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Immigration law is controversial, complicated and contested. Situated at the intersection of domestic concerns and international obligations, asylum law is infused with 10 times as much controversy, complication and contestation as many other parts of immigration law.
As a student-athlete at a Division I school, one is often faced with the question of which part of his or her hyphenated descriptor actually describes her occupation better.
Duke is expensive. There is no doubt about it. A good education in the hallowed halls of Gothic architecture costs big bucks. Even if the Duke administration tells us that it is investing an average of $90,000 in each student’s education, the $60,000 a year that it costs to be an undergraduate at this school is a significant and often burdensome financial commitment. Of course, current and prospective Duke students are entitled to choose any available legal means of raising those funds, from federal financial aid, to local scholarships, to work-study programs, to part-time jobs in the service industry, to acting in pornographic films.
The parade of horribles is almost inevitable.
Over the past year or so, North Korea has appeared in U.S. headlines for everything from the idiosyncrasies of its leader, Kim Jung Un, to Dennis Rodman’s entertaining infatuation with the isolated country, to Kim Jung Un’s refusal to budge on his country’s nuclear aspirations.
Last week, the House of Representatives did something pretty special—it passed a bill. It has already been diagnosed with a fatal flaw, however, because President Obama almost immediately stated that he would veto the bill if it ever comes across his desk. What is this intriguing bit of proposed legislation? H.R. 7, the No Tax Payer Funding for Abortion Act.
On New Year’s Eve, shortly before dropping the ball in Times Square, Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor dropped the ball on women’s reproductive health.
An independent judiciary is the hallmark of a functioning democracy. Judges, especially those primarily responsible for interpreting the Constitution, need to be able to reach decisions based on constitutional principles without undue extraneous political pressure. Naturally, this principle of judicial independence runs up against the democratic theory of government, under which power is based on the consent of the governed. According to Alexander Hamilton, judges were responsible for enforcing the people’s will as expressed in the Constitution and prevent abuses of power by the legislative and executive branches. Ever since the emergence of political parties in the 1790s, however, the impartiality of the judiciary has been compromised by partisanship in the nomination of federal judges. The effect of this partisanship was magnified last week when two federal appeals courts upheld state laws imposing sharp limits on abortion and birth control.
In the paradoxically blistering and dripping afternoon heat of August, as you proudly tack a whiteboard to the door of your newly arranged dorm room, you bid adieu to your parents. Their faces reflect their conflicted feelings of pride and terror, as their child is about to embark on a four-year journey that will change her life in unimaginable and unpredictable ways. She might exchange her childhood desire to become a doctor for the equally eyesight-damaging career goal of becoming a lawyer. Or she might eschew the post-grad route altogether and opt instead for a lucrative career in finance or consulting, or a slightly less well-remunerated job as a teacher or a Peace Corps volunteer. Whatever transformation ends up happening, parents and students alike can rest assured that students will come out the other side as different people, for better or for worse.
When Chief Justice John Roberts gutted the Voting Rights Act last June, he argued that the United States is no longer divided along racial lines. In other words, he maintains that the country has managed to eradicate racism and that protective measures to ensure tactics such as poll taxes, literacy requirements and gerrymandering do not suppress minority votes are, therefore, no longer necessary. The Chief Justice’s remarks sparked substantial outrage, and the force of his argument was undermined by the almost immediate enforcement of voter ID laws in Texas and Mississippi. Officially intended to combat voter fraud, these measures did not pass the “preclearance” procedures under the Voting Rights Act and could substantially suppress minority and low-income votes.
The Netherlands has some skeletons in its closet. Nine times out of 10, when I tell someone that I’m Dutch (and they don’t ask me if I’ve ever been to Copenhagen), I am immediately hit with stories about that one amazing and barely remembered weekend he or she spent in Amsterdam. But my birth country’s cultural skeletons don’t carry the sweet pungent smell of American college students on a life-altering summer backpacking experience through Europe. Unfortunately, Dutch tradition has a very engrained example of racism. One that I did not even realize existed until I was a teenager.
