Professional Commentary

The state-legal cannabis industry has been slowly crawling into existence over the past decade. Despite federal illegality, most states have legalized medical cannabis and about a dozen states have legalized adult-use cannabis. For compliant cannabis businesses, becoming operational is no easy endeavor and may lead to myopic compliance that fails to consider essential business practices, [...]

What did the American public understand the word “sex” to mean in 1964? That’s the foundational question before the Supreme Court in Harris Funeral Homes v. EEOC. This case originated when Harris Funeral Homes hired a male funeral director who agreed to follow the company’s sex-specific dress policy. Nearly six years later, the director informed [...]

The enactment of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2020 (NDAA) was undoubtedly a historic moment – one ceasing perpetuation of the nearly 70 years of disparate treatment to which certain military personnel suffering the harms of medical malpractice incident to their service had previously been subjected as the result of an archaic, [...]

Attorneys litigate on both sides of some of the most contentious issues in the country: affirmative action, rent control, abortion rights, gun rights, you name it. Sometimes the positions attorneys take may be seen as offensive, as those positions may run contrary to more “popular” opinions. But in our adversarial system of justice, free speech is necessary [...]

Martin Luther King Jr. called Fred Gray the chief counsel of the Civil Rights movement. Gray was born in Alabama in 1930. Born and raised in the segregated South, he understood the full impact of segregation on black communities and experienced it personally. Gray attended a Christian boarding school in Nashville, Tennessee, because, at the [...]

For more than 20 years, a key prosecution witness in Maryland criminal proceedings named Joseph Kopera, a firearms expert for the state crime lab, routinely and blatantly lied about his resume, background, qualifications, and other matters. Recently, the Maryland State Police discovered that he also forged signatures on firearms ballistics reports. His testimony was used [...]

This year, the U.S. Supreme Court will consider June Medical Services v. Gee, the first abortion case since Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh became members of that court. The Court will rule on the constitutionality of a Louisiana law that is identical to a Texas law struck down by the Supreme Court in 2016. In Whole [...]

The most recent disciplinary order issued against a federal judge vividly demonstrates a major shortcoming of the federal judicial disciplinary system—transparency. In September, the Judicial Council of the Tenth Circuit publicly reprimanded Kansas federal district court judge Carlos Murguia. The judge’s offenses included “sexually harassing Judiciary employees,” habitually tardiness, and an extramarital affair. To the detriment [...]

Over the past several years, the use of e-cigarettes has increased greatly. While the original demographic for e-cigarettes was intended to be legal adults who already smoked traditional cigarettes, these numbers seem to be higher amongst a younger population than expected. Parents and guardians filed lawsuits alleging that the marketing campaigns lead by popular manufacturers, [...]

Chief Hinga Norman, head of the brutal Civil Defense Force, during the monstrous civil war in the West African country of Sierra Leone—part of larger unrest that engulfed neighboring Liberia and others—admonished his men to kill every living thing down to the ants in Pujehun. That they did. This was emblematic of the brutality that [...]