The Obama administration’s regulations concerning access to oral contraception through employer-provided health insurance allow each person to follow the precepts of his or her religion within the confines of one’s home and body – and protects those of us who choose to follow different precepts than those of religious Conservatives
Last Tuesday, the Supreme Court held that police officers do not need to read prison inmates their Miranda rights when questioning them about events unrelated to their current incarceration. The prisoner in this case was questioned without being read his Miranda rights, and during questioning confessed to actions that formed the basis of a criminal sexual conduct conviction. Justice Alito’s opinion concludes that the prison inmate in this case was not “in custody for Miranda purposes” at the time of his questioning, and therefore that Fields was not constitutionally entitled to receive the warnings set out under Miranda.
Congress has required the Federal Aviation Administration to integrate military drones into U.S. airspace. Past efforts to militarize police forces should make us wary about the influence drones could have in domestic policing.
If it is true that Kagan expressed an opinion on the merits, the dilemma she faces pits the integrity of the Court against what she (and many others) may see as a greater purpose: to fight for and protect a law she apparently believes in passionately. She likely also feels loyalty to the man who put her on the court; after all, if this law is overturned, it might do serious damage to his reelection chances. But should these considerations matter? What about the public’s confidence in an independent and objective judiciary?
The obvious fact that unpaid internships create opportunities for exploitation raises the equally obvious question of how exploitation should be defined.
The right to be forgotten creates a clear tension between two values that many of us concerned with civil liberties share: the protection of free speech and the protection of privacy rights on the Internet.
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.
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.
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.
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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