Quebec’s Bill 21: When Provincial Autonomy Threatens Minority Rights
On June 16, 2019, the National Assembly of Quebec passed Bill 21, The Act Respecting the Laicity of the State, as a declaration of Quebec’s “particular attachment to State laicity” and an affirmation that “the state is a lay state”. The passing of Bill 21 and the proceedings of Hak v. Procureure générale du Québec (2019) urge Canadians to consider the consequences of Quebec’s provincial autonomy and, ultimately, demonstrate the need for constitutional amendments to protect vulnerable minority groups against provincial legislature.
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The State of Oregon and Ballot Measure 110: A Trailblazer in Controlled Substance Abuse Legislation
On February 1, 2021, the state of Oregon put into effect the historic Ballot Measure 110, also known as the Drug Decriminalization and Addiction Treatment Initiative. Measure 110 makes Oregon the first state to decriminalize the possession of specified quantities of formerly illegal drugs including heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine, and Oxycodone; it also lessens the punishment for possession of larger quantities than those legalized by the measure. Most importantly, Measure 110 requires the state of Oregon to institute several programs aimed at aid and recovery. This implementation of Measure 110 marks a significant step forward in the outlook on drug control policy, as it reframes substance abuse as a public health issue instead of a criminal justice one.
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Confederate Monuments as Government Speech: Pleasant Grove City v Summum and Its Ambiguities
Following the mass protests caused by the murder of George Floyd, among other unarmed African Americans in May 2020, the removal of Confederate symbols has again captured national attention. Yet, opponents of Confederate monuments now face a major constitutional hurdle: the government speech doctrine, which holds that First Amendment restrictions, such as content discrimination, do not apply when the United States government is the speaker. Therefore, the question becomes: Do Confederate monuments occupying government land adhere to the government speech doctrine?
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Texas v. United States: A Once Old DACA Lawsuit Enters the Courtroom Again
On June 18th, 2020, the historic Supreme Court ruling Department of Homeland Security v. Regents of the University of California (2020) overturned the Trump Administration’s termination of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, otherwise known as DACA. Although this ruling reinforced DACA’s role as part of U.S. immigration policy, DACA has once again come under the spotlight due to a lawsuit in Texas that challenges the very foundation of the program.
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The Thinning Divide Between the U.S. Public School System and Law Enforcement: What Authorizes Constitutional Interrogation in Public Schools?
Public schools have a unique duty to reasonably maintain a safe academic environment for their students. While this is an undisputed fact, methods aimed at ensuring this safety have surfaced as problematic in nature. The Supreme Court must expand their application of the Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination in public school settings in order to ensure adequate due process is being awarded to students subjected to schoolhouse interrogations.
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Current Events | 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.
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Current Events | 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).
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A Win for Clean Water: County of Maui v. Hawaii Wildlife Fund
The 1972 Clean Water Act (CWA) is a landmark piece of legislation that protects American waters from pollutants and discharges. To regulate pollution discharges, the drafters of the CWA created a legal framework, the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES), that requires agencies to obtain an NPDES permit for pollution discharges that originate “from a point source” such as pipes or man-made ditches and enter certain bodies of water, i.e. navigable waters and surface water bodies termed “waters of the United States.” However, the definitions of “point source” and “waters of the United States” in the CWA have proven too vague and have thus been the source of much litigation.
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Rucho, Lamone, and Partisan Gerrymandering: The Role of Mathematics in Establishing Justiciability
Much has changed in the United States legal system since 1812, but the partisan practice of gerrymandering, or drawing political districts to favor one party over another, remains. Since the first salamander-looking “gerrymander” created by 1812 Governor of Massachusetts Elbridge Gerry, gerrymandering techniques have evolved to include “cracking” districts to spread out a certain voting bloc and “packing” as many voters of one bloc into one district. Regardless of technique, this practice essentially allows politicians to pick their voters. With modern technology, computer algorithms can now account for a multitude of other factors including voter demographics in drawing a district, making the redistricting process limitless in its vulnerability to partisanship. This phenomenon has raised a key legal question: When does partisan gerrymandering become constitutionally impermissible?
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