Vol. 54, No. 2
Latest Edition
Read about civil rights law’s inner-city crisis, parental rights, jails as polling places, and more in the latest edition of the Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review.
Recent Volumes
Vol. 54, No. 2, Summer 2019
Read about civil rights law’s inner-city crisis, parental rights, jails as polling places, and more in Vol. 54, No. 2.
Vol. 54, No. 1, Spring 2019
Read about consumer abuses in the criminal legal system, energy and environmental justice, forced arbitration, and more in Vol. 54, No. 1.
Vol. 53, No. 2, Fall 2018
Read about indigenous water rights, prison labor, infrastructural exclusion, and more in Vol. 53, No. 2.
The Latest
This Week in Civil Rights and Civil Liberties: February 24, 2020
This week, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Trump administration’s right to prevent immigrants from accessing public assistance, The Fifth Circuit struck down Mississippi’s fetal heartbeat abortion ban, and the Eleventh Circuit ruled that ex-felons in Florida cannot be barred from voting over unpaid court fees. Meanwhile, California issued an apology for its role in Japanese internment, and the ACLU decried a slew of bills targeting trans youth in state legislatures.
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Extending Attorney-Client Privilege to Prison Email
To ensure that those in prison have equitable and fair access to representation, both the legislature and courts should direct the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) to revise this system. Prisoners should be legally entitled to maintain confidentiality in their communications with attorneys.
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This Week in Civil Rights and Civil Liberties: February 17, 2020
This week, the White House released its legal justification for the Soleimani strike, pressured the DOJ to lower its own sentencing recommendation for Roger Stone, lost a court battle over a Medicaid work requirement, and deployed tactical Border Patrol agents to sanctuary jurisdictions across the country. A new lawsuit challenges roadblocks to insurance coverage for abortion, while criminal justice reform measures in California and New York are implemented and North Dakota tribes achieve a voting rights victory. And, a New York Times reporter asks, “is this the end of privacy as we know it?”
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Rethinking the Use of the Clemency Power
Clemency will certainly not solve mass incarceration, but right now it is a vastly under-utilized tool for chipping away at the injustices the criminal legal system creates and perpetuates. Presidents, and even state governors, who often also have clemency power, should begin exercising this power to curb the legal system’s excesses.
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Protecting the Rights of Suspended Library Patrons
“…this affirmation is the guiding mantra of libraries as society’s most democratic space: a forum for people from all backgrounds to mold their polity through the pursuit of knowledge and dignity. As such, libraries and civil rights intertwine, each buttressing the other.”
read moreTaking Liberties Episode 10: Mark Haidar of the Equal Democracy Project
On this episode, we speak with Mark Haidar, President of The Equal Democracy Project at Harvard Law School, a new student group fighting for voting rights and electoral reform. Follow The Equal Democracy Project on Twitter...
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We need to get the #FAIRAct through the Senate—but until that happens, it's up to states to respond to the forced arbitration crisis. Fantastic new @HarvardCRCL post from @BennJennett & @daveyseligman on how states can take action.
#EndForcedArbitration
https://harvardcrcl.org/sunshine-is-not-enough-state-responses-to-the-enforcement-crisis-caused-by-forced-arbitration/
Still hoping that courts will revive a general liberty or expression right to student dress freedom as @djuna22 and I advocated in @HarvardCRCL. In the meantime, Equal Protection, Free Exercise, and compelled speech doing a decent job policing the boundaries of gov’t overreach. https://twitter.com/galenleigh/status/1199442702582059008
Another thing to be thankful for this week: declaratory judgment finding that the provision of Charter Day School dress code requiring girls to wear skirts violates Equal Protection, & order permanently enjoining the school from establishing or enforcing the provision. Justice!
As someone who used to assist accused students in Title IX proceedings, I think I’m in a good position to say that DeVos’s “due process” regs are unnecessary and dangerous. When they were proposed, I wrote about it for @HarvardCRCL’s blog: http://harvardcrcl.org/why-betsy-devo… https://twitter.com/azbrodsky/status/1192104171664822274
We are expecting @BetsyDeVosED’s final regulations on Title IX and sexual harassment within the month. Based on the previously published proposed rules, we have good reason to think they will be bad.
CR-CL's annual HLS Ames Final Live-blog is LIVE with blow-by-blow commentary by Nicole Franklin as the student competitors face-off before a panel of judges, including Judge Merrick Garland! https://harvardcrcl.org/2019-ames-moot-court-finals-live-blog/.
CR-CL's annual HLS Ames Final Live-blog is LIVE with blow-by-blow commentary by Nicole Franklin as the student competitors face-off before a panel of judges, including Judge Merrick Garland! https://harvardcrcl.org/2019-ames-moot-court-finals-live-blog/.
In light of today's finding against the Trump foundation, I've written a post for the @HarvardCRCL Amicus blog on the importance of transparency in ideological nonprofits. https://harvardcrcl.org/nonprofits-dafs-and-campaigns-a-call-for-more-transparency-in-ideological-nonprofits/ https://twitter.com/Fahrenthold/status/1192535254919237632
BREAKING: @realdonaldtrump ordered to pay $2M in damages for misusing a charity’s money — using it to buy portraits of himself, pay legal settlements, and help his 2016 campaign. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-ordered-to-pay-2-million-to-charities-over-misuse-of-foundation-court-documents-say/2019/11/07/b8f804e2-018e-11ea-9518-1e76abc088b6_story.html
Great to talk with @HarvardCRCL (where I was a staffer 30 years ago -- oy) about the LGBTQ discrimination cases before SCOTUS https://twitter.com/jaredodessky/status/1192481402916409344
For @HarvardCRCL, @emilythemorrow and I spoke to James Esseks of the @ACLU LGBT & HIV Project about his thoughts coming out of oral argument for the Title VII LGBTQ cases before the Supreme Court https://harvardcrcl.org/taking-liberties-episode-9/
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