Law

When Diversity Matters

During October’s marathon argument in a pair of affirmative action cases, the most racially diverse Supreme Court in US history debated the value of diversity.

January 19, 2023 issue

Michael C. Dorf and Laurence H. Tribe

Court v. Chatbot

In a recent experiment, chatGPT showed a more developed moral sense than the Supreme Court’s current conservative supermajority.

December 26, 2022

Sean Wilentz

The Emancipators’ Vision

Was abolition intended as a perpetuation of slavery by other means?

December 22, 2022 issue

Peter Canby

The Death Squad Dossier

Decades after Guatemala’s long civil war, a chronicle of government kidnapping and disappearance is bringing former officials to trial. Will there be justice for the victims?

December 8, 2022 issue

David Cole

Originalism’s Charade

Two new books make a devastating case against claims that the Constitution should be interpreted on the basis of its purported “original meaning.”

November 24, 2022 issue

Bill Keller

Reform or Abolish?

American prisons are often unjust, inhumane, and ineffective at protecting public safety. Mariame Kaba and Ruth Wilson Gilmore believe they should be eliminated entirely.

November 3, 2022 issue

Jed S. Rakoff

A Prisoner of His Own Restraint

Felix Frankfurter was renowned as a liberal lawyer and advocate. Why did he turn out to be such a conservative Supreme Court justice?

November 3, 2022 issue

Linda Greenhouse

A Powerful, Forgotten Dissent

Stephen Breyer’s dissent in the Supreme Court’s Parents Involved case has proved prophetic about the decision’s consequences for racial integration in public schools.

October 6, 2022 issue

Essays by Laurence Tribe

Laurence H. Tribe

Deconstructing Dobbs

Whether or not one sees the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision as barely concealed theocracy, it fails to provide any coherent legal analysis of why the right to abortion is not protected by the Fourteenth Amendment.

September 22, 2022 issue

Laurence H. Tribe

Politicians in Robes

Why does Stephen Breyer continue to insist that the Supreme Court is apolitical?

March 10, 2022 issue

Judge Antonin Scalia in his office, shortly before his confirmation to the Supreme Court, Washington, D.C., July 28, 1986

Laurence H. Tribe

The Scalia Myth

The selection of a justice to serve for life on the nation’s highest court is far too consequential to be treated either as an abstract referendum on legal methodology or as a game to be played for partisan advantage.

February 27, 2016

Laurence H. Tribe

Pursuing the Pursuit of Happiness

Traditional Supreme Court precedent may depend too much on substantive due process to safeguard human rights. “A better system of reason,” argued Charles Black, may be found in the Declaration of Independence, the Ninth Amendment, and the Privileges or Immunities Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment.

September 24, 1998 issue

Laurence H. Tribe

The Latest

Eric Foner

A Regional Reign of Terror

Most Americans now grasp that violence was essential to the functioning of slavery, but a new book excavates the lesser known brutality of everyday Black life in the Jim Crow South.

April 6, 2023 issue

Scott W. Stern

The Lost Promise of Environmental Rights

Fifty years ago, working-class activists tried to make courts and legislatures affirm rights to clean air and water. Today that strategy is on the verge of a comeback.

March 15, 2023

Liza Batkin

Men Explain Abortion Drugs to the FDA

In a Texas lawsuit, Christian medical organizations are asking a hand-picked judge to make the FDA rescind its approval of mifepristone. They might succeed.

March 7, 2023

Sarah Schulman

Red Lights, Blue Lines

Three recent books examine the discrimination and hypocrisy at the heart of policing “vice.”

March 23, 2023 issue

Liza Batkin

The Empty Words of the Religious Right

The legal group Alliance Defending Freedom has perfected a tactic for twisting the First Amendment: casting discriminators as visionaries persecuted by despotic laws.

February 10, 2023

Felicia Kornbluh

The Grassroots of ‘Roe’

My mother’s part in the 1970 repeal of New York’s abortion law is a lesson for today’s activists: all politics is local.

January 16, 2023

Liza Batkin

Controversy

In a case litigating Andy Warhol’s use of a photograph of Prince, the Supreme Court wades into the uncomfortable territory where art criticism and copyright law collide.

October 25, 2022

Saidiya Hartman

The Hold of Slavery

In the archive of slavery, I encountered a paradox: the recognition of the slave’s humanity and status as a subject extended and intensified servitude and dispossession.

October 24, 2022