Month: March 2017

Perhaps no issue is more closely associated with religious, moral, and emotional concerns than extending marriage to same-sex couples. As the discussion has broadened and deepened over the last fifteen years, though, the public debate has evolved to include considerations of the social and economic consequences of marriage equality. Economic consequences, in particular, have assumed… continue reading

“This is without question the worst case of my judicial career…” So observed United States District Court Judge Gerard Lynch in 2002 in a case before him involving a defendant facing a mandatory-minimum ten-year sentence on a charge of advertising the distribution of child pornography. That case and Judge Lynch’s actions and observations, about which… continue reading

Veterinary medicine has gone through tremendous changes in the past several decades. Until fairly recently, veterinary practice was viewed primarily as a “service profession to agriculture,” that involved many rote practices such as vaccinating herds of cows. In contrast, today’s veterinary practice focuses much more heavily on companion animal medicine and includes such specialty areas as… continue reading

As one of the Nation’s preeminent legal philosophers and public intellectuals, Ronald Dworkin has, not surprisingly, engaged the Nation’s preeminent legal-political-social issue – the meaning of marriage. That engagement appears in its most focused form in Is Democracy Possible Here? published in August 2006 (with key excerpts appearing in the September 21, 2006 issue of the New… continue reading

The Borgata Hotel, Casino and Spa in Atlantic City, New Jersey recently came under attack for the strict weight policy that is imposed on its beverage servers. The weight requirement provides sanctions for any employee whose weight increases by more than seven percent from the time at which a baseline weight was established. Critics of… continue reading

Imagine for a moment that you are three years old again. Your biological mother has been diagnosed with bipolar disorder and your biological father left before you were born. As a result of your mother’s inability to maintain a job, her dramatic, often frightening mood swings, and lastly, a verbalized threat of potential harm, the local… continue reading

Imagine the scene: you are sitting in your living room at 11:05 pm on a Wednesday night peacefully reading a magazine. Suddenly, you hear police sirens blaze and a voice muffled through a megaphone shout, “you two . . . stop right there, don’t move!” You toss down the magazine, run to the window, pull… continue reading

In October 2005, Florida, a notoriously violent state, codified its castle doctrine and doctrine of self-defense into a group of statutes known as the “Stand Your Ground” law. This new statutory scheme abrogates the duty to retreat before using deadly force and is built upon hard, bright-line rules and presumptions that appear to do away… continue reading

This paper considers differences in evidentiary standards and constitutional limitations during the guilt, eligibility and penalty selection determinations of a capital trial. Capital trials and the subsequent sentencing hearings of guilty defendants require careful procedural safeguards to ensure that juries are able to make distinct guilt, eligibility and penalty determinations, as contemplated by the governing… continue reading

Moral Judgment has always played a major role in judicial decision-making, especially in cases involving poverty-related offences. An analysis of recent court decisions in such cases shows the same values that informed the courts in their deliberations more than 150 years ago continue to do so today. View More