Current Events
Our Current Events initiative was created in the Spring of 2021 to allow for more relevant legal discourse on social and political events. All CULR members are invited to write on current legal issues from their own perspective.
With diverse voices writing about a variety of topics, the Current Events division hopes to make the Columbia Undergraduate Law Review’s articles more relevant and enable members to engage in discourse from different standpoints.
[11/03/2021] Upholding CEDAW: The Fight for Gender Equality in Kenyan Marriage Law
Over the last decade, Kenya has implemented new legislation to ensure legal equality between men and women in marriage. However, there is still a lack of equality between spouses, particularly in reference to matrimonial property and custody. This stands in conflict with Kenya’s obligations as a ratifying party to the 1981 Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), which requires that member states ensure that men and women be treated equally during, after, and outside of marriage. In order to comply with the standards of international human rights law laid out in CEDAW, Kenya must revise its 2013 Matrimonial Act and the 2014 Marriage Act and amend the 2016 Legal Aid Act to guarantee women legal equality.
Written by Genevieve Cabadas
[9/23/21] Supreme Court (In)action on Texas’s S.B. 8: The Growing Vulnerability of Abortion Rights
Last month, plaintiffs in Whole Woman’s Health v. Jackson filed an emergency request to block Texas’s new law prohibiting nearly all abortions. [1] On September 1, the Supreme Court denied their request, allowing the nation’s most restrictive abortion law to go into effect. To fully grasp this case’s significance, it is necessary to examine the content of the Court’s decision, the dissents, and the key legal questions that the judgment leaves behind.
Written by Isabel Coberly
[4/6/21] Bringing the Shadow Docket into the Light
Lawmakers and legal scholars have recently raised growing concern over the abundance and impact of the Court’s emergency and summary orders––which Professor William Baude termed “the shadow docket” in 2015. The shadow docket has gained national attention as death penalty appeals, presidential election disputes, and COVID-related cases are brought to the Court.
Written by Karen Cheng
[3/17/21] Resolution for WWII ‘Comfort Women’: Korea, Japan, and the International Court of Justice
In January 2021, South Korea’s Seoul Central District Court ordered the Japanese government to pay 100 million won (approximately $91,000) in damages to each of the twelve plaintiffs in Hee Nam Yoo v. Japan. The plaintiffs in this case were former Korean ‘comfort women,’ a euphemism for women and girls—mostly in their teens and twenties—who were forced into sexual slavery by Japan’s military during the Second World War (WWII). The Japanese government has vowed not to recognize the Hee Nam Yoo decision, and has condemned it as a violation of Japan’s sovereign immunity. Despite this fraught response, however, the Hee Nam Yoo ruling is significant in two regards: it holds potential for modifying the scope of sovereign immunity under international law, and it reveals a stunning failure in existing international legal frameworks to respond to sexual slavery with the same gravity as other humanitarian crimes.
Written by Mrinalini Sisodia Wadhwa
All Spring 2021 Current Events articles edited by Katy Brennan and Tiffany Jing
All Fall 2021 Current Events articles edited by Mrinalini Sisodia Wadhwa