Amicus Blog
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.
read more
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?”
read more
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.
read more
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 more
Depositions May Protect Defendants’ Sixth Amendment Rights
Though the Sixth Amendment guarantees the right to a trial by jury, fewer than ten percent of individuals going through the criminal legal system exercise that right. In fact, both in the federal and state systems, 97 and 94 percent of felony cases respectively result...
read more
This Week in Civil Rights and Civil Liberties: February 3, 2020
This week, Alabama officials made plans to close one of the state’s most notorious prisons, a Planned Parenthood clinic got the greenlight to become Kentucky’s second abortion provider, and the California senate voted down a bill to address the state’s housing shortage. Meanwhile, the Trump administration has continued to curb immigration, with the Supreme Court’s voting to allow a policy heightening restrictions for poor immigrants, and the announcement of new restrictions for Nigeria and several other countries.
read more
The Fate of Habeas Rights in Expedited Removal Proceedings
This is a guest post authored by Kevin Thompson, a student at University of Minnesota Law School.
read more
Sunshine Is Not Enough: State Responses to the Enforcement Crisis Caused by Forced Arbitration
This is a guest post authored by Jennifer Bennett, a Staff Attorney at Public Justice, and David Seligman, Director of Towards Justice, a non-profit workers’ rights law firm based in Denver, Colorado. Lots of attention these days is rightfully being paid to...
read more
James Wiseman, the NCAA, and State Action
Ultimately, the NCAA has created a disciplinary apparatus that imposes severe punishment on schools who defy its eligibility recommendations, while simultaneously escaping accountability for those recommendations by making the universities take the final action. This is a perversion of our constitutional system that purports to protect an individual’s ability to hold powerful actors accountable and instead renders athletes powerless. Schools escape accountability by deferring to the NCAA, while the NCAA claims its conduct is private and exempt from the requirements of constitutional rights.
read more
This Week in Civil Rights and Civil Liberties: December 2, 2019
Welcome to This Week in Civil Rights and Civil Liberties. This week, the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of the Inspector General released a report on their investigation of the family separation policy, the Oregon Supreme Court limited the ability of police...
read more
FOR DETROIT AND THE NATION, A CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT TO AN EDUCATION IS A WORTHWHILE PURSUIT
Photo credit: Leigh Taylor/The Detroit News Earlier this month, the Sixth Circuit heard oral arguments for a case filed by Public Counsel, a national pro bono law firm which focuses much of its resources on children’s rights, which claims that the conditions in...
read more
Ignoring the Intersectionality of Gun Violence
It’s easier to write off each bout of gun violence as a one-time tragedy, and forget about it until then next one, than it is to address the ways that gun violence disproportionately kills women, racial, ethnic and religious minorities, and members of the LGBTQ+ community.
read more
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/