The recent Australian High Court ruling in NZYQ v. Minister for Immigration, Citizenship and Multicultural Affairs has prompted significant developments in Australia’s immigration detention policies. This commentary examines the legal implications of the ruling, the subsequent legislative response, and the ongoing concerns raised by human rights and refugee advocates. A History of Mandatory Detention for [...]
On Feb. 11, much of the global community marked the International Day of Women and Girls in Science and Technology. But in Afghanistan, few felt like celebrating. After all, that day was the 874th since girls were banned from attending secondary school studies, and the 415th since universities shut their doors to women. The urgency [...]
Last week, a US appeals court panel stood as guardians of America’s founding ideals against a would-be despot. Donald Trump told the court that he is immune to prosecution over the January 6 Capitol attack because at the time he was president, and thus anything he may have said or done in connection with the [...]
Alabama’s experimental use of gas to torture to death Kenneth Smith on January 25th — like all executions by lethal injection — has perpetuated a horrific Nazi legacy in the United States and is a traumatizing affront to many in the Jewish community. The fact that this torment was blindly carried out just ahead of [...]
In what proved to be a constitutionally fraught week, the Governor of the State of Texas, Greg Abbott, stated on January 26 he will oppose any measure to infringe on Texas’s placing of razor wire on the US-Mexico border, a move that has bolstered Texas nationalists and increased calls that Texas should secede from the [...]
I am an ordained Jewish cantor, a former Jewish prison chaplain, a third-generation Holocaust survivor, and co-founder of L’chaim! Jews Against the Death Penalty. I write these words on the eve of International Holocaust Remembrance Day, and on the morning after Alabama executed Kenneth Eugene Smith with nitrogen gas — the first execution of this [...]
Barring the unlikely success of last-minute litigation, today, at 6 p.m. CST, Kenneth Eugene Smith is scheduled to become the first person in history to be executed by forced nitrogen gas inhalation. In Smith’s final minutes, personnel at the William C. Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore, Alabama will strap an industrial-grade mask to his face. Secured [...]
According to the most recent data from the American Bar Association, women outnumbered men in law school classrooms across the country for the eighth year in a row in 2023. At the outset of the 20th century, women comprised less than five percent of all law students. However, a gradual but significant shift commenced in [...]
Author’s Note: The publication of this piece coincidentally aligns with the initiation of a direct military response by the US and UK against the Houthis in Yemen overnight on 12 January 2023. Rather than update the piece, we have decided to publish it as-is. Everything below still stands – the Yemeni people deserve a considered, [...]
On Jan. 25, the Alabama Department of Corrections (ADOC) plans to execute Kenneth Smith by forcing him to breathe pure nitrogen gas, an untested execution method with profound legal and ethical consequences. Death penalty abolitionists worldwide have railed against this form of capital punishment, but these efforts have thus far failed to alter the state’s [...]
