On leafing through Indian Family Law readings in law school, one can’t help but feel disgruntled with the ubiquity of sexism making its way into legislative enactments. The difference in the minimum marriage age for men and women in India is a testimony to that fact. Currently, several personal laws prescribe ages 18 and 21 [...]
Search Results for: Brianna Bell
Trump’s Blackwater Pardons Reveal Security Contractor Impunity Tendencies Typical for Republicans
“Cheaper than water.” This is how Iraqis commented on the value of their lives after they learned that US President Donald Trump had pardoned the four Blackwater security contractors who had previously been sentenced over the death of 17 Iraqi civilians in the 2007 Nisur Square massacre. Sentences included life imprisonment for a first-degree murder. A child [...]
Legal Educators Have the Power to Cultivate a More Accessible Profession
When I started law school in 2019, I did not believe my professors would play a critical role in supporting me as a disabled law student. I assumed I would receive occasional words of affirmation, and I knew I could ask for extra time on my exams. But as I understood it, my disability was [...]
In a Pandemic, Why are Cities Still Making it Hard for People to Get Utilities?
With the continuing pandemic – and expiring housing and unemployment benefits across the country – millions of people may have their utilities cut off soon. Meanwhile, at least 13 states currently have expired moratoriums on water shut-offs. Many notable COVID-19 hotspot states (Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Oklahoma) never implemented any moratorium on utility shut-offs. For those facing [...]
As the political conversation in the United States increasingly scrutinizes the problems with policing and the inequities within America’s criminal justice system, many books have been published on the topic. From Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow, to Bryan Stevenson’s Just Mercy, to Ibram X. Kendi’s How to be An Anti-Racist, these books paint a [...]
As a rabbi who has not attended an indoor prayer service since March, I still would have been happy if the Supreme Court had held that draconian restrictions on indoor religious services are unconstitutional. However, what the Court’s liberal and conservative justices actually evaluated in Roman Catholic Diocese v. Cuomo was whether New York’s coronavirus [...]
Senator Mark Kelly (D-AZ), the former astronaut and rising political star, was sworn in December 2, marking the end of an astonishingly long period (two years plus three months) during which the people of Arizona were deprived of their constitutional right to elect one of their two U.S. senators. It is an outrage that it [...]
A Practical and Constitutional Proposal for Reparations for African-Americans
Responding to the discussions on Reparations are replete while the appalling reality on the ground is not in doubt, to be of assistance and subject to the wisdom of people who have been working on this far longer than me I put on my Business School hat and put this practical and constitutional proposal together. [...]
Every four years, Americans are met with countless ads and displays encouraging them to vote. However, current and formerly incarcerated Americans are continuously left out of the conversation. Our criminal justice system is so stigmatized that we discount incarcerated Americans from the voting process: the pillar upon which our democratic society is built. In 1972, [...]
Has the Supreme Court Finally Become a Major Issue in a Presidential Election?
The U.S. Supreme Court has emerged as a significant election issue for the first time in more than fifty years. The death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett has riveted the nation’s attention on the Court in a way that rarely if ever has occurred during a presidential campaign. [...]