authority Due to Imposition of U.S. Limitations
There are over 570 federally-recognized Tribal Nations in the United States and more than 330 tribal courts serving as the judicial branch of those nations. Yet, there is little mention of the existence of tribal courts in most mainstream civil procedure courses taught in the over 200 law schools in the United States. To gain any knowledge as to the existence of these courts, law students must take a course on federal Indian law, which is not available in the majority of law schools. In fact, less than twenty law schools offer a series of courses forming an Indian law program. Thus, the invisibility of tribal courts is perpetuated through curriculum omission in mainstream civil procedure courses and rarely remedied through offering a stand-alone course on federal Indian law. Tribal Nations have existed from time immemorial with their own laws, dispute resolution systems, and governing structures. This lack of attention and suppression of information serves only to reinforce colonizing ideas of subsuming tribal governance into the forums set up by the United States.
Continue reading “Jurisprudence and Recommendations for Tribal Court Authority Due to Imposition of U.S. Limitations”Designing Children: Tort Liability for Medical Providers in the Era of CRISPR/CAS-9 Genetic Editing
Once only thought possible in the realm of science fiction, today, scientists are able to edit genes in human embryos using a technique that employs a Clustered, Regularly Interspaced, Short Palindromic Repeat (CRISPR) and a CRISPR associated protein (Cas)—typically Cas-9.1 For ease, this comment will refer to the CRISPR system, inclusive of the Cas protein, as CRISPR/Cas-9.
David Cyranoski, a well-respected Nature editor, remarked that CRISPR/Cas-9 technologies will trigger a “Sputnik 2.0.” Shockingly, China has already used CRISPR/Cas-9 in twin girls to remove part of a gene that is responsible for causing HIV.4 Similarly, CRISPR/Cas-9 has been used on human cancer cells, and it has the potential to be therapeutic for aggressive forms of lung cancer. CRISPR/Cas-9 also enables researchers to produce specific types of tissues by altering genes in pluripotent stem cells. Furthermore, researchers can use CRISPR/Cas-9 to replicate the genetic basis for various human diseases, which will provide unprecedented insight into otherwise enigmatic diseases. Ultimately, at this early stage, the budding uses of CRISPR/Cas-9 extend to sickle cell anemia, cystic fibrosis,
muscular dystrophy, cancer, eye diseases, and HIV.
Improving Police Officer Accountability in Minnesota: Three Proposed Legislative Reforms
The killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officers in May 2020 put the issue of police reform back into the national discussion and made Minnesota, at least during a brief window of time, confront its past on issues of racism and police abuse. The video showing Mr. Floyd pleading for his life while a Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck became an unprecedented catalyst for outrage. Even in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, massive protests and civil unrest spread from Minneapolis to all over the world.
Nationwide demonstrations and media attention put pressure on policymakers and police departments to make substantial changes. Police reform efforts appeared at every level of government. For instance, the New York Police Department announced that it would disband its notorious plainclothes anti-crime unit. Likewise, a majority of the Minneapolis City Council vowed to “begin the process of ending the Minneapolis Police Department.” By summer’s end, Iowa, Delaware, Utah, and Nevada passed legislation banning choke holds, and Colorado enacted broad changes that could serve as a model for Minnesota and other states. Meanwhile, the United States House of Representatives passed a bipartisan bill that “mark[ed] one of the most comprehensive efforts in modern times to re-imagine law enforcement departments across the country.”
Now the Border is Everywhere: Why a Border Search Exception Based on Race Can No Longer Stand
The faster we deport undocumented immigrants, the safer our country will be. This belief has become a foundational tenant of the Trump administration’s immigration regime and its increased use of the expedited removal program.
Expedited removal was originally introduced in 1996 as an amendment to the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), granting the executive branch discretion to accelerate the deportation process in limited contexts. Under this fast-track program, undocumented immigrants who have entered the country in the last two weeks can be deported without any
hearing or meaningful review, as long as they are apprehended within 100 miles of any U.S. border. However, the current administration was concerned that the program was not being utilized to its full statutory extent.
Gamble v. United States: Military Justice in Absence of Double Jeopardy
In this article, I argue that to combat the over-delegation of power to military tribunals, some limiting principles must exist to prevent prejudiced and unwarranted second-chance prosecutions. The United States’ criminal justice system purports to embrace sturdy protections against double jeopardy, meaning no person shall be tried twice for the same offense. Yet, this ideal is far from the reality. In a legal system governed by various, distinct sovereigns, prosecutors often have two, or more, opportunities to try a case. The United States Supreme Court reaffirmed this reality in Gamble v. United States,1 which left service members particularly vulnerable to successive prosecutions in military courts.
Continue reading “Gamble v. United States: Military Justice in Absence of Double Jeopardy”Why the Legal Profession is the Nation’s Least Diverse (And How to Fix It)
A Black female attorney recalls being told as an associate that she was being put on a case because they “need a Black face.”
A White male partner told a Latina associate, “you might not be the right person to argue before the Minnesota Supreme Court.”
A Black female associate recalls being the only woman and person of color in a trial and the only person whose objections were consistently overruled. Her colleagues noticed she was being treated differently—but did nothing.
Continue reading “Why the Legal Profession is the Nation’s Least Diverse (And How to Fix It)”