Criminal law, as distinguished from civil law, is a system of laws concerned with crimes and the punishment of individuals who commit crimes. Thus, where in a civil case two parties dispute their rights, a criminal prosecution...
Fourteenth Amendment
Petitioners Halima Culley and Lena Sutton both owned vehicles that were seized under Alabama laws which allow the state to hold, subject to civil forfeiture proceedings, property used to facilitate drug crimes. Culley v. Attorney Gen. at 2. On February...
In 2018, Mississippi passed the Gestational Age Act (“HB 1510”), which prohibits abortions after 15 weeks, except for in cases of medical emergency or severe fetal abnormality. Jackson Women's Health Org. v. Dobbs at 269. HB 1510 defines “gestational...
Equal Protection refers to the idea that a governmental body may not deny people equal protection of its governing laws. The governing body state must treat an individual in the same manner as others in similar conditions and...
Abigail Fisher applied to the University of Texas at Austin (“UT”) for admission to its fall 2008 class. Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin, et al., 758 F.3d 633, 637 (5th Cir. 2014). UT’s admissions scheme included three paths for accepting...
In 1986, Timothy Tyrone Foster was arrested for the murder of 79-year-old Queen Madge White in Rome, Georgia. See Foster v. State, 374 S.E.2d 188, 190 (1988). Following the jury trial, Foster was convicted of malice murder and burglary and sentenced to...
The Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution contains a number of important concepts, most famously state action, privileges or immunities, citizenship, due process, and equal protection—all of which are contained in Section...
In 2003, Congress passed and President George W. Bush later signed into law the Partial Birth Abortion Ban of 2003 (“Ban”). Carhart v. Gonzales, 413 F.3d 791, 793 (8th Cir. 2006). The Ban outlaws the performance of any abortion during which the doctor...
In 2003, Congress enacted the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act (“Ban”), which defined “partial-birth abortion” as “deliberately and intentionally vaginally deliver[ing] a living fetus . . . for the purpose of performing an overt act that the person knows...
1. Does a state violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment by defining marriage solely as the union of a man and a woman?
2. Do the official proponents...