This Week in Civil Rights and Civil Liberties
Welcome to This Week in Civil Rights and Civil Liberties. SCOTUS will consider access to medical abortions, while the 11th Circuit ok’d Florida’s pay-to-vote system for people convicted of felonies. Three studies shed light on a host of inequities facing Illinois...
PANDEMIC SHINES LIGHT ON INJUSTICES OF MASS INCARCERATION
The COVID-19 pandemic presents a deadly risk to incarcerated people and others who have contact with the criminal justice system. Over 2 million people are incarcerated in jails and prisons in the United States, with another 4.5 million supervised on probation or...
With Decision in Kahler, SCOTUS Upholds Narrowed Insanity Defense
Last Monday, the Supreme Court issued its decision in Kahler v. Kansas and upheld Kansas’s significant narrowing of the insanity defense. Justice Kagan—joined by the five conservative justices—wrote for the majority, rejecting Kahler’s claim that Kansas had...
What’s Happening in the NRA’s Backyard?
When gun control measures stalled at the national level, advocates took a page out of the conservative playbook: they focused on the states. This is not to say that there haven’t been hard-won victories at the national level. After Democrats regained control of the...
The lives of Black victims do not matter nearly as much as those of white ones when it comes to the death penalty, a new study finds.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/03/us/racial-gap-death-penalty.html?referringSource=articleShare
Applications are open for article submissions for CR-CL 56.2. Please submit any articles that broadly touch on civil rights and civil liberties for publication. Details can be found here: https://harvardcrcl.org/submit/
Check out our newest blog post by Christina Coleburn about confronting racism! https://harvardcrcl.org/the-ostrich-rears-its-head-americas-2020-racial-reckoning-is-a-victory-and-opportunity/
Check out the second article in our series about racism and police brutality! Olivia Murray discusses prison abolition: https://harvardcrcl.org/why-8-wont-work/
Check out "Why We Can't Wait"—a powerful piece by Mo Light and the first in our new online series about racism and police brutality: https://harvardcrcl.org/why-we-cant-wait/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=why-we-cant-wait
As a journal, we stand with the student protestors HLS is attempting to discipline for exercising their free speech rights regarding prison divestment. Please sign the petition here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1TGkQyJlUPuvl9wqv5MAis8c7iec9A5JFzY92tj0Z_ns/viewform?edit_requested=true
We have 3 terrific pieces up on how progressives must reclaim the meaning of our Constitution.
Our contributors reflect back on progressives' priorities at the beginning of the Obama Administration and look forward to fights in 2021 and beyond.
https://harvardlpr.com/2020/04/02/online-symposium-the-future-of-progressive-constitutionalism/