It turns out that New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. City of New York was not a watershed Second Amendment decision. That much-discussed case concerned a New York City prohibition on the transportation of firearms outside the city. After the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case and before oral argument, state and city laws…

The United States is now fully subject to the rampaging effects of Covid-19.  Whether the Trump Administration admits it or not is no longer relevant. The virus is unmoved by pleas to focus on the economy or on Trump’s re-election ambitions.  In the midst of this void of leadership, a public health hot spot is…

Not surprisingly, Senator Mitch McConnell has announced that President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial will, at least initially, be bare-bones. McConnell has proposed opening statements from the House impeachment managers and lawyers representing the president, with questions from senators through the Chief Justice. At least at the start, there will be no witness testimony—though a majority…

This article was written in conjunction with Professor Carla Spivack. Professor Spivack is an Oxford Research Professor and the Director of the Certificate Program in Estate Planning at Oklahoma City University School of Law. The will and trust of Jeffrey Epstein, financier and accused sex trafficker, have been making headlines this week. These documents seem to have…

As reported in the New York Times, the judge overseeing the military tribunal of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and the four other suspects believed to have designed and organized the September 11 attacks has set a trial date of January 2021. Although there have been numerous court hearings for these five suspects since they arrived at Guantanamo, there…

Back in May, the New York Times published a piece by the technology entrepreneur, Heidi Messer, in which she argued that the time has come to “stop fetishizing privacy,” understood as control over one’s personal information. Her basic contention is that the modern narrative about information privacy – that is, control over information about ourselves – is outdated. She…

On June 26, 2019 the Supreme Court issued its much-anticipated decision in Kisor v. Wilkie.  In it, the Court preserved the Auer doctrine, which requires judges to give deference to federal agencies in interpreting their regulations. The Court’s elaborate reexamination of this doctrine — named for Auer v. Robbins, a 1997 case in which Justice Antonin Scalia endorsed it…

The truth may be out there, but President Donald Trump is doing his level best to prevent its discovery. His latest effort is the assertion of executive privilege in the face of congressional inquiries into the addition of a citizenship question to the 2020 census. The move is not likely to go unchallenged—and, in this…

For some time, the Supreme Court and Congress have jointly viewed the federal court system as a special, nearly exclusive forum for resolving disputes. Congress has permitted federal courts to hear only those cases that directly invoke a federal law, or in which the parties are citizens of entirely different states. And the Supreme Court…

The US government is tracking people who oppose its unlawful and inhuman practices.  In February of 2019, I filed Communiques with UN Special Rapporteurs, asking for their intervention with the US government.  UN human rights mechanisms are a last resort, utilized when a person’s own government is harming them, and refuses requests for transparency about…