Analysis and Commentary Posted in 2013-04
The Supreme Court Will Review a Michigan Affirmative Action Case Next Term, but May Address the Key Issues in It This Term
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Justia columnist and Cornell law professor Michael Dorf comments on a set of key affirmative action issues that the Supreme Court may address this term and/or the next. The programs at issue include affirmative action in state public higher education, employment, and contracting. As Dorf notes, the Michigan affirmative action case that the Court will address is more complicated than it may at first seem, in part because Court precedents establish limits on how a state or local government may go about eliminating or preventing laws that benefit racial minorities. Dorf also notes that an issue that is important here also crops up in the Prop 8 case currently before the Court: the issue of the import of giving and then taking away rights.

What’s the Matter with North Dakota and Arkansas? Two State Legislatures Pass Highly Restrictive and Unconstitutional Abortion Laws
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Justia columnist and Hofstra law professor Joanna Grossman comments on two states’ decisions to pass abortion laws despite the fact that under U.S. Supreme Court precedent, it is very clear that these new laws are unconstitutional. Grossman explains the relevant tenets of constitutional law regarding abortion, and details exactly why both North Dakota’s and Arkansas’s laws flout the U.S. Supreme Court’s precedents. Grossman also covers other abortion laws that have been passed by state legislatures despite their very clear unconstitutionality, and notes that the new laws do not gibe with public opinion regarding abortion rights.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit Rules in Favor of a Public Elementary School Student Who Sought to Pass Out Invitations to Her Church’s Party to Her Classmates
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Justia columnist and attorney Julie Hilden comments on a recent school speech decision from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. The case involved a fifth grader who had sought to invite her classmates to her church's Christmas party. The court invoked the Tinker test, which asks whether student speech causes substantial disruption in the school's setting. The case also raised the intriguing question of how old students need to be to have their speech in the school setting protected by the Tinker precedent.

Meet our Columnists
Vikram David Amar

Vikram David Amar is a Distinguished Professor of Law at UC Davis School of Law and a Professor of Law and Former Dean at the University of Illinois College of Law on the Urbana-Champaign campus.... more

Neil H. Buchanan

Neil H. Buchanan, an economist and legal scholar, is a visiting professor at the University of Toronto Law school. He is the James J. Freeland Eminent Scholar Chair in Taxation Emeritus at the... more

John Dean

John Dean served as Counsel to the President of the United States from July 1970 to April 1973. Before becoming White House counsel at age thirty-one, he was the chief minority counsel to the... more

Michael C. Dorf

Michael C. Dorf is the Robert S. Stevens Professor of Law at Cornell University Law School. He has written hundreds of popular essays, dozens of scholarly articles, and six books on constitutional... more

Samuel Estreicher

Samuel Estreicher is Dwight D. Opperman Professor of Law and Director of the Center of Labor and Employment Law and Institute of Judicial Administration at New York University School of Law. He... more

Leslie C. Griffin

Dr. Leslie C. Griffin is the William S. Boyd Professor of Law at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas Boyd School of Law. Prof. Griffin, who teaches constitutional law and bioethics, is known for... more

Joanna L. Grossman

Joanna L. Grossman is the Ellen K. Solender Endowed Chair in Women and Law at SMU Dedman School of Law and is currently serving as the Herman Phleger Visiting Professor at Stanford Law School. ... more

Marci A. Hamilton

Professor Marci A. Hamilton is a Professor of Practice in Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania. She is also the founder and CEO of CHILD USA, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit academic think... more

Joseph Margulies

Mr. Margulies is a Professor of Government at Cornell University. He was Counsel of Record in Rasul v. Bush (2004), involving detentions at the Guantánamo Bay Naval Station, and in Geren v. Omar... more

Austin Sarat

Austin Sarat is the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science at Amherst College.Professor Sarat founded both Amherst College’s Department of Law,... more

Laurence H. Tribe

Laurence H. Tribe is the Carl M. Loeb University Professor Emeritus at Harvard University and Professor of Constitutional Law Emeritus at Harvard Law School, where he has taught since 1968. Born in... more

Lesley Wexler

Lesley Wexler is a Professor of Law at the University of Illinois College of Law. Immediately prior to taking the position at Illinois, Wexler was a Professor of Law at Florida State University,... more