The Roundtable
Welcome to the Roundtable, a forum for incisive commentary and analysis
on cases and developments in law and the legal system.
on cases and developments in law and the legal system.
By Suaida Firoze
Suaida Firoze is a senior at Clark University studying Economics and Business Management. US colleges and universities have historically attracted large populations of international students. Apart from their interest in attending some of the best institutions in the world located here, many foreign students choose to pursue their educations in the US because of the numerous opportunities for receiving scholarships or financial aid to subsidize the cost of their education. According to NAFSA, as of 2014, the US hosts approximately 886,052 international students, who contribute $26.8 billion dollars to the economy and support almost 340,000 jobs. [1] A high quality education, a world-renowned degree, and an opportunity to study outside of their home country are not the only reasons for which students from across the world decide to pursue their dreams in the US. Many of these students hope to receive job offers here after their graduation and eventually establish their roots in the “land of dreams.”
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By Alicia Kysar
Alicia Kysar is a senior at Columbia University studying English and Political Science with a concentration in Pre-Law. In my previous article, “The Value of Dissent in the Supreme Court,” I enumerated arguments in favor of and against the practice of dissension in Supreme Court rulings through the lens of political science and judicial scholarship. [1] This article will approach the same issue though the perspective of legal history, and explore the influence that legal dissents have had on past Supreme Court decisions. The landmark case of Brown v Board of Education (1954), in which the Supreme Court unanimously voted to desegregate schools, so that children of all races could attend school together, was a landmark case in American history and is a credit to all the justices on the bench at the time, and particularly to Earl Warren, the Chief Justice.[2] It was, at the time, a highly controversial decision – so much so that President Eisenhower had to deploy the National Guard to enforce it. Arguments similar to those used in the Warren Court’s ruling, however, were not new to the Supreme Court. In Plessy v Ferguson (1896), the case that upheld the constitutionality of state laws that required the doctrine of “separate but equal” as a rationale for racial segregation, Justice John Marshall Harlan dissented from the majority opinion. [3] Many of the arguments that Harlan used in opposition to racial discrimination reappeared in Chief Justice Earl Warren’s decision in Brown v Board of Education (1896). [4] In his dissension, Justice Harlan warned that the decision of the majority would “encourage the belief that it is possible, by means of state enactments, to defeat the beneficent purposes which the people of the United States had in view when they adopted the recent amendments of the Constitution.” [5] He cited the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments, which abolished slavery after the Civil War and took additional measures in order to ensure the freedom and liberty of all Americans. By Regina Salmons
Regina Salmons is a sophomore at the University of Pennsylvania. Increasingly, researchers claim that the human brain is not fully developed at the major milestones in American youth culture. In other words, at sixteen, many Americans can drive a car, at eighteen they can vote, and at twenty-one they can drink alcohol, but according to the MIT Young Development Project, only at twenty-five are human brains fully developed. [1] Until 2012, a juvenile could be sentenced to life in prison without parole. The question that then arises is should the criminal justice system hold individuals with underdeveloped brains that commit criminal acts so accountable? Should any person under twenty-five be condemned to life and death in prison when their rational and moral judgment is not yet solidified? In the 2012 case Miller v. Alabama, the Supreme Court ruled the sentencing of juveniles to life in prison without parole unconstitutional, arguing that it violated the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments’ protections against cruel and unusual punishment. [2] However, only juveniles charged with committing, or being an accomplice to, murder after the decision feel its effects; the ruling has no retroactive powers to overturn or amend the sentences of juveniles made prior to it. Thus, all of Pennsylvania’s nearly five hundred juveniles serving life without parole, the highest inmate count for any state in the country, have no hope of re-entering society and redefining their life with a fully developed capacity for reason. [3] |
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