The Teitiota family from a little-known Pacific island didn’t intend to become a catalyst for expanding the concept of asylum—but they became one anyway. In 2015, New Zealand denied the family’s asylum claim and deported them, despite the parents’ plea that their three children’s health and well-being were at risk amid crop failure, withering coconut [...]
Search Results for: 2015-05-19
After the American Election: Overcoming Plague, Chaos and "Mass"
“The mass-man has no attention to spare for reasoning; he learns only in his own flesh.” – Jose Ortega y’Gasset, The Revolt of the Masses (1930) In the United States, prima facie, presidential elections represent a core fixture of democracy. Nonetheless, though necessary – and never more so than in the just-completed defeat of Donald [...]
Age Bar on Legal Education in India: A Human Rights Violation
Recently, a 77-year-old Indian woman moved to the Supreme Court of India because she was denied admission by multiple law colleges. The woman, who is passionate about the subject desired to gain knowledge by enrolling herself in a 3-year LLB course. However, to her utter dismay, she was denied admission because of the Bar Council of India [...]
Nationwide protests in response to the brutal murder of George Floyd have put a spotlight on the profound injustices of the criminal legal system. Much of the criticism has rightly focused on the abuses in policing and incarceration. But along with abusive policing, another urgent threat that impoverished communities face under this system is the [...]
Examining Airline Market Power in Light of COVID-19 Bailouts
Giants run the airline industry. Today, four airlines, American, United, Delta, and Southwest, control over 65 percent of the market. They achieved this level of dominance in just the past twenty years, with merger after merger cutting the number of major airlines left today into less than half the number that existed in 2000. The [...]
On July 15, 2020, the New Jersey Supreme Court released an Order declaring that the Bar Exam would be administered online. This would be the first time the NJ Bar exam was ever administered online. The move to online seems like a good idea amid a global pandemic killing Americans at an exorbitant rate; however, [...]
Polexit: Will the Current Legal Issues Trigger Poland to Leave the EU?
Ever since winning the general election of Poland in 2015, the Polish government led by the Law and Justice Party (PiS), has continuously pushed the country to adopt a series of judicial reforms supposedly to drive out the last strands of communism from the judicial set-up. These reforms, however, have been highly controversial in that [...]
When Will Black Lives Matter to the Florida Board of Bar Examiners?
I am a native Tampanian, and in 1992 I graduated from Vanderbilt University Law school. Because I spent my last year of law school studying abroad, a novel idea back then, the law school registrar would not certify my graduation for me to sit for the July bar exam in 1992. This was the first [...]
Is it Time to End Police Unions? Why Police Unions are Hurting More Than They Are Helping
The COVID-19 pandemic, the death of George Floyd by the Minneapolis police, and the subsequent protests have brought racial inequalities to the forefront of public square discussion. As faculty of color in the fields of criminal justice and legal studies, we cover diversity issues in all of our classes, especially with students who will be [...]
“ shot from the back through the chest and into the eye” was how one commentator described it. On May 2, 2020, Germany’s highest constitutional court, the Bundesverfassungsgericht, delivered a judgment that sent shivers through the political and legal institutions of Europe. It had been asked to rule on the lawfulness of the participation of [...]