Last summer, the North Carolina legislature unanimously passed the Safe Harbor/Victims of Human Trafficking Act. This was an impressive feat not only because of the bill’s unanimous support, but also because it exemplifies an increased awareness across the nation of the slavery that persists in the United States today. “White slavery” in the United States is no long white. Sexual slaves no longer conform to the Eastern European stereotype. Rather, the majority of victims of sex trafficking in the United States come from Thailand, Mexico, Guatemala, the Philippines and China. Further, trafficking in persons is not limited to sex trafficking. In fact, many men, women and children are victims of forced labor. The most impressive reconceptualization that has occurred in the past decade in the United States, however, is the redefinition of prostitution to accommodate the effects of sex trafficking. Since North Carolina just recently legally changed its definition of prostitution, I would like to focus on how the Safe Harbor Act amended state definitions of slavery and prostitution.
The storm has passed. The clouds looked purplish green and ominous for a while, but the threat of war with Syria seems to have dissipated without a single drop of rain. President Obama drew a line in the sand at the use of chemical weapons. Although the consequences of crossing that line initially seemed to promise military repercussions, in the end, diplomacy took the day, and CNN’s impressive graphic for the “Crisis in Syria” will suffer from underuse. The television news media has spent hours analyzing whether this peaceful resolution constitutes a loss or a win for the United States and President Obama. But the real question is why the line was drawn at the use of chemical weapons, and why that was a promise the United States felt compelled to stand by.
The storm has passed. The clouds looked purplish green and ominous for a while, but the threat of war with Syria seems to have dissipated without a single drop of rain. President Obama drew a line in the sand at the use of chemical weapons. Although the consequences of crossing that line initially seemed to promise military repercussions, in the end, diplomacy took the day, and CNN’s impressive graphic for the “Crisis in Syria” will suffer from underuse. The television news media has spent hours analyzing whether this peaceful resolution constitutes a loss or a win for the United States and President Obama. But the real question is why the line was drawn at the use of chemical weapons, and why that was a promise the United States felt compelled to stand by.
I am not an economist. My knowledge of economic issues is limited to what I can glean from newspaper articles. But I would like to think that I have at least a little bit of common sense. So when I am confronted with the fact that the last time Congress increased the federal minimum wage was 2009, and that it has not touched the federal minimum wage for tipped workers in over 20 years, my common sense tells me something has to change.
In the midst of burgeoning Orwellian fears this summer, Anthony Weiner played an important role. At the end of May, late-night talk show hosts and comedians were presented with a bottomless well of hot dog humor when Weiner announced his candidacy for mayor of New York City. When The Guardian published the first exclusive based on Edward Snowden’s leak at the beginning of June, Weiner’s campaign continued to provide comic relief. In July, Edward Snowden took refuge in the international arrivals terminal of the Moscow airport, and the Obama administration scrambled to justify its surveillance programs to its own citizens and the rest of the world. In the meantime, more inappropriate pictures of Weiner surfaced, and he reaffirmed his continuing commitment to his mayoral campaign.
I may be a product of a Facebook-obsessed, non-pocket-knife-carrying airplane passenger generation, but last week’s big National Security Administration scandal didn’t really shock me. My essential reaction to the news that the federal government tracks phone and Internet habits was one of indifference.
During their first elementary school social studies lesson, American students learn that we live in a nation of immigrants...although perhaps not in so many words. In any case, our students are taught to admire and respect the pilgrims for their brave and courageous trek to the New World. Every Thanksgiving, elementary school classrooms across the country dedicate a bulletin board to hand turkeys and the Mayflower. Every fifth grader is expected to be able to rattle off the names of Christopher Columbus’s ships: the Niña, the Pinta and the Santa María.
On Feb. 18, 2010, the FBI raided the Women’s Medical Society, with the aim of collecting evidence that it was illegally selling prescription drugs. What they found was something much worse. A flea-infested cat walked across a blood-covered floor. Semi-conscious women sat in waiting and recovery rooms on filthy recliners with blood-stained blankets. Public officials inspected the surgery rooms, and found rusty, outdated equipment, corroded suction tubing that was used for abortion procedures and for breathing assistance, as well as a single blood pressure cuff. Throughout the clinic, in paper bags, cat-food containers and orange juice cartons, officials found fetal remains.
Last week was one for the history books, or at least constitutional law case books, at the Supreme Court. The Court heard oral argument on two cases involving gay marriage. The first, Hollingsworth v. Perry, challenges whether the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment prohibits California from defining marriage solely as the union between a man and a woman. The second, United States v. Windsor, asks whether section three of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) violates the Fifth Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection of the laws as applied to persons legally married under the laws of their state to a member of the same sex.
