Civil Rights

February 22nd, 2024

Attorneys Mark W. Tanner and Samuel Mukiibi are pursuing a civil rights lawsuit on behalf of a woman who was sexually battered, raped, and terrorized by a deputy sheriff while held at an ICE detention center — a facility with a known history for mistreatment …

March 26th, 2014

Despite that Philadelphia Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey wrote a memo in 2011 advising all officers that civilians are permitted to take photographs or video footage of them in public places, some in the department have been slow to adapt. A year after Ramsey informed police …

April 3rd, 2013

Of the three branches of government, the judicial branch receives by far the least attention. With the exception of high-profile cases like the Affordable Care Act and Proposition 8 (dealing with same-sex marriage in California), the judiciary lacks the glamor of the presidency and the …

February 6th, 2013

2012 saw the 40th anniversary of Title IX, a portion of the Education Amendments of 1972 signed into law by President Richard Nixon. Many regard Title IX as a landmark piece of legislation that helped ensure that women have the same ability as men to …

January 30th, 2013

Recent mass shootings at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin, a movie theater in Colorado, a shopping mall in Oregon and an elementary school in Newtown, Conn. have garnered a lot of media attention, but it is worth pointing out that since the shooting in Newtown …

October 24th, 2012

This past May, Pennsylvania legislators passed a law that would force the state’s voters to produce some form of photo identification at their local polling places to participate in elections. As of late September (according to a poll conducted by Franklin & Marshall College), 59 …

September 12th, 2012

On July 11, this blog published a post titled “Justice Delayed Is Justice Denied,” which dealt with the shortage of judges (and thus backlog of civil cases) in Union County, New Jersey. Upon further research, it has become painfully clear that this problem is not …

June 20th, 2012

On May 18, 2012, Ben Present of The Legal Intelligencer wrote an article called “State Supreme Court to Address Admissibility of Text Messages” which, as its title suggests, explains the circumstance surrounding what will surely be a noteworthy precedent regarding whether or not “unauthenticated” text …

June 6th, 2012

The sex abuse scandal that has publicly rocked the Catholic Church for more than a decade has actually been around much longer than that. Rachel Zoll of The Associated Press writes that one priest, who happens to have founded an entire religious order dedicated to rehabilitating …

May 9th, 2012

On the topic of social media, this blog has already covered the judicial precedents being set in the state of Pennsylvania with regard to insurance companies probing plaintiffs’ Facebook profiles. As judges become more familiar with the sensitive nature of an individual’s social media profile …

May 2nd, 2012

The number of users on social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+ is growing, and as it does, its prominence in law suits increases exponentially. In February 2012, this blog covered the precedents being set in the state of Pennsylvania about whether insurance …

December 15th, 2011

The international weekly newspaper “The Economist” published an article in its September 29, 2011 issue about the judicial branch of the government, calling it “the feeblest branch,” due to the lack of funding and public and media attention it receives relative to legislators and executives. …