Civil Rights and Liberties
Inmate Rights and the Prison/Jail System During COVID-19—Interview with Prof. Susanna Blumenthal
May 9, 2020
JLI staff members Abbie Hanson and Jen Davison recently interviewed Professor Susanna Blumenthal in a conversation about COVID-19’s effects on inmate rights and the prison/jail system. Professor Blumenthal co-directs the Program in Law and History at the University of Minnesota and she is an expert in criminal law. Professor Blumenthal’s research and writing focuses on the historical relationship between law and the human sciences. In this discussion, the group highlights the challenges of containing a virus in inherently constrained spaces, the damaging results on inmate rights, and how groups are working to ensure that incarcerated individuals receive adequate protection during a pandemic.
Continue ReadingRefunding the Community: What Defunding MPD Means and Why It Is Urgent and Realistic
March 18, 2021
We hope this scholarship will help Minnesotans better understand police brutality against Black Americans and people of color, and the need for urgent changes in the way Minneapolis is policed.
Continue ReadingHow a New Ohio Law and Other State Reforms Are Changing the Landscape of Mental Health and Criminal Justice
January 24, 2022
By Bailey Martin* In 2021, Ohio became the only active death penalty state with a law that allows for resentencing of people on death row who have serious mental health conditions. While this kind of law provides an important starting point for thinking about mental health and criminal justice, courts have much further to go to protect all persons with mental health conditions from disparate impacts in the justice system.
Continue ReadingCuba’s 2022 Family Code: A Different Model for Social Progress
November 2, 2022
In this blog post, staffer Buchanan Waller analyzes the development of and reasons for success behind Cuba’s 2022 Family Code.
Continue ReadingFundamental, Not Absolute: Implications of the Minnesota Supreme Court’s Ruling in Schroeder v. Simon
March 29, 2023
In this blog, Staff Member John Leiner examines the Minnesota Supreme Court’s ruling in Schroeder v. Simon and how legislation could restore voting rights to Minnesotans with past felony convictions.
Continue Reading2020 Summit for Civil Rights – What Is To Be Done? How Can We Help?
December 1, 2020
Deadly Force: How George Floyd’s Killing Exposes Racial Inequities in Minnesota’s Felony-Murder Doctrine Among the Disenfranchised, the Powerful, and the Police
March 8, 2021
View/Download PDF Version Greg Egan[1] I. Equity in Peril: How Felony-Murder Charging Discretion and Widely Varying Punishments are Deployed Against White Defendants, Defendants of Color, and Peace Officers Minnesota’s second-degree felony-murder statute represents a unique and creative charging mechanism that affords wide discretion to prosecutors. This makes it ripe for inequitable application. It is the…
Continue ReadingWe Finally (Kind of) Understand COVID – What Does That Mean at the Voting Booth?
February 1, 2022
By Rob Grimsley* When the Coronavirus first went viral, most Americans agreed that public spaces needed to be shut down in order to slow the spread and begin to understand what we were dealing with. However, as 2020 was an election year, there was soon speculation as to how to handle voting. Traditionally, voting had…
Continue ReadingTelehealth Providers: A Temporary, Tenuous Solution for Post-Dobbs Access to Medication
November 29, 2022
JLI Managing Editor Lottie James examines the vital, but limited, role of telehealth providers play in maintaining access to medication abortions after the Dobbs decision.
Continue ReadingThe Clash Between LGBTQ Anti-Discrimination Law and Freedom of Speech in 303 Creative v. Elenis: Which Will Take the Cake?
April 2, 2023
By Elizabeth Wellhausen* In December 2022, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments for 303 Creative v. Elenis, a case that is basically a “redo” of Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission.[1] In Masterpiece, a baker refused to make a wedding cake for a same-sex couple because same-sex marriage conflicted with his religious views.[2] The…
Continue Reading2020 Summit for Civil Rights – The State of American Apartheid
November 20, 2020
In “The State of American Apartheid”, scholars and on-the-ground activists discuss the history of school segregation, and, even six decades after Brown v. Board of Education declared “Separate is not equal”, how segregation exists and affects people today. This panel discusses the causes, results, and on-going impact of our society’s unwillingness to challenge racial…
Continue ReadingDoes Minnesota’s Third-Party Visitation Rights Statute Apply to Unmarried, Same-Sex Couples?
March 16, 2021
A survey of the past, present and possible future of visitation rights for unmarried same-sex couples.
