Law
The Other Nuremberg Trials, Seventy-Five Years On
The failed efforts to prosecute businessmen who profited from the Nazi war machine.
Derek Chauvin and the Myth of the Impartial Juror
What should “impartiality” mean for jurors in a historically unequal criminal legal system?
Is There a Right to Heresy?
A proposed French bill says so. But, strictly speaking, there can be no such thing as blasphemy within the terms of secular public order.
We Can No Longer Deny the Atrocities in Ethiopia
A civil war in the northern region of Tigray broke out in November. Denial within the international community has prevented much-needed humanitarian aid.
Algerian Jews Have Not Forgotten France’s Colonial Crimes
A recent report neglects to mention how France forced Arab Jews to adopt the European persona of Jew as citizen and see Arabs and Muslims as others.
A Parable and Parody of Restorative Justice
The Netflix series Dead to Me suggests that we might get closer to justice by forgiving each other and ourselves for the sometimes literally fatal flaw of being human.
How Nations Heal
We cannot simply put the past behind us. The framework of transitional justice offers a promising path forward.
Time Is the Universal Measure of Freedom
Labor activists once understood time to be a checking mechanism on market activity.
Mourning in Tehran
On Ashura, Shi’a Muslims grieve the Prophet’s grandson. But with Iran crippled by COVID-19 and U.S. sanctions, it was also an occasion this year to mourn the country’s deaths from disease and despair.
Bolsonaro’s War Against Reason
The Brazilian president’s offensive against universities threatens democracy and recalls the dark years of the country’s dictatorship.
Democracy Hangs in the Balance
Part two of a conversation on voter turnout, vote counting, and what we can expect now.
How Criminal Law Lost Its Mind
Many U.S. criminal statutes betray the bedrock legal principle of mens rea: the notion that actions are criminal only when they are accompanied by a guilty mind.
Our Undemocratic Constitution
Amy Coney Barrett’s confirmation is a sham, but it is one the Constitution allows. There’s only one way out of this crisis: we must amend.
How to Talk about COVID-19 in Africa
To ask why COVID-19 hasn’t been deadlier in Africa is to suggest that more Africans should be dying. We need better questions.
Save the Equal Rights Amendment
Renewed efforts to quash it stand to wipe out a hundred years of women’s work as constitution-makers.
The Law Ought to Be King
Thailand has been gripped by the largest wave of protest in years, forcing a reckoning between the country’s dual structures of democracy and monarchy.
In the Shadow of Reagan
Only a few decades old, the corporate autocracy the former president unleashed on the United States is not natural law. It had to be created, and it can also be undone.
Colonizing the Future
Working people are forever kept on the brink of going broke—preventing them from having any control over their own futures.
U.S. Politics is Failing Children
Everyone agrees that child poverty is a problem. Why are Democrats and Republicans so bad at addressing it?