In January 2020, the federal cabinet of Pakistan approved the Citizen’s Protection (Against Online Harm) Rules to regulate social media platforms for streaming content related to terrorism, extremism, hate speech, sedition, fake news, defamation, violence, and national security. Pakistan is not the first country that has attempted to regulate social media platforms. Countries such as [...]

“A civilization that proves incapable of solving the problems that it creates is a decadent civilization.” Aimé Césaire wrote this in his critique of colonialism. Close examination of the legacy of colonialism helps explain the disparate impact of the current healthcare crisis based on race and class. The sick and dying in the US are [...]

In a time where people are getting seriously ill and dying (and not from a zombie apocalypse), society is faced with the moral question of whether we should release individuals from jails so that we can protect them from contracting, and dying from, COVID-19. It is no secret that jails are a hotspot for COVID-19 [...]

In Richmond Newspapers, Inc. v. Virginia (1980), the Supreme Court of the United States wrote, “People in an open society do not demand infallibility from their institutions, but it is difficult for them to accept what they are prohibited from observing.” It’s easy to visualize, ahem, colorful presidential press conferences and vigorous congressional debates on [...]

Universal suffrage has long been accepted as the standard for enfranchisement in democracies, however full and equal participation is rarely the reality. One group in particular that is frequently excluded across jurisdictions is prisoners. Indian law provides for this exclusion in Section 62(5) of the Representation of the People Act, 1951. This exclusion has faced [...]

Members of Pennsylvania’s most vulnerable communities are at risk of losing access to essential legal services in the face of the unprecedented public health crisis, economic turmoil, and social disruption brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. Graduating law students could help fill this growing need, but it is unclear whether we will be given the [...]

The novel coronavirus has disrupted the lives of billions globally. In the United States, as Americans shelter in place to stop the spread of COVID-19, so too stop the “normal” functions of the country. Americans are being laid off and filing for unemployment benefits at the highest levels ever recorded. Nearly 40,000 people who seek [...]

The health degree of a society’s well-being is determined by the ideas which take actual shape in the course of its daily self-constitution. In order to reform and even redeem such a society, we have to reform those defining ideas. The quality of our human life is a function of our determining ideas. Law plays [...]

The Appellate Body is an important element of the Dispute Settlement System of the World Trade Organization (WTO), hearing appeals against the findings of the panel established by the Dispute Settlement Body (DSB). The Appellate Body (AB) ideally consists of seven members including the Chairman. But on 10th December 2019, this body went into crisis [...]

The coronavirus pandemic has created a cascade of horrible effects. As of April 10, there have been half a million cases and 18,000 deaths in the United States (1.5 million cases and over 100,000 deaths worldwide). The pandemic has also created widespread economic hardship, with 17 million Americans newly unemployed within the past three weeks. And [...]