Results for “Texas Civil Rights Project”

whenever states (or state-like institutions) take actions that affect the rights of individuals whether these actions are preventive or reactive in nature. This need may seem obvious

which was seen by its framers largely as a bill of restrictions on the power of the national legislature—namely “Congress.” There was considerable concern that the Constitution

it is not a suicide pact.” But it is precisely during times of crisis—when the balance between momentary expediency and enduring safeguards often goes askew—that courts can perform their most critical function: to preserve or restore a sense of perspective.

and no professor has the right to propagandize his captive classroom audience or to grade them down if they disagree with his political opinions. But it is sometimes difficult to distinguish between acceptable teaching and unacceptable prostheletizing. This too is an area where...

when the media seeks to publish information—such as an excluded confession—that may prejudice a defendant’s right to a fair trial. A variation on this theme is the media’s refusal to publish the names of alleged rape victims

or corporate support for the First Amendment right to make unlimited contributions to political campaigns. You do not have to be a supporter of freedom of speech to protest when the government tries to censor the speech of those who are goring your ox.

it held that a condemned person’s constitutional rights were not violated “by permitting the jury to impose the death penalty without any governing standards” or by permitting the imposition of the death penalty in “the same proceeding and verdict as determined

telling me that the Senator had been involved in a fatal automobile accident and asking me to make my way to Martha’s Vineyard—a place I had never visited. I was asked to become part of the legal team being assembled in anticipation of the upcoming criminal investigation. My jo...

I teach the law of rape as an example of a cutting-edge subject that poses a sharp conflict between the rights of defendants and their accusers. As usual

but the vast majority of the world’s population has no such legal protection. Human rights are not limited by geographic or political borders. They apply

why not? It had been founded in the wake of the allied victory over Nazism by nations—mostly democracies—that had been on the right side of the war against Germany

“In practice you can do a lot to implement human rights in this generation but in teaching you can both help this generation and help plant the seeds for progress later on.”

several years after he left the Soviet Union. Since he had been a sometimes threatened advocate of human rights in Moscow

” which first alerted me to the plight of Soviet Jewish and non-Jewish dissidents. I traveled to the Soviet Union and other parts of Eastern Europe on several occasions during the 1970s and 1980s and filed briefs on behalf of dissidents Refusenicks and others. I have written ex...

I was invited to speak at the Witwatersrand University in Johannesburg. Many in that university had been on the forefront of opposing Apartheid and I was anxious to lend support to these efforts by delivering a strong human rights message. When I appeared at the South African c...