In the upcoming weeks, the legislators of my home state of North Carolina will be faced with a dilemma: how does a government compensate victims of a historical atrocity that was deemed legal at the time? At the national level, this question is often asked in the context of slavery [...]
As the allegations of sexual harassment built against Herman Cain this month, Cain’s supporters and the press have quickly invoked race as a part of the discussion in Cain’s presidential campaign. After the press aired the initial allegations of harassment, Cain’s supporters began to echo the “high tech lynching” terminology [...]
Last week, the Eleventh Circuit in Atlanta issued an injunction on two provisions of Alabama’s recent immigration law (known as HB 56), which the Alabama legislature passed in June. The Eleventh Circuit temporarily suspended two sections of HB 56, including the section making it a criminal misdemeanor for failing to [...]
When 96-year-old Dorothy Cooper was born, women were legally barred from voting. With the passage of Tennessee’s new voter identification law, women’s access to the polls is once again in jeopardy. As of last year, Tennessee law requires voters to present a valid, government-issued ID before casting a vote in [...]
In opposition to a bill in the California State Senate allowing public universities and colleges to consider race, gender, ethnicity and national origin in admissions, the College Republicans of UC Berkeley held a bake sale yesterday. Charging sweet-toothed patrons different prices based on their race and gender – whites paying [...]
A round-up of some of the top stories in civil rights and civil liberties news.
U.S. jurisprudence has dealt with constitutional rights since the enactment of the U.S. Constitution. In contrast, it was explicitly decided by the framers of the Australian Constitution to not include a similar Bill of Rights, although the American notions of judicial review, separation of powers, and federalism were incorporated. Accordingly, throughout Australian history courts have rarely acted to protect civil rights on the basis of constitutional interpretation. This method of rights protection has been largely inadequate to protect Indigenous Australians from breaches of their civil rights, particularly in regards to equal protection and racial discrimination.
While the world watches and waits for news on Davis, Lawrence Russell Brewer was put to death in Texas. Brewer is one of the men who, in 1998 in Jasper, Texas, dragged James Byrd, Jr. behind his truck. As easy as it is to hate Brewer, to hate the terrible crime that he committed, to hate his hate, his victim’s son, Ross Byrd, doesn’t want to see him die. “You can’t fight murder with murder.”
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