On November 20, 2019, U.S. District Judge Tanya S. Chutkan issued a preliminary injunction halting four executions that the Justice Department planned to carry out in December. [1] Judge Chutkan stated that the plaintiffs would, “suffer the irreparable harm of being executed under a potentially unlawful procedure before their claims can be fully adjudicated.” [2] These legal challenges to the lethal injection procedure originally stemmed from a series of botched executions in

Since the United States Supreme Court handed down the Graham v. Florida decision in 2010 and Graham’s inevitable sequel, Miller v. Alabama, in 2012, there have been two principles of law operating in conflict with each other: mandatory minimum sentences and the unique way the law treats juveniles. Graham held that a life sentence for a juvenile offender for a non-lethal crime violated Eighth Amendment rights by being too harsh a punishment. Miller extended that doctrine to in

Following the Supreme Court’s decision in Roe v. Wade in 1973, abortion became one of the most polarizing topics in America’s political and public discourse. On March 4, 2020, the Supreme Court will again address the legality and nuance of abortion legislation in the United States, affording the 2020 presidential candidates ample opportunity to comment on, and discuss, the subject.[1] This upcoming case, June Medical Services, LLC v. Gee, revolves around restrictions that leg

Lately, public defenders are leaving their positions to work for the other side – the prosecution. To many aspiring public defenders, or even career public defenders, this may appear as a shock that someone who believes in the adversarial system and ending mass incarceration would want to work as a District Attorney. However, because these former public defenders feel so passionately about ending mass incarceration, they are able to recognize that to end racial biases, prosec

The United States government has been very critical towards the International Criminal Court (ICC) ever since George W. Bush wanted to “unsign” the Rome Statute, the governing document of the ICC. This viewpoint continues under the Trump administration. Just last year the U.S. revoked the visa of the ICC prosecutor, Fatou Besounda, who was investigating Afghan war crimes including crimes that might have been committed by American forces. [1] Trump’s former National Security A