Just as Brown v. Board championed Plessy v. Ferguson, a major transformation in precedent is essential for not only the Courts, but the entirety of the federal government, to circumvent its politicized view of the LGBTQ community and finally recognize sexual orientation as an objective attribute to one’s identity. This article evaluates landmark Supreme Court cases involving members of the LGBTQ community and highlights the politicization of state-based court cases in regard to sexual orientation. This period is an opportunity for the Court to develop precedent in an ever-changing country that increasingly values the sentiment that sexual orientation is a valid, often unalterable part of one’s identity.

As the student loan debt in the United States continues to rise above $1.5 trillion, President Biden proposed a plan where approximately $430 billion dollars would be forgiven. However, with the Supreme Court recently ruling that the plan was illegal in Biden vs. Nebraska, Biden is struggling to find an alternative for student loan forgiveness. Nevertheless, looking through the dissent, majority, and concurring opinions brought forth by the Justices, Biden’s plan is clearly an executive branch overreach. This article explores the different aspects and facets seen in the case and why, in my opinion, that the Supreme Court was right to rule in favor of Nebraska and the five other states that disagreed with the policies of Joe Biden. Student debt is a problem, and the solution isn’t found just yet.

For as long as the Supreme Court has existed, it has had to make decisions in trials regarding race, which it has done haphazardly. After undergirding the enslavement of African Americans, denying citizenship and civil rights to various racial groups, and ingraining race into our legal system, the Supreme Court has done little to promote racial justice or integration. Not only are its attempts few and far between, but they have been short lived, reversed, or impactless. However, it is time for the general public to recognize the Court was never created to advocate for racial justice, and the public should not expect anything different.

The introduction and subsequent removal of AP African American Studies in Florida schools is just one of the controversial implications of the Stop W.O.K.E Act. The Act, ostensibly designed to counter Critical Race Theory (CRT) in K-12 education, is criticized for its misrepresentation and weaponization of CRT. The article contends that the Act extends beyond schools to restrict workplace diversity training, negatively impacting minority populations. By examining the Act's language and intent, this paper develops how the Stop W.O.K.E Act is carefully curated to foster unnecessary fear and division. The repercussions of such weaponization are explored, emphasizing the sacrifice of children's mental well-being and the Act's failure to address the real harm caused by fictitious historical education. Through this article, I continue to challenge the Act's assumptions about CRT's impact on students, highlighting the importance of diverse perspectives in education and cautioning against relying on such legislation for equality.

According to research conducted by the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network, more than 4,600 people in Massachusetts and 106,000 people in the U.S. are on the waiting list for organ transplants, with 28% in MA identifying as Black, Hispanic or Latino. MA state legislature Bill H.2333 aims to tackle both the crises of organ donation shortages and mass incarceration by shortening sentences of incarcerated people from 60 to 365 days in exchange for organ donations in a prison organ donation program. Democratic Representatives and sponsors of the bill Judith Garcia and Carlos González assert the policy will expand the donor pool and reduce the health disparity of organ shortages for communities of color triggered by the disproportionate targeting of marginalized racial groups by the criminal justice system. Despite making poignant observations on the detrimental state of organ donation and mass incarceration in MA, the sponsors of the bill make profound ethical and legal oversights by commodifying the bodies of people in prison, even when the current prison medical care provider in MA–Wellpath Recovery Solutions–is failing to meet basic care standards for those incarcerated. The Act to Establish the Massachusetts Incarcerated Individual Bone Marrow and Organ Donation Program risks exploiting already vulnerable populations in inherently coercive environments and further violates human dignity in prison spaces where dehumanization is salient and incessant. MA has the opportunity to transform medical care in the state to confront racial injustice while at the same time changing the way society thinks about prisons as an inevitable fixture of society, serving as a model for the rest of the nation. MA Bill H.2333 is a morally and legally impermissible policy to abate the organ donor shortage, promote decarceration, and dismantle stigmas against incarcerated people. Legislators should instead focus their efforts on policies addressing health disparities for both marginalized people in prison and society through healthcare reform and ending harmful prison medical contracts.

The DREAM Act of 2017 is intended to provide a clear pathway to citizenship for DACA eligible individuals residing in the United States. DACA is a currently suspended program that stands for the Deferred Action of Childhood Arrivals and protects young adults from deportation if they were brought to the U.S. as children. However, one procedural barrier to obtaining legal residency status is the requirement of passing a criminal background check. This article explains why the legal pathway to citizenship for Dreamers should be revised to include a hardship waiver-equivalent for Dreamers with a potentially barring criminal record to explain the circumstances of their case.

Emerging AI technology will be greatly beneficial to society in many ways. Its use and spread are unstoppable, but we also must recognize its dangers. One of its most dangerous capabilities is its creation of deep fakes, which are images, audio recordings, or videos that have been manipulated to show people doing or saying something they did not actually do or say. Deep fake pornography and the use of the likeness of real people to spread disinformation are two of the biggest threats this technology poses. In the regulation of AI deep fakes, ex post remedies are not sufficient. Responsibility should not fall to the victim to bring litigation against deep fake creators. Instead, the United States needs a Deep Fakes Task Force within the Department of Homeland Security and the specific criminalization of deep fake porn and deep fakes meant to spread disinformation or defame a person.

