Archive for category: Issue Areas

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  The Fifth Circuit’s Troubling Abortion Ruling

  Amicus, Issue Areas, Reproductive Rights February 20, 2012 1:31 pm

  The United States Circuit Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit on January 10 upheld a Texas law requiring doctors to show sonograms to patients seeking abortions. The decision functions as an unfortunate emblem of the court’s tendency to treat abortions as quasi-criminal acts rather than a legal medical procedures and improperly infringes upon the privacy and autonomy of patients’ and doctors’. Two key ideas underlie the court’s reasoning in this case: 1) the unborn are citizens of the state, and 2) legislation of this kind is reasonably calculated and reasonably necessary to ensure mature and informed decisions by would-be mothers.

   
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  The Susan G. Komen Foundation’s Planned Parenthood Debacle

  By Nitzan Weizmann, Reproductive Rights February 19, 2012 6:33 pm

  The rule, which the foundation enacted “to fulfill [its] fiduciary duty” to donors, stipulates that it will not give funds to an organization under investigation. However, this particular decision to stop funding seems so closely connected to the political situation and to the perception of Planned Parenthood as a provider of abortion services, that it was almost divorced from public health considerations.

   
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  Data Aggregation, Credit Scoring, and Privacy

  By Andrew Mamo, Consumers and Corporations, Privacy and National Security February 13, 2012 8:55 pm

  There are two distinct problems with data aggregation as a window into character. The first is that the accuracy of profiles built on data aggregation is questionable. The deeper problem is that even with greater accuracy, data is necessarily incomplete.

   
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  Unpaid Internships: Are They Legal?

  By Minal Caron, Labor and Employment, Poverty and Economic Justice February 9, 2012 4:04 pm

  Last week, a former unpaid intern sued her former employer for violating federal and state minimum wage laws. Over one million Americans work as interns each year, and over half are not paid. Many of these unpaid positions should be paid under the Fair Labor Standards Act, but a lack of enforcement has allowed such non-payment to persist.

   
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  Missed Opportunity to Examine Sex Offender Registry Laws

  By Samuel Weiss, Criminal Justice, Poverty and Economic Justice February 8, 2012 11:53 pm

  Last month, a federal court in Michigan had the opportunity to confront the constitutional problems that sex offender registries present. The court ducked them by resolving the case on a narrow question of statutory interpretation, missing the chance to examine whether the registrations are constitutionally acceptable.

   
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  [Update3] SCOTUS Fails to Intervene to Prevent Execution of Mentally Ill Defendant

  By Noah Kaplan, Courts, Criminal Justice, Human Rights February 8, 2012 10:29 pm

  [Update3 - 10PM February 8] Edwin Hart Turner was executed at 7:21PM EST after receiving a lethal injection at the Mississippi State Penitentiary. Turner, represented by attorneys from the Louisiana Capital Assistance Center, had filed a petition for a writ of certiorari to the Supreme Court arguing that the execution would violate the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishments because at the time of his offense Mr. Turner suffered from a serious mental illness.

   
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  Measuring Creativity in the Public Schools

  Education February 7, 2012 8:13 pm

  Though there may be much to be said for the axiom that creativity can’t be quantified, at least three states have been working to develop something akin to an objective measure of imagination.

   
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  Cause for Optimism on Google’s Privacy Policy?

  By Andrew Mamo, Consumers and Corporations, Privacy and National Security February 5, 2012 11:50 pm

  There are clear tradeoffs involved in Google’s new privacy policy, but what does it suggest for the growing problem of data privacy more generally? Despite the seeming novelty of privacy problems in the age of the Internet, we can learn a few lessons by turning to privacy problems at the beginning of the information age.