Search Results for: 2013-06-19

The US prides itself on being a nation built on freedom, justice, and individual rights. And yet the evolution of its system of mass incarceration — a system that cannot be defined without reference to shocking racial disparities — seems to directly contradict these founding principles. The US prison population dwarfs those of nearly every other [...]

“That which is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. This is the entire Torah; the rest is commentary…: Rabbi Hillel, Babylonian Talmud, Shabbat 31a Israel’s continuous support for Donald J. Trump represents a grim irony of Jewish history. Even before the latest revelations concerning this former president’s anti-Semitic outbursts (that is, his [...]

JURIST Deputy Features Editor Jaimee Francis talked with Shai Dromi, author of Above the Fray: The Red Cross and the Construction of the Humanitarian Relief Sector (University of Chicago Press, 2022) and co-author of Moral Minefields: How Sociologists Debate Good Science (University of Chicago Press, forthcoming), about his research on the impact of non-governmental organizations [...]

In 2002, when President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP) came to power in Turkey, defeating Kemalist hegemony, there was a glimmer of hope in the West for the overwhelmingly Muslim country. However, the experience of Turkey over the past 20 years is one descending into an authoritarian regime with clampdowns [...]

This commentary was written just before Raila Odinga filed his Supreme Court petition challenging the announced presidential result of Kenya’s general election.  On 9 August, 2022, Kenyans turned out in large droves to elect the fifth president of the Republic of Kenya, and as in previous elections this one was marked by never-ending drama like [...]

The situation in Myanmar continues to deteriorate, with news received on July 25 that four activists have been executed. The executions are the first carried out in Myanmar for several decades. The government mouthpiece, the Global New Light of Myanmar, claimed that the activists’ crimes were “giving directions, making arrangements, committing conspiracies for brutal and [...]

Human Rights Watch (HRW) Thursday urged members of the African Union (AU) to take drastic steps to protect young girls and women. The report was released on the AU’s the Day of the African Child. Among the concerns raised by HRW are child marriage, free education for children, and allowing pregnant girls and young women [...]

In the leaked Supreme Court draft opinion overturning a half-century of abortion jurisprudence, Justice Samuel Alito repeatedly argued that this difficult issue should be decided by the people through their elected representatives. Such calls for democracy to work, however, should be looked at with great skepticism by the American people, given how often and how [...]

In June 2021, the Hungarian Parliament passed certain amendments to several acts, which curtailed the dissemination of information concerning homosexuality and sex reassignment (“H&SR”) among minors and school-goers. Inter alia, the legislation: (1) bans the availability of any material portraying or promoting H&SR or any other forms of deviation from one’s sex assigned at birth [...]

Even though the US State Department is issuing positive statements about the Taliban, it is hard for the US to recognize the Taliban as Afghanistan’s lawful government. The reasons are evident and understandable. First, the Taliban have defeated the US military in a protracted war stretching over twenty years (2001-2021). The hurt in the Pentagon, [...]