Law Commons^™

Florida Governor Desantis’ Transport Of Migrants To Massachusetts Is A “Crude Political Tactic…Playing With People’S Lives,” Law Expert Says, Rich Barlow, Sarah R. Sherman-Stokes

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Massachusetts officials say Florida may have broken the law by transporting 50 Venezuelan immigrants to Martha’s Vineyard on September 14.

Rachel Rollins, US Attorney for the District of Massachusetts, says she’s reviewing whether the unannounced transport violated laws against human trafficking, coercion, or other crimes. Lawyers and aid workers on the Vineyard report that the immigrants were lied to about jobs and housing awaiting them in Massachusetts, about landing in Boston, and about having to register their new addresses with federal citizenship and immigration officials.

Data Vu: Why Breaches Involve The Same Stories Again And Again, Woodrow Hartzog, Daniel Solove

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In the classic comedy Groundhog Day, protagonist Phil, played by Bill Murray, asks “What would you do if you were stuck in one place and every day was exactly the same, and nothing that you did mattered?” In this movie, Phil is stuck reliving the same day over and over, where the events repeat in a continual loop, and nothing he does can stop them. Phil’s predicament sounds a lot like our cruel cycle with data breaches.

Every year, organizations suffer more data spills and attacks, with personal information being exposed and abused at alarming rates. While Phil …

Massachusetts Needs More Ex-Public Defenders As Judges, Sadiq Reza

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Four to one.

That is the ratio of former prosecutors to public defenders who sit on the seven-person Supreme Judicial Court, our highest state court.

On our 25-member Appeals Court, which sits one level below the SJC and is the final word in the vast majority of criminal cases, the count is worse: 16 to three. But two of those former public defenders also worked as prosecutors before reaching the bench; and two other appellate judges, while never formal prosecutors, worked in the Attorney General's Office (i.e., in other law enforcement roles).

This staggering imbalance of experience and outlook is …

Teacher And Lawyer, Constance Browne Is Driven By Social Justice, Constance A. Browne

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Constance Browne’s passion for justice has deep roots.

William Holt, her grandfather, was born in a women’s prison outside Boston in either 1887 or 1888. His mother had been incarcerated—no one is sure why. Then, when Holt was three or four years old, he was taken by rail to Maine with other orphans intended to become farm laborers. Did his mother consent to letting him go? No one knows that either.

Eventually Holt landed with a family in North Waterford who treated him well, though it seems he was never adopted. He graduated from Bowdoin College and the Medical School …

Pov: What Rights Could Unravel Next, In Light Of Draft Opinion By Scotus Overturning Roe V. Wade, Robert L. Tsai

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Beyond what Alito’s draft opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization portends for the future of abortion rights is the striking method of analysis he employs in the reported draft. Despite his many efforts to reassure that the opinion “does not undermine” other constitutional rights “in any way,” it actually outlines a roadmap for the withdrawal of other cherished constitutional rights.

Is The End Of Roe V. Wade Near? Leaked Scotus Brief Says Yes, Nicole Huberfeld, Linda C. Mcclain

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Protesters on both sides of the abortion debate descended on the US Supreme Court Monday night and into Tuesday after a leaked secret draft of a US Supreme Court opinion indicated that a majority of justices support overturning Roe v. Wade, after almost 50 years of legalized abortion rights in America. If finalized, possibly as soon as this summer, the bombshell could trigger a cultural tsunami across American life, forcing some women to travel to another state for an abortion and putting the divisive issue at the heart of the fall midterm elections.

Pov: Why The Crown Act Is Needed, Angela Onwuachi-Willig

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Imagine, for one minute, that we live in an alternate universe where employer and school grooming policies that ban “unprofessional” or “faddish” hairstyles are routinely employed as a reason for firing, or refusing to hire, individuals with naturally straight hair. The normative standard for hair in this alternate universe is tightly coiled, curly hair—the kind of hair texture that actors like Denzel Washington or Issa Rae are born with, hair texture that is best suited for natural and protective hairstyles like locs, twists, braids, and Bantu knots.

William Fairfield Warren Distinguished Professorships Honor Mark Grinstaff, Gary Lawson, And Dana Robert, Gary S. Lawson

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“Through their research, scholarship, and teaching, Professors Robert, Grinstaff, and Lawson represent the very best of Boston University’s faculty—leading in their fields and being model citizens of our University. I am very proud to honor them as Warren Professors,” says Robert A. Brown, University president.

Established in 2008 and named in honor of BU’s first president, the William Fairfield Warren Distinguished Professorships are bestowed upon senior faculty members who remain actively involved in research, scholarship, teaching, and the University’s civic life.

“She’S Earned This”: Angela Onwuachi-Willig Rejoices In Historic Confirmation, Angela Onwuachi-Willig

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Angela Onwuachi-Willig, the dean of Boston University’s School of Law—the first Black woman to be dean of a top-20 law school—is rejoicing. The first Black woman has been confirmed to the US Supreme Court.

Onwuachi-Willig has had Ketanji Brown Jackson’s back from the moment President Biden announced he would nominate the federal judge to the nation’s highest court.

Bu Celebrates Ketanji Brown Jackson’S Rise To Us Supreme Court, Nicole Huberfeld

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The operative word about Ketanji Brown Jackson is “first.” Once she is sworn in to the US Supreme Court, after being confirmed by the Senate Thursday 53-47 (three Republicans joined Democrats in supporting her), she will be the first Black woman on the high court in its 233 years. And she will be the first former public defender to join the court. Brown Jackson—the daughter of a lawyer and a school principal and currently a federal appellate judge in Washington, D.C.—won Senate confirmation after a bruising hearing last week where Republican senators tried to label her as an extreme liberal …

An Institute Of One's Own: Polly Bunting's "Messy Experiment" Of Helping Women Navigate Work-Family Conflict, Linda C. Mcclain

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Maggie Doherty, The Equivalents: A Story of Art, Female Friendship, and Liberation in the 1960s (2021).

In 1960, Mary (“Polly”) Ingraham Bunting, newly-appointed President of Radcliffe College, wrote an essay for The New York Times Magazine to encourage applications to the new Radcliffe Institute for Independent Study. In the essay, Bunting connected the Institute’s goal of ending the “waste of highly talented, educated womanpower” to helping women as well as to better realizing America’s “heritage” and “aspirations.” The Institute would help “intellectually displaced women”—mothers whose homemaking and childcare responsibilities had interrupted their careers—get back on track through a financial stipend …

Law Dean’S Letter Urges Confirmation Of Biden’S Historic Scotus Pick, Ketanji Brown Jackson, Angela Onwuachi-Willig

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In a letter citing Black women’s underrepresentation on the federal bench, Angela Onwuachi-Willig, dean of the BU School of Law, and more than 200 other Black women law deans and professors urged the US Senate on Friday to confirm President Joe Biden’s nominee, Ketanji Brown Jackson, to the nation’s highest court “swiftly and with bipartisan support.”