This Week in Civil Rights and Civil Liberties
Welcome to This Week in Civil Rights and Civil Liberties. This week, President Biden forms a panel to study Supreme Court reform, Maryland establishes a multitude of police reform measures, and California’s COVID-19 related restrictions are once again struck down by...
Historic New York State Legislation Shows Us What is Possible When Elected Officials Listen to Organizers and Directed-Impacted Communities
On the morning of March 31st, New York, home to the city once considered to be the marijuana arrest capital of the world, became the 15th state to legalize the recreational use of marijuana. Just hours later, the Governor signed into law an act dramatically limiting...
Pretrial Detention Has Become Exponentially More Deadly in the Pandemic
Pretrial detention, or keeping a person accused of a crime in jail until their trial, is a common practice throughout the United States. Though the system is portrayed as a way to protect public safety and ensure people show up for their trials, most often it instead...
The Family Regulation System: Why Those Committed to Racial Justice Must Interrogate It
Photo credit: The Imprint This past summer, the broadest protests in U.S. history erupted in response to the murders of Black people, like Tony McDade, George Floyd, and Breonna Taylor, at the hands of law enforcement. Calls to defund the police and reinvest those...
Justice for Breonna Taylor: The Abuse of Prosecutorial Discretion
On March 13th, 2020, Breonna Taylor, an EMT, aspiring nurse, and unarmed Black woman, was fatally shot in her home. Months after she was senselessly killed by police, Kentucky Attorney General, Daniel Cameron, recommended charges against just one of the three officers...
On one read, Fulton is decidedly narrow; on another, it represents a subtle but worrisome expansion of religious liberty at the expense of other fundamental rights. Read below! https://harvardcrcl.org/a-tale-of-two-fultons/ https://twitter.com/HarvardCRCL/status/1406982603094335492
New on the Amicus Blog: @samjuneneal examines the Supreme Court's limited decision in Fulton v. City of Philadelphia, and what it means for both the future of free exercise principles and LGBTQ rights https://harvardcrcl.org/a-tale-of-two-fultons/
Though the Supreme Court's decision yesterday in Fulton has been hailed as narrow, its silent expansion of religious liberty should give LGBT rights litigants pause. I wrote about it for the @HarvardCRCL blog. Read here: https://harvardcrcl.org/a-tale-of-two-fultons/
A new episode of our podcast, Taking Liberties, is up! On this episode, editor Laura Garcia speaks with @MALDEF's Nina Perales. They discuss her work as an impact litigator, voting rights, civil rights issues facing the LatinX community, and more.
https://harvardcrcl.org/taking-liberties-episode-16-nina-perales-of-maldef/
Hey! You! It's Friday afternoon and I know you're not really working. Take a minute to read my post on @HarvardCRCL's blog! I reflect on my recent experience in West Roxbury court and how we define "efficiency" in the criminal legal system.
https://harvardcrcl.org/criminally-inefficient/