Justia columnist and former counsel to the president John Dean makes a forceful case against the Republicans’ decision to shut down the government, calling the move “government by extortion,” and explaining precisely why he believes that, for many reasons, the Republicans should have eschewed this gambit as completely out of bounds.

Justia columnist and Cardozo law professor Marci Hamilton contends that Catholic and evangelical leaders are waging a new war against the use of contraception, enlisting public relations experts, lobbyists, and lawyers, despite the fact that very large majorities of Americans support contraception. One strategy, Hamilton notes, involves “conscience clauses” that would, for instance, allow pharmacists not to hand over contraceptives if it violates the pharmacist’s own anti-contraception beliefs.

Justia columnist and Cornell law professor Sherry Colb argues that eating meat from a laboratory culture does not allow diners to evade the ethical problems that otherwise arise from eating meat. For one thing, Colb explains how animals still die from cultured meat, for contrary to popular belief, cultured meat, contrary to popular belief, involves the use and slaughter of animals, as Colb explains. Colb also notes that, unlike a person who needs an organ transplant and has no alternative, a person who buys In Vitro meat has numerous vegan alternatives.

Justia columnist and attorney David Kemp describes two recent lawsuits filed in Virginia challenging that state’s laws prohibiting same-sex marriages. Kemp describes the two cases, explains why Virginia is a favorable venue for such legal challenges, and notes the prevalence of other similar cases around the country. Kemp concludes that the existence of so many cases challenging discriminatory laws must be seen as a step in the right direction for same-sex marriage advocates.

Justia columnist and Hofstra law professor Joanna Grossman and Justia guest columnist and Stanford law professor Lawrence Friedman together comment on an epic contest over an estate that totaled over $300 million. Grossman and Friedman explain why the estate at issue, belonging to a woman named Huguette Clark, raised a host of complex issues that were ripe for a will contest, and they comment on the possibility that the will contest might have been avoided in various ways.

Justia columnist, George Washington law professor, and economist Neil Buchanan expresses very strong disagreement with the economic policies of Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel, who recently claimed electoral victory. Buchanan contends that Merkel’s policies are bad for Europe, the United States, and the world, and carefully details the reasons behind his conclusions. Though Merkel is little known by Americans, as Buchanan notes, she will surely exert influence on the U.S., so, Buchanan warns, Americans ought to take more notice of her policies and influence.

Justia columnist and Cornell law professor Michael Dorf contends that mass shootings will never lead to gun-control laws. While he notes that the gun lobby plainly plays a role in that situation, Dorf also sees the difficulty of getting such laws passed as a failure of democracy: Although more people favor than oppose additional gun-control measures, the gun-control opponents appear to favor gun rights with greater intensity than the intensity with which the majority favors gun control.

Justia columnist and University of Washington law professor Anita Ramasastry comments on a Southern California school district’s decision to retain a private firm to search the Web and look for public posts, photos, tweets, and other communications made by its students. The district’s stated purpose for retaining the firm is to prevent students from harming others—and, in particular, to stop cyberbullying. But Ramasastry notes that the company that does the monitoring also finds out a lot of other information about students, as well.

In this second of a series of columns on the death penalty in California, Justia guest columnist and Loyola Law School professor Paula Mitchell describes a procedural dilemma facing federal courts in states with the death penalty. Mitchell explains that under a Supreme Court case decided earlier this year, federal courts are not required to stay habeas corpus proceedings for death row inmates who are mentally incompetent. She describes the absurd result this holding creates and calls on death penalty states to implement alternative dispute resolution programs in order to reduce miscarriages of justice and end “taxpayer expenditures on pointless litigation.”

Justia columnist and attorney Julie Hilden comments on a recent Ninth Circuit case regarding the tension between the right to free speech and fears that such speech might spur school violence. Another issue that the case raises is whether the well-known Tinker test for public school student speech needs to be modified or augmented in the Internet Age.

