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The Limits of the Second Amendment in Instances of Self-Defense

On the night of October 1, 2017, Stephen Paddock open-fired onto a crowd of concertgoers in Las Vegas, Nevada using an AK-47 rifle and 23 other guns with calibers ranging from .223 to .308. The guns used in this massacre, which left 58 people dead, were fully legal in the state of Nevada.[1] The right to bear arms is enshrined within the Second Amendment, which officially states that “a well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the

Print Commentary: The Clean Power Plan and the EPA's Regulatory Purview

Editor's Note: This article, authored by Emily Woo, is a legal commentary related to Grace Weatherall's "Hope for the Future or Unconstitutional Disaster? The Clean Power Plan and West Virginia et al. v. EPA" in our Fall 2017 issue. We encourage readers interested in more information to refer to our print journal for unabridged legal analysis. In October of 2017, Scott Pruitt, Trump’s administrator for Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), announced a measure to repeal the C

Print Commentary: The Need for Reform in European and American Refugee Policy

Editor's Note: This article, co-authored by Nora Salitan and Kelcie Gerson, is a legal commentary related to Nadia Almasalkhi's "Institutionalized Xenophobia: The Effects of an Electorate’s Prejudice on Swiss Institutions" in our Fall 2017 issue. We encourage readers interested in more information to refer to our print journal for unabridged legal analysis. In the summer of 2017, the number of displaced people in the world, more than 66 million, hit a record high.[1] Most ref

Print Commentary: Public Funding for Religious Schools and Institutions

Editor's Note: This article, co-authored by Emma Gomez and Emily Dolgin, is a legal commentary related to M. Emad Jabini's "The Religious Exemption: To What Extent Should Religious Organizations be Exempt from Civil Rights Laws?" in our Fall 2017 issue. We encourage readers interested in more information to refer to our print journal for unabridged legal analysis. Since the colonial era, immigrants have fled to the United States to escape European religious persecution. Under

Print Commentary: The Legal Consequences of American Withdrawal From the Paris Agreement

Editor's Note: This article, authored by Publisher Elizabeth Turovsky, is a legal commentary related to Archita Mohapatra's "The United States’ Withdrawal from the Paris Agreement and its Implications" in our Fall 2017 issue. We encourage readers interested in more information to refer to our print journal for unabridged legal analysis. Striking a tremendous blow to the environmentalist community, on June 1, 2017, President Trump announced that he plans to withdraw the United

Print Commentary: A Legal Iteration of Slavery in Prison

Editor's Note: This article, authored by Arianna Scott, is a legal commentary related to Darby Hopper's "Reforms with History: The Return of Prison Farms" in our Fall 2017 issue. We encourage readers interested in more information to refer to our print journal for unabridged legal analysis. Prisons are typically enormous institutions with innumerable isolated jail cells, each with four metal walls surrounding the incarcerated. Some jails, however, also feature their own farms

Floridian State of Emergency and University Protest: A First Amendment Case Study

On October 19th, 2017, Richard Spencer, an infamous Nazi and white supremacist, delivered a speech at the University of Florida. Prior to Spencer’s presence on the college campus, Florida governor Rick Scott declared a State of Emergency in Alachua County. Being a public forum, or a space for public speech designated by the government, the University was required to give Spencer an area to speak under the first amendment. Although student groups as well as the University were

Modernizing Foreign Investment in the US: CFIUS and FIRRMA

Those interested in finance and law may be familiar with the blocked $1.3 billion acquisition deal between Lattice Semiconductor Corporation, a U.S. chipmaker, and Canyon Bridge Capital Partners, a reportedly Chinese-backed private equity firm. The deal, following a review and recommendation by the Foreign Committee of Investment in the United States (CFIUS), was blocked by the president before completion. Recently, however, another takeover transaction of Germany’s Bayer for

The Case of Melilla and Ceuta: Spanish Violations of EU and International Law

January first of this year at around 4am local time, an estimated 1,100 migrants attempted to traverse the high double fence between Morocco and the Spanish enclave of Ceuta in the Northern part of Africa in what was deemed an “extremely violent and organized” act, according to the Spanish central government’s representative in Ceuta[if !supportFootnotes][1][endif]. The end result? Over 1,000 migrants pushed back into Morocco by Spanish and Moroccan authorities and at least t

The Case of Melilla and Ceuta: Moroccan Hitmen and Disproportionate Violence Against Refugees

Last summer 14 people died attempting to swim from the Moroccan territory into the Spanish enclave of Ceuta. An internal criminal investigation is still pending in Spanish courts three years later, but CEAR, a Spanish NGO and Human Rights watchdog argues that little will come of this investigation as it is being lead chiefly by the Spanish Guardia Civil, the agency who ordered the attack in the first place. Before this, another group of migrants, many of whom were confirmed b

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