Heroes or Criminals: The Legality of American Volunteers in the Russo-Ukrainian War
With the outbreak of hostilities in the Russo-Ukrainian War, the arrival and participation of foreign volunteer fighters has been one of the defining characteristics of the conflict. According to a March 2022 statement by the Ukrainian Foreign Minister, Dymetro Kuleba, over 20,000 volunteers have joined the Ukrainian armed forces, of which an estimated several thousand are American citizens. [1] Despite the uncertainty about precise numbers, it is important to consider the legality under U.S. law of U.S. citizens volunteering in foreign nations. Throughout the two and a half centuries during which American volunteers have participated in foreign wars, there have been a series of acts by Congress and rulings by the Courts on the legality of such participation.
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The Willow Project: A Modern Mistake by an Antiquated System
From the spread of solar panels to the proliferation of compostable wrappers, climate change is changing our lifestyles in unprecedented ways. The public sphere is no exception: every executive department from Homeland Security to Treasury has begun to rethink its operations as the Earth heats up. [1] Yet, one initiative overseen by the Department of the Interior (DOI) is of singular importance in the battle against climate change—the federal fossil fuel leasing program. [2] Under the program, private companies purchase leases from the federal government that permit them to extract oil, gas, and coal from public lands and waters. [3] In 2018, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), the agency tasked with approving land-based fossil fuel leases, authorized ConocoPhillips’s Willow Project, one of the single largest oil and gas drilling projects to be proposed on federal lands. [4]
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Legacy Admissions: An Insidious Form of Racial Discrimination
About 10 to 15 percent of students at Ivy League universities are the children of alumni. [1] Commonly known as “legacies,” they are often favored in the application process to encourage alumni ties and donations. [2] Between 2014 and 2019, Harvard accepted legacies at a rate of 33 percent, more than five times its overall acceptance rate. [3] In addition, 70 percent of Harvard’s legacy applicants are white. [4] This is hardly surprising: historically, the alumni of selective American universities like Harvard have been disproportionately white. [5] Yet, this racial disparity reveals the discrimination underlying legacy admissions that preserves and perpetuates historical inequalities in higher education.
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Justice for Sale: Non-Prosecution Agreements as Instruments of Inequality
Recent high-profile sex crime cases such as the Bill Cosby case and Jeffrey Epstein case have catapulted the non-prosecution agreement into the public spotlight. Non-prosecution agreements (NPAs) are legally binding arrangements between government agencies such as the Department of Justice and companies or individuals facing a criminal or civil investigation. Under the agreement, the government refrains from filing further charges as long as the company or individual agrees to its demands, which typically requires that companies/individuals either pay a fine or cooperate with the government. [1] Given that NPAs are typically applied to cases dealing with corporate crime, the use of the non-prosecution agreement in the Cosby and Epstein cases was highly unprecedented.
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The Limits of Free Exercise: Examining the Constitutionality of Title IX’s Religious Exemption
The Department of Education (ED)’s recent proposed changes to Title IX regulations are missing a critical element: any mention of its controversial religious exemption. Title IX is a federal civil rights law passed in 1972 that prevents sex-based discrimination, including recent expansions to include discrimination on the basis of sexuality and gender. [1] The religious exemption to Title IX, codified by Congress in the Civil Rights Restoration Act of 1988, states that religiously affiliated schools are exempt from some Title IX protections that oppose their religious beliefs, regardless of whether or not they receive federal funds.
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Factory Farms v.s. Whistleblowers: Agricultural Gag Laws that Hide Animal Cruelty
Upon opening Iowa Select Farms’ main website, viewers are greeted by a heartwarming image of light shining through a cornstock field, with the words “Producing Pork Responsibly” centered in an elegant font atop the greenery. [1] When the rare curious consumer scrolls down, Iowa Select Farms assures them, “We believe in doing the right thing every day, operating with character and integrity and being stewards of our resources.” However, like other U.S. factory farms, their definition of “character and integrity” is vastly different from that of those reading their mission statement. To Iowa Select Farms, “Producing Pork Responsibly” means sanctioned tail cuttings, castrations without anesthesia, and smashing piglets against concrete floors. [2] Meatpacking in the U.S. accounted for $1.02 trillion in economic output and generated $256 billion in wages in 2016. [3] Further, due to the cultural fixation on and societal expectation of a meat-eating diet, the U.S. has developed a heavy reliance on factory farms, with an approximated 99% of livestock living at factory farms. [4]
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Can the U.S. Turn Away Asylees At Sea? A Legal Examination of the Migrant Interdiction Program
On April 12, 2022, the Coast Guard intercepted a vessel near the Bahamas carrying sixty seven Haitian migrants. [1] The rickety, U.S.-bound boat was stopped, its migrants were transferred onto a Coast Guard cutter, and ultimately, the entire group was sent back to Haiti. [2] This is common practice for the Migrant Interdiction Program (MIP)– the Coast Guard performs interdictions by intercepting refugee boats before they enter U.S. territorial waters and returning them back to their country of origin where many face imprisonment and torture, with insufficient determination of asylum eligibility. [3] Created in 1981 by President Reagan’s Executive Order 12324, the MIP was established as a “necessary and proper means” of enforcing U.S. immigration laws by preventing undocumented migration. [4]
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Religious Freedom For All?: Determining What is Left of First Amendment Protections for America’s Incarcerated
In March 2022, the United States Supreme Court handed down an important decision, setting a precedent for the role of clergy in death penalty executions. [1] The Court held that the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) violated the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA) and “substantially burdened” death row inmate John Ramirez’s First Amendment right to practice his Baptist faith. TDCJ had earlier rejected Ramirez’s request to have his pastor “lay hands” and “pray over him,” rituals of the Baptist faith, while in the death chamber, as such actions would breach execution security protocol. [2]
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The UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons—Fruitful or Futile?
Since launching its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russia has deployed nuclear intimidation to deter foreign intervention. From implicit orders to put Russia’s nuclear forces on alert to ominous threats that anyone in Russia’s way would face “consequences such as you have never seen in your entire history,” Putin has recklessly raised the nuclear stakes. [1] Russia’s aggressive behavior not only sets back decades of work on nuclear disarmament, but also poses new challenges for recent milestones such as the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW). First established in January 2021, the TPNW became the first international legal instrument that subjected nuclear weapons to a comprehensive ban. In addition to prohibiting nations from “producing, testing, acquiring, possessing or stockpiling nuclear weapons,” it “bans any transfer or use of nuclear weapons… and the threat to use such weapons.” [2]
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