Continue ReadingAre New York’s Bail and Discovery Reforms in Renewed Danger?
February 9, 2022
By Kenneth Cooper* Tracking the status of these New York procedural reforms in particular (one increasing discovery obligations and the other reducing the use of cash bail in pretrial services) can shed further insight into how other attempts at reform, perhaps more substantive in nature, may play out.
Continue ReadingReforming the Troubled Teen Industry
November 30, 2022
By Alida Weidensee* Imagine yourself as a teenager. You wake up in the middle of the night to adult strangers in your bedroom. Maybe there are police officers too. These strangers force you to go with them, telling you that there is “a choice to do this the easy way or hard way.” You might…
Continue ReadingMinnesota Crisis Pregnancy Centers and The Positive Pregnancies Bill
May 9, 2023
By Lizzy Miller* Introduction In 2022, the federal constitutional right to abortion previously found in Roe v. Wade was overturned by Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.[1] Crucially, Dobbs found that “the state has an ‘important and legitimate interest’ in protecting fetuses that it does not have in preventing contraception.”[2] While abortion remains constitutionally protected…
Continue Reading2020 Summit for Civil Rights – Who’s Profiting?
November 23, 2020
The $2 Billion-Plus Price of Injustice: A Methodological Map for Police Reform in the George Floyd Era
March 22, 2021
View/Download PDF Version David Schultz† Introduction The death of George Floyd on May 25, 2020 under the knee of a Minneapolis police officer forced America again to confront the connection between racism and law enforcement. It also compelled the City of Minneapolis to act. Merely a few days later on June 7, 2020 a majority…
Continue ReadingAbove the Law: How Kim Potter’s Sentencing Serves as Another Example of Police Receiving Disproportionately Low Sentences
March 7, 2022
The recent sentencing of former Brooklyn Center Police Officer Kimberly Potter provides a reminder that police officers who kill people while on duty are granted leniency over and over again in the criminal justice system.
Continue ReadingThe Forgotten Child Bride in the United States
December 1, 2022
In this blog post, staffer Rachel Emendorfer discusses child marriage in the United States, the current landscape of legal issues surrounding marriages involving minors, and the specific impact child marriage has on young girls.
Continue ReadingBreonna Taylor is Not Forgotten: Department of Justice Finds Civil Rights Violations by the Louisville Metro Police Department and the Louisville/Jefferson County Metro Government
May 9, 2023
By Alejandrea Brown* Police violence and misconduct against Black people in America is not a new phenomenon. Studies have shown that Black people are 3.23 times more likely than White people to be killed by the police.[1] The lack of accountability concerning police misconduct and violence against the Black community is also not new trend.[2] …
Continue ReadingResponse to MPD’s Killing of George Floyd
June 2, 2020
by Jen Davison and the JLI Editorial Team On May 25, 2020, a White Minneapolis Police Department officer killed George Floyd, a Black man in our Twin Cities community. The White police officer killed Mr. Floyd while Mr. Floyd was in police custody, and bystanders captured the scene of Mr. Floyd’s final…
Continue ReadingThe Movement Lawyer of 2020
August 11, 2020
Want to hear how two recent University of Minnesota Law grads chose to respond to the tragic killing of George Floyd? Click the link to learn more about the inspiration behind the “Breathless” podcast, created by Ian Taylor, Jr. (’19) and Haaris Pasha (’19).
Continue ReadingHow We Got Here: Race, Police Use of Force, and the Road to George Floyd
April 1, 2021
Long before the killing of George Floyd, the United States has struggled to mitigate racially arbitrary use of force by the police. This article seeks to explain how we got to the killing of George Floyd. This article contends that that the law—especially the decisions of the Supreme Court and political choices made by politicians—has helped to enable the relatively unchecked use of force against people of color.
Continue ReadingBiden’s Private Prison Ban Must Include ICE Detention
March 16, 2022
By Katie McCoy* Our incarceration-focused immigration system needlessly locks up hundreds of thousands of noncitizens each year. The number of people incarcerated in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody was 15,000 when President Biden first took office, and it now hovers near 29,000. Sixty-nine percent of those detained have no criminal history. Many ICE detention…
Continue ReadingFirst Down, First Amendment: A Case Comment on Kennedy v. Bremerton School District
December 2, 2022
Note & Comment Editor Karissa Grapes analyzes a recent Supreme Court decision and discusses its impact on religious practices in schools.
Continue Reading