Politics Literature Arts Ideas

Law

David Cole

When Rights Went Right

Is the American conception of constitutional rights too absolute?

April 21, 2022 issue

Linda Greenhouse

Should We Reform the Court?

A recent report commissioned by President Biden lets the public in on the fact that the legal academy is close to giving up on the Supreme Court.

April 7, 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

Ariel Dorfman

The Futility of Censorship

Eric Berkowitz’s Dangerous Ideas focuses on heroes and heroines who refused to allow their freedom of expression to be extinguished.

April 7, 2022 issue

David Cole

The University and Freedom of Expression

It is no mere academic matter if Georgetown Law succumbs to pressure to fire Ilya Shapiro over a pair of offensive tweets.

February 15, 2022

Sarah A. Seo

Reimagining the Public Defender

For the poor, who are disproportionately people of color, the criminal justice system in the United States is essentially a plea-and-probation system.

December 2, 2021 issue

Jake Bernstein

Loopholes for Kleptocrats

The term “tax haven” may conjure images of Caribbean islands and palm trees, but two recent books make the case that the world’s leading tax haven is America.

December 2, 2021 issue

David Cole

Let the Decision Stand

Every argument against Roe was squarely rejected in the Supreme Court’s 1992 Casey decision, and nothing has changed since then except the composition of the Court.

November 4, 2021 issue

The End of ‘Roe’?

Melissa Gira Grant

Policing Womanhood

For groups like Alliance Defending Freedom, the erosion of abortion rights and trans rights are complementary pathways to building a Christian nation.

May 15, 2022

Elizabeth A. Reese

Unsteady Ground

Native people have known for a long time that in this country, rights—whether to remain, to pray, to vote, or even to live—are impermanent and fickle things, subject to revision by those in power.

May 14, 2022

Catherine Coleman Flowers

Our Lives in Their Hands

If state governments truly cared about the lives of poor women or our children, they wouldn’t poison our water and pollute our air. They can’t be trusted with our bodies.

May 13, 2022

Sherrilyn Ifill

Stealing the Crown Jewels

Justice Alito purports to place the future of abortion in the hands of women voters—despite abetting the disenfranchisement of Black and Latina women.

May 12, 2022

Paisley Currah

What Sex Does

For transgender people in the United States, the sheer number of institutions with discrete authority to define sex ensnares us in Kafkaesque contradictions.

May 27, 2022

Christine Henneberg

The End of Roe?

Writers respond to the leaked Supreme Court draft decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.

June 9, 2022 issue

Melissa Gira Grant

Policing Womanhood

For groups like Alliance Defending Freedom, the erosion of abortion rights and trans rights are complementary pathways to building a Christian nation.

May 15, 2022

Elizabeth A. Reese

Unsteady Ground

May 14, 2022

Sherrilyn Ifill

Stealing the Crown Jewels

Justice Alito purports to place the future of abortion in the hands of women voters—despite abetting the disenfranchisement of Black and Latina women.

May 12, 2022

Sue Halpern

Before the Fall

As evangelicals came into the GOP tent, Republican voters and politicians traded women’s bodies for political power.

May 11, 2022

Meaghan Winter

Weak Protagonists

While purporting to be the party of reproductive rights, Democrats have consistently failed to take a strong stance on abortion. Can they still stand up to minority rule?

May 10, 2022

Annette Gordon-Reed

Uprooting Rights

The draft opinion looks back longingly to a nineteenth-century understanding of who was in control and whose lives mattered.

May 9, 2022

Charlotte Shane

‘Can You Describe This?’

Every week that I handle calls on the abortion fund’s hotline is a week spent confronting the mundanity of the struggle for dignity.

May 8, 2022

Anne Enright

A Cruel Vote

Can you imagine what it is like to put your mark on a paper ballot that asks you to tease out the issue of a raped child’s inconvenient ability to end her own life?

May 8, 2022