After decades of trafficking, the legalization of marijuana, psychedelics, and opioids is imperative to reduce ethnic discrimination in the prosecution of and harms in drug production while limiting the collateral consequences of incarceration on minority populations. This policy is especially pertinent given today’s fentanyl crisis that has had a heavy influence on American politics. Since 1971, the War on Drugs has perpetuated decades of racialized stigma and profit-driven violence on marginalized communities. Marijuana in particular demonstrates the prejudiced incarceration of Black and Latino populations fueled by targeted policing, making legalization uniquely key in reversing this bias. Furthermore, the negative impacts of racially targeted criminalization of drugs do not stop at incarceration, with a conviction for drug possession having detrimental collateral consequences for minority populations. Additionally, criminalization’s suppression of drug use fuels the present opioid crisis, making legalization not only key for basic human rights, but also for the reversal of a heavy and tragic epidemic.

The historical roots of increased state regulation of abortion lie in the excluded narratives of marginalized communities. Recent efforts to illegalize access to reproductive healthcare point to a disproportionate misfortune for Black women, as well as a trend in the exclusion of Black femininity in reproductive healthcare law. From the legal and historical implications of American slavery on gender and racial lines, to landmark cases in reproductive justice signaling a shift in women’s rights activism, the position of Black women as a legal and social identity relies on an acute acknowledgment of past and present disparities in maternal and reproductive health. In order to close this gap and effectively include Black women in the legal narrative of reproductive rights, our government must follow in the footsteps of local organizations reframing policy efforts by including marginalized identities.

The advancement of artificial intelligence (AI) has led to an era in which machines can generate thousands of distinct images within minutes. This technological progress raises a crucial question: should AI-generated images be eligible for copyright protection? The prevailing legal perspective, echoing the stance of the U.S. Copyright Office, dismisses the copyrightability of AI-produced images. However, a compelling argument exists in favor of their protection. Rooted in a principle called “beyond mere reproduction,” one can judge whether or not AI images go beyond simple replication and encapsulate a form of originality. Beyond mere reproduction means a prompt must exhibit specificity, originality, and depth of concept, which I will elaborate on more in detail. In building my case, I will introduce the four main elements of the fair use doctrine in the context of AI’s utilization of online images for training purposes, and then make a case emphasizing how the prompting mechanism in AI image generators renders AI-created images sufficiently original to qualify for copyrightability.

Current psychedelic law in the United States focuses on a harmful perspective of “innovation” that ignores the emotional, cultural, and ecological harms that it creates for Indigenous peoples, who originated the use of psychedelic medicine. Due to these factors, new psychedelic drug laws must incorporate Indigenous scholarship, and, apart from accumulating wealth for Indigenous communities, the protection of Indigenous cultures through stricter criteria for property rights. Lastly, it is important to decolonise legal thought, as without a decolonial legal framework, there can be no change in the unequal colonial world.

The increasing prominence of climate disasters and the failure of developed nations to make significant progress in reducing carbon emissions and curtailing the effects of global warming have fueled the migration of displaced individuals. This wave of migration occurs mainly within nations, but also notably across international borders. According to estimates by the World Bank in 2018, the three most climate displacement vulnerable regions of Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, and Southeast Asia “will generate 143 million more climate migrants by 2050.” Currently, there is no legal recourse for climate migrants seeking support and protection when crossing borders, allowing governments to avoid responsibility and deny entry to those fleeing climate-related conflicts and disasters. The lack of any international, legally binding agreement accounting for access to legal services and planned relocation for climate migrants has prompted many experts to advocate for expanding the refugee definition. It is evident that terminology in the law matters and that a multilateral effort is vital to ensure government support of climate migrants and their ability to maintain a livelihood and community. However, simply expanding the legal definition of a refugee does not go far enough to protect the most vulnerable individuals displaced by this existential threat, since it would exclude protections for the majority of climate migration that happens internally and the fact that motivating factors for climate migration exist on a broad, complex spectrum that is not easily pinpointed to one causal element. Instead, a new legally binding international convention and institutional framework to specifically address the rights and needs of all climate migrants is critical to establishing an inclusive approach to the intersection of the climate crisis and its impacts on human mobility.

Since Franklin Roosevelt’s failed Court-packing plan of 1937, structural reform of the Supreme Court has not seemed like a politically realistic option. But recent years have seen an unprecedented swell of support for the idea. As the Court rolls back decades of progress and undermines the guardrails of democracy, politicians and activists alike have responded with increasing calls for change – suggesting anything from an enforceable ethics code to limits on jurisdiction to even court expansion. The consensus is growing: the Court is in crisis, and something must be done. In this article, we propose a statute creating term limits for the justices.

By advocating for 18-year nonrenewable terms, we aim to foster a more balanced and representative Court. This approach allows each president to appoint two justices during their term, reducing the chances of a minority party dominating the Court's composition. Moreover, it discourages strategic retirements and mitigates the certain chaos associated with appointments.

We believe that term limits can be implemented, without a constitutional amendment, thereby maintaining the Court's independence and alleviating its perceived partisan tendencies. Our proposal, supported by a diverse cross-partisan appeal, paves the way for a better future where the Supreme Court regains its legitimacy and plays its necessary role in the American legal system.