Professional Commentary

As a US immigration lawyer who has spent years dealing with visa problems involving Russian citizens, I initially saw the recent report concerning Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Alimov as another consular issue. Once I started looking at the rules that apply, however, it became clear that ordinary visa law only takes the analysis so [...]

The legal news is crowded with stories about generative AI. Judges impose sanctions for hallucinated citations and fabricated case law. Courts add new standing orders restricting how lawyers and litigants may use these tools. A profession built on the accuracy and grace of its written word is surrendering that core capability to machines. The volume [...]

In July, the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) released an updated Youth Justice: A Guidebook for Legislators and refreshed its Juvenile Justice Toolkit. The timing matters. State lawmakers continue to confront questions about age of jurisdiction, diversion, transfer to adult court, restorative justice, and data reporting while trying to balance rehabilitation, accountability, and public [...]

The Department of Justice has moved to enter a Minnesota assault case on the side of the defendant. Hennepin County charged Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent Gregory Donnell Morgan Jr. with two counts of second-degree assault for allegedly pointing his gun at two motorists. Morgan sought to move the case to federal court, claiming [...]

As a physician, I have spent a career on the far side of a fact pattern I did not choose. This is the moment when something prescribed or administered goes wrong inside a body that trusted it not to. I have seen that more than once. It would be more comfortable to cast myself as [...]

An Iranian court has announced that crude removed from the US-owned Advantage Sweet tanker has been sold for $36 million to $37 million. The proceeds, held by Iran’s judiciary, are intended to satisfy a damages judgment for 771 Iranians with epidermolysis bullosa (EB) over sanctions-related barriers to medical supplies. The vessel was released in 2024. [...]

Allegations of sexual violence in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) keep making international headlines: a UN mission’s finding of reasonable grounds to believe rape occurred during the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks; Nicholas Kristof’s New York Times column detailing accounts of sexual abuse, including alleged gang rape, of Palestinian detainees; a Gaza flotilla activist’s [...]

On Tuesday, August 11, after 22 years without an execution in Lebanon, the country’s parliament voted to abolish the death penalty, making it the first Arab country to formally scrap capital punishment. The new law replaces death sentences with life imprisonment with hard labor. And what was the only party on record in that country to [...]

A website called RentAHuman now lets artificial intelligence agents post tasks, pick workers, and pay them—an arrangement no contract or labor law was written to govern, because no legal system recognizes the hiring party as a person. Forty years ago the Israeli-American legal theorist Meir Dan-Cohen, a longtime professor at UC Berkeley School of Law, [...]

Around the world, algorithms are increasingly being asked to do something once reserved for human judgment: help decide who should remain free and who should be deprived of liberty. In recent years, algorithmic risk assessment tools have grown more deeply embedded in criminal justice systems worldwide. From bail decisions to sentencing recommendations, predictive technologies promise [...]