Print Archive
In search of an accessible epithet, newspapers across the country have christened debt that is barred by the statute of limitations “zombie debt.” This “funny term” for time-barred debt reflects its tendency to come back to life and attack when, like the first victims in a horror movie, consumers “seal their [ ] fate” by their own heedless approaches to debt collectors.
Internet giants like Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and Amazon have attracted controversy for their growing influence on our social, political, and commercial activities. Some commentators worry that these companies’ ability to gather data and control who accesses it threatens the competitive health of the digital economy. This trend could harm consumers by stifling innovation in online products and by producing a digital economy with fewer choices and fewer competitors determined to win consumers’ business.
In 2016, Mississippi passed the Protecting Freedom of Conscience from Government Discrimination Act, a law exempting Mississippians with “sincerely held religious beliefs or moral convictions” that marriage should be restricted to heterosexual couples from the state’s antidiscrimination laws.
A police officer suspects someone of being an undocumented immigrant and detains them. Later, that individual sues the local police department in federal court for establishing a policy of hardline immigration enforcement that violated their Fourth Amendment rights.
Legal practice is riddled with claims about when the law is or isn’t “clear.” If a statute is unclear or ambiguous, a court might defer to an agency, side in favor of lenity, or avoid interpretations that would render the statute unconstitutional.
From 2000 to 2017, more than three hundred thousand people died of overdoses involving opioids in the United States.
A foreign national is set to testify under subpoena to a grand jury about detainee abuse by certain Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents. The district court has issued an order prohibiting the ICE agents from removing the foreign national from the United States. But the foreign national’s testimony is damaging, and the ICE agents would rather deport him than allow him to testify.
David Brunell was indicted on October 26, 2017 on one count of embezzlement of government funds under the federal embezzlement statute, 18 USC § 641. Brunell’s father, prior to his death in 1993, received monthly retirement benefits from the Social Security Administration (SSA).
Engineers training an artificially intelligent self-flying drone were perplexed.
In the 2011 case of Turner v Rogers, the United States Supreme Court held that a father jailed for a year by a family court judge for nonpayment of child support was not entitled to a public defender.
The judiciary are different than you and me, not just because they have life tenure, but because they spend years being petitioned by real people.