Legislative and Policy

Highlighting state and national legislative news, focusing on some of the most important policy issues of the day.

What Monopoly Can Teach Us About Cash Bail Reform: Recent Efforts, Pros and Cons, and the Community Response

January 31, 2020

“Go to Jail. Go directly to jail. Do not pass go. Do not collect $200.” Jail is one of the most-landed on spaces in a typical game of Monopoly.  However, for many Americans, Monopoly jail is the closest they will ever come to being behind bars.  The latest Department of Justice statistics available on the jail population in America places the jail incarceration rate as of 2017 at 0.229 percent of the U.S. population (based on the number of confined inmates in local jails per [...]

Student Servitude: The Pedagogy and Peonage

January 24, 2020

“A man in debt is so far a slave.”[1] These are the words Ralph Waldo Emerson uses in his 1860 essay, Wealth, to succinctly lay bare the concept of debt. Though Mr. Emerson likely did not foresee the looming—and now present—crisis of student loan debt in the United States, his words encapsulate the existence of more than 44 million Americans today. These citizens, saddled by student loan debt, are trapped in an indentured state of existence. Consider that figure in this context: it is [...]

Desegregation in K-12 Schools in North Carolina Today

January 18, 2020

The New Hanover County Board of Education has proposed a plan to redistrict elementary, middle, and high school districts for the 2020-21 school year. The plan utilizes a variety of factors, one of which is the racial make-up of neighborhoods in New Hanover County. This would be a new method of desegregation in modern society, one of which has never been tested under the United States Constitution and the jurisprudence of the United States Supreme Court. The proposed plan will likely be [...]

Climate Change and the Constitution: The Right to a Clean Environment   

January 10, 2020

Climate change is an issue that has recently come to the forefront of discussion in both the United States and the rest of the world.  Commonly, climate change is debated through the lens of politics, social policy, or economic principles.  The legal field has not yet delved as deeply into the issue.  Until recently, many have hoped to combat climate change through legislation and lifestyle changes.   However, individuals, activists, and other groups around the country have now turned to [...]

Back to the drawing board: Why repealing Obamacare piece-by-piece does more harm than good for health care reform

November 29, 2019

Nearly a decade following the passage of The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (“ACA”), the American health care delivery system continues to face many of the same problems that the “Obamacare” reforms sought to address.  Prior to the ACA, 50 million Americans were without health insurance—more than 16 percent of the population.  Health care represented 17 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product, and costs were increasing faster than inflation rates. The Act sought [...]

Is that Legal Hemp or Illegal Marijuana? Essential Differences and the Consequences of Treating Them the Same

November 22, 2019

The 2019 North Carolina Farm Bill looks to ban smokable hemp throughout the state.  The North Carolina House of Representatives and Senate are at odds choosing a date to ban smokable hemp.  One side wants to accommodate law enforcement’s request to ban hemp, while the other side wants to make sure local farmers are protected. The legalization of smokable hemp creates issues in relation to law enforcement’s ability to establish probable cause based on the odor or appearance of marijuana.  [...]

Judge Strikes Down State Constitutional Amendment

April 14, 2019

Judge Collins of the Third Division of the Superior Court ruled two amendments to the North Carolina Constitution, effectuated by N.C. Session Laws 2018-117 and 2018-128are now void.  Judge Collins wrote in his opinion, “an illegally constituted General Assembly does not represent the people of North Carolina and is therefore not empowered to pass legislation that would amend the state’s constitution.”   Judge Collins is referring to when the General Assembly redrew the [...]

It’s Not A Heart Issue: A look into the recent abortion war in Iowa

April 14, 2019

When it comes to a woman’s right to an abortion, the spotlight has recently been focused on New York. However, recently there has been an abortion war in Iowa where two battles that took place that ended in a victory for the pro-abortion activists. The first battle that took place was the fight in the Iowa legislature to stop a new restrictive abortion law from being passed. The second battle consisted of the fight that ensued in the Iowa courts after the bill was signed into law. The [...]

Cell phones and the 5th Amendment right against self-incrimination

April 7, 2019

Data security technologies, like those used on both Apple and Samsung cell phones, continue to provide consumers with features aimed at increasing their data security.  Apple says iPhone users unlock their phones an average 80 times a day. Samsung’s newest device allows users to unlock their phones with an on-screen fingerprint scanner.  Apple has included fingerprint technology (Touch ID) on their phones since 2013 and now offers Face ID, which allows users to unlock certain iPhones by [...]

International legal rights of children living with disabilities: The realizations behind country-level implementation

April 1, 2019

International guidelines paint a relatively clear picture of the legal rights that all children living with disabilities share across the globe. These rights apply regardless of the region in which the child lives. The rights are inherently fundamental. These international human rights standards serve as excellent guidelines for countries looking to adopt and modernize their disability laws.  However, country-level implementation of these international laws on an individual country basis can [...]

A guide to Canada’s recent legalization of recreational marijuana

April 1, 2019

With the passage of the Cannabis Act, Canada just became the first G7 nation to legalize recreational marijuana use for adults on a federal level.   Under the new policy, Canadian adults may legally possess up to 30 grams of marijuana in public.   On October 17, 2018, Canada passed the Cannabis Act, legalizing the recreational use of marijuana for adults.  According to the Canadian Department of Justice, the Cannabis Act “creates a strict legal framework for controlling the [...]

A divided court and a controversial travel ban: Trump v. Hawaii

March 23, 2019

Those following American politics will have heard of President Donald Trump’sProclamation No. 9645, a travel ban on nationals from eight foreign countries, including Chad, Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, Syria, Venezuela, and Yemen.  On June 26, 2018, the controversial travel ban was fortified in a 5-4 decision by the Supreme Court in Trump v. Hawaii. (2018).   President Trump’s Executive Orders   On January 27, 2017, immediately after taking office, President Trump issued Executive [...]
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