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.

Who Deserves to Be Forgiven?

Forgiveness is a public good, but it is doled out unevenly. Justice demands we widen its reach beyond the select few.

How Law Made Neoliberalism

If we are to emerge from this era of crisis, we need legal thinking that operates on fundamentally different presumptions.

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.

Democracy Is on the Ballot

Understanding Trump's strategy.

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?

The Political Economy of Saving the Planet

An interview with Noam Chomsky and Robert Pollin on the climate crisis, COVID-19, and the future of environmental politics. 

When Quotas Come Up Short

Some gender equality initiatives help to reinforce exclusion rather than dismantle it.

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