In September 2022, California Governor Gavin Newsom passed CARE Court: a first-in-the-nation scheme to address individuals with severe mental health and substance use disorders, emphasizing how “we’re going to do it without taking away people’s rights.” Now, as of October 1, 2023, it is time for the plan to start coming to fruition. Undoubtedly, the […]
Tag: courts
The Future for Racial Justice in U.S. Courts
Nearly one year ago, President Biden’s ascension to office alongside a Democratically controlled Senate and House brought with it a cautiously optimistic hope for legislation that could address racial injustice in the United States. However, much racial justice legislation throughout the year has been unable to withstand the pressures of partisan and intra-party divisions in […]
Is Impartiality in the Supreme Court Possible?
A few weeks after the Supreme Court was under fire for refusing to block a controversial Texas abortion law that jeopardizes the precedent set by the landmark case Roe v. Wade, Justice Amy Coney Barrett publicly defended the court’s inaction. At a Kentucky conference hosted by Republicans, Barrett argued that the Supreme Court is not […]
The Case for Military Justice Reform
For eight years, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York has introduced the same bill in the Senate: the Military Justice Improvement Act (MJIA). Despite the fact that this bill has failed year after year, Gillibrand’s bill has time and time again been cosponsored by the most unlikely of allies – Texas Senator Ted Cruz. Thus, […]
Algorithmic Injustice
Algorithms in the justice system started off as a noble solution to a serious problem: the bias of judges. There are two distinct ways that judges can be biased — targeted bias, such as sexist and racist beliefs, and cognitive bias, ways in which our mental circuitry fails to work logically (such as how judges […]
Rewriting Title IX: A New Chapter in California’s Schools
In 1972 Congress passed Title IX, a sweeping policy of the Education Amendments that protects students from discrimination based on sex in education programs or activities that receive federal financial assistance. Title IX was, and still is, monumental legislation for the protection of women on college campuses: it mandates, among other things, the creation and […]
Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act: The Bad and the Ugly
Advocates of the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act protest President Obama’s veto outside the White House. Stephanie DeSimone was pregnant when her husband, Navy Commander Patrick Dunn was killed at the Pentagon in the September 11 attacks in 2001. 15 years later, in 2016, DeSimone filed a lawsuit against the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. […]