Justia columnist and former counsel to the president John Dean comments on the case of Sarah Jones v. Dirty World Entertainment, which he notes raises a fundamental question about the scope of immunity from defamation liability for Internet Service Providers under Section 230 of The Communications Decency Act (CDA). Dean predicts that the case will be watched closely, as an indication of whether the courts will, in fact, start policing the nearly unlimited immunity that has evolved under Section 230. There are good arguments on both sides of this case, Dean notes, making the case an especially interesting one.

For this year’s Constitution Day, Justia columnist and Cardozo law professor Marci Hamilton comments on three key flaws in the Constitution of 1787. She comments, specifically, on the original Constitution as to the issues of slavery, women’s suffrage, and the civil rights of gay men and lesbians.

Justia columnist and Cornell law professor Sherry Colb comments on the United States Supreme Court’s June grant of certiorari in Cline v. Oklahoma Coalition for Reproductive Justice. The new case confronts the regulation of medically induced abortion and, Colb predicts, may prove to be important and surprising. Colb provides a particular focus here on Justice Kennedy’s possible views on abortion issues.

Justia columnist and Hofstra law professor Joanna Grossman, and Justia guest columnist and University of Pittsburgh law professor Deborah Brake comment on the 40th anniversary of Title IX, which transformed athletics for women and girls. Yet, they note, serious problems remain. Grossman and Brake note issues such as the cost of prizing masculinity in sports and the collateral damage of masculinity, including rape, gang-rape, and male-on-male hazing and assault. They also discuss the daunting task of changing sport culture, suggesting that community sports programs, especially in the younger years, should encourage more co-ed play, so that kids learn young to respect all athletes, both male and female, at a young age.

Justia columnist and attorney Julie Hilden comments on the U.S Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit’s decision invalidating Michigan’s criminal anti-begging statute. The ACLU successfully argued in court that begging is protected, as speech, by the First Amendment. Hilden agrees with the ruling, but also raises the more difficult question of aggressive begging’ and how it can be regulated to strike an appropriate free speech balance.

Justia guest columnist and U.C. Berkeley School of Law professor Saira Mohamed critically discusses the possibility of military force by the United States against Syria. She first describes how unilateral military intervention would violate international law and explains why the United States should avoid it. She then draws alarming parallels to punitive actions taken by the U.S. against Libya in 1986, Afghanistan and Sudan in 1998, and Iraq in 2003. Professor Mohamed concludes with the optimistic perspective that the American public supports the principle that military force should not substitute for diplomacy, and that war is not a legitimate tool of international relations.

Justia guest columnist and Touro Law Center professor Rodger Citron comments on the historic case of Leo Frank, who was convicted of the murder of a woman who worked at the factory he managed, and ultimately lynched by an angry mob, but might well have been innocent. Citron focuses on the case's legal significance as this year marks the 100th anniversary of Frank's conviction, noting two key lessons that we can take from it.

Justia columnist Vikram Amar and Justia guest columnist Alan Brownstein, both U.C. Davis law professors, analyze an important and interesting decision, Demers v. Austin, involving the First Amendment academic-freedom rights of public school and university faculty members that was handed down last week by the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Amar and Brownstein argue that that a more concrete and categorical framework for resolving academic freedom disputes than the Ninth Circuit's needs to be fashioned.

Justia columnist, George Washington law professor, and economist Neil Buchanan sharply questions the competence and knowledge of mainstream media figures who cover economic issues. He illustrates his point with examples in which media figures’ uninformed opinions clash with the much better informed stances of economists regarding, for example, key issues such as budgeting, entitlements, deficits, health-care inflation, and the debt ceiling.

Justia guest columnist and Loyola Law School professor Paula Mitchell describes California voters' changing views on the death penalty. She provides several possible explanations for the death penalty's decreasing support, including the presence of high-profile cases where an innocent person was sentenced to death, lower concerns about crime rates, and the high economic costs of maintaining capital punishment in the state. This is the first of a series of columns by Mitchell discussing the death penalty in California.