7/31/17  //  Commentary

By Saul Cornell: The opinion striking down D.C.'s gun law under the Second Amendment relies heavily on a selective culling of historical evidence—and a shocking ignorance of the most important facts about Anglo-American criminal law and its history.

7/27/17  //  Commentary

The case against felon disenfranchisement is overwhelming as a matter of public policy. This matters for the constitutional analysis.

7/20/17  //  Commentary

On this week’s episode of Versus Trump, we discuss the litigation against the newly-created Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity, that has Kansas Secretary of State—and repeat defendant in voting rights litigation—Kris Kobach as its now-infamous Vice Chair. Listen now!

7/10/17  //  Commentary

In a challenge to Texas's strict voter ID law, DOJ has just turned its back on minority voters and victims of discrimination in Texas.

7/10/17  //  Commentary

As disenfranchisement and voter suppression efforts are on the rise, one partial response is reenfranchisement.

5/30/17  //  In-Depth Analysis

The president’s proposed budget reveals an intent to roll back protections for the most vulnerable members of society.

5/25/17  //  Commentary

Mitch Landrieu’s speech defending the removal of Confederate war monuments in the heart of New Orleans is an eloquent reminder that the Constitution forbids acts that subordinate or denigrate, whether in the context of religion, LGBT rights, or racial equality.

5/12/17  //  Commentary

President Donald Trump is known for changing his political views after a ten-minute history lesson. In this continuing feature, I encourage the president to take a few minutes to learn about the historical background of things he says. This first edition, on his signing statement regarding HBCUs, concerns one of his favorite historical topics: A nineteenth-century general who saw the Civil War coming, was angry, and did something about it.

5/11/17  //  Quick Reactions

By Jed Shugerman. Trump is using the Comey firestorm as a smoke screen for a potentially more dangerous move: appointing Kris Kobach vice chair of a new “election integrity” commission, with Mike Pence as chair. Kobach will make it a voter-suppression/vote rigging commission, fomenting anti-immigrant and racist fears.

5/9/17  //  Commentary

In a new op-ed, Erwin Chemerinsky and I argue that the entry ban is unconstitutional because it was driven by animus toward Muslims.

5/7/17  //  Commentary

In its Muslim Ban brief, DOJ favorably cites Palmer v. Thompson (1971)—which allowed Jackson, Mississippi to close public pools rather than integrate them. The Fourth Circuit should question DOJ about this stunning citation and make clear that Palmer, an odious ruling, has no place in anti-discrimination law today.

5/2/17  //  Commentary

100 days in and 25 years after the unrest in Los Angeles, the Trump Administration is failing communities entitled to fair and just policing.

4/21/17  //  Commentary

A letter about how to fix DOJ’s Civil Rights Division has some interesting parallels to a recent voting rights dissent.

4/19/17  //  In-Depth Analysis

The Trump Administration may already have the tools it would need to predict with high accuracy the religious identity of a significant percentage of U.S. citizens and visiting Muslims. And software engineers, not lawyers, may be our first line of alarm and defense.

4/13/17  //  Commentary

Given the nativist overtones of his campaign and his administration’s signature policies — from the Muslim ban to an immigration crackdown that equates being a foreign-born minority with criminality — Trump has exploded the fiction that we live in a post-racial society.