Digital Commons Network^™

Cross, Crucifix, Culture: An Approach To The Constitutional Meaning Of Confessional Symbols, Frederick Mark Gedicks, Pasquale Annicchino

Frederick Mark Gedicks

In the United States and Europe the constitutionality of government displays of confessional symbols depends on whether the symbols also have nonconfessional secular meaning (in the U.S.) or whether the confessional meaning is somehow absent (in Europe). Yet both the United States Supreme Court (USSCt) and the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) lack a workable approach to determining whether secular meaning is present or confessional meaning absent. The problem is that the government can nearly always articulate a possible secular meaning for the confessional symbols that it uses, or argue that the confessional meaning is passive and ineffective. What …

Emerging Technologies And Dwindling Speech, Jorge R. Roig

Jorge R Roig

Restorative Justice In The Gilded Age: Shared Principles Underlying Two Movements In Criminal Justice, Ali M. Abid

Ali M Abid

Two very different approaches to Criminal Justice have developed in recent years suggesting systemic reforms that would reduce rates of crime and incarceration and lessen the disproportionate effect on minority groups and other suspect classes. The first of these is the Restorative Justice movement, which has programs operating in most US states and many countries around the world. The Restorative Justice movement focuses on reintegrating offenders with the community and having them repair the damage directly to their victims. The movement describes itself as based on the systems of indigenous and pre-modern societies and as wholly distinct from the conventional …

A Post-Racial Voting Rights Act, Jason Rathod (R-Z)

Jason Rathod (R-Z)

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 (VRA) was enacted “to foster our transformation to a society that is no longer fixated on race.” Georgia v. Ashcroft, 539 U.S. 461, 490 (2003). This article critiques the prevailing election law scholarship and jurisprudence as out of step with VRA’s post-racial aspirations and offers proposals for Congress to correct course. The United States has long been torn between civic nationalism and racial nationalism. By the mid-20th Century, the uneasy interplay of these visions had produced a remarkable expansion of citizenship to all migrants from Europe alongside appalling discrimination against, or outright exclusion of, …

Accountable Intelligence And Intelligent Accountability, Mary O'Rawe

Mary O'Rawe

Abstract Intelligence led policing is in the ascendancy on a global level. This poses serious and often delegitimated questions around law’s ability to prevent and sanction wrongdoing by state security agents. The ramifications of law’s failures are particularly felt in conflicted and post conflict societies. This paper, through the prism of the Northern Ireland experience, problematises the more global sanitation and reification of ‘covert intelligence’ approaches and their potential to contribute to insecurity rather than security.

Human Rights And Gun Confiscation, David B. Kopel

David B Kopel

This Article addresses a human rights problem which has been generally ignored by the advocates of firearms confiscation: the human rights abuses stemming from the enforcement of coercive disarmament laws.

Part I conducts a case study of the U.N.-supported gun confiscation program in Uganda, a program which has directly caused massive, and fatal, violations of human rights. Among the rights violated have been those enumerated in Article 3 (“the right to life, liberty and security of person” ) and Article 5 (“No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment”) of the Universal …

When Obscenity Discriminates, Elizabeth M. Glazer

Elizabeth M Glazer

When public indecency statutes outlaw gender nonconformity, obscenity discriminates; when movie ratings censor representations of sexual minorities, obscenity discriminates, and discriminates on the basis of their status as sexual minorities. This Article addresses obscenity doctrine’s infliction of first generation, or status discrimination against sexual minorities by conflating “sex” – and the prurient representation of sex that constitutes obscenity – and “sexual orientation.” Civil rights lawyers and scholars have turned their attentions away from “first generation” discrimination,” where groups experience discrimination on the basis of their status, and toward “second generation” discrimination, where groups experience discrimination for failing to downplay or …