A Southern jury of six women – none of them black – found 28-year-old George Zimmerman’s shooting of unarmed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin to be justifiable homicide because he acted in self-defense. The jurors were prohibited from considering race. They were instructed only on the parts of self-defense law that helped Zimmerman, and the chief police… Read more »
By Marjorie Cohn and Jeanne Mirer President Obama declared in his victory address on election night, “Democracy in a nation of 300 million can be noisy and messy and complicated . . . We want our children to live in an America that isn’t burdened by debt, that isn’t weakened by inequality, that isn’t threatened… Read more »
The issue of immigration has been tossed about like a political football for some time. Democrats argue that migrants who have spent many years in the United States should be permitted to apply for lawful status. Republicans criticize these proposals as “amnesty.” But Congress has been unable to agree on comprehensive immigration reform. Three and… Read more »
On August 9, the California Assembly took the historic step of becoming the first state to agree to publicize the text of three ratified U.N. human rights treaties, and to submit the required reports to the State Department for consideration by the U.N. treaty committees. The State Assembly voted to pass ACR 129, the Human… Read more »
The conservative “states’ rights” mantra sweeping our country has led to one of the most egregious wrongs in recent U.S. history. New legislation in Arizona requires law enforcement officers to stop everyone whom they have “reasonable suspicion” to believe is an undocumented immigrant and arrest them if they fail to produce their papers. What constitutes… Read more »
For weeks, pundits have speculated about why Hillary Clinton insists on remaining in the primary race when Barack Obama has all but clinched the Democratic presidential nomination. On Friday, Clinton answered that question. It appears she’s waiting in the wings for something dreadful to befall Obama. When asked by the editorial board of South Dakota’s… Read more »
In response to highly-publicized sound-bites from sermons by Rev. Jeremiah Wright of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, Sen. Barack Obama delivered an historic speech on racism, titled “A More Perfect Union.” Rev. Wright had strongly criticized the U.S. government for putting Indians on reservations, Japanese in internment camps, and Africans into slavery. He… Read more »
In 1937, the American Bar Association refused to allow people of color to join its ranks. With the blessing of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the National Lawyers Guild was founded as a multi-racial alternative to the ABA. The Guild’s founding members included the attorney general, several judges, some congressmen, and the head of the National… Read more »
We do not believe the Executive has, or should have, the inherent constitutional authority to violate the law or infringe the legal rights of Americans, whether it be a warrantless break-in into the home or office of an American, warrantless electronic surveillance, or a President’s authorization to the FBI to create a massive domestic security… Read more »
JURIST Contributing Editor Marjorie Cohn of Thomas Jefferson School of Law in San Diego says that although reparations for African-American slavery remain an elusive goal due largely to misconceptions about what they might entail, meaningful reparations could in practice come in different forms in different contexts… The reparations movement is grounded in the civil rights… Read more »