By Patrick Jaicomo, Esq.

October 2023

Qualified immunity shields government workers from suit, denying those harmed the constitutional remedies and the fundamental guarantees that most of us assume protect us from government abuse. Instead, those rights are little more than a parchment promise — words on a page with nothing to back them up.

By Erwin Chemerinsky, Esq.

January 2023

The U.S. Constitution's post-Civil War Reconstruction Amendments were designed to “create racial equality.” The Fourteenth Amendment in particular greatly expanded the power of the federal government over the states. The author argues that narrow interpretation of these amendments by the Supreme Court “overall, has done much more harm than good with regard to race.”

By Michael E. Tigar, Esq.

January 2023

The author recounts that resisting racism has “pervaded almost every aspect” of his work and recalls how events in the Civil Rights Movement shaped his thinking. He said “You cannot count on the government to do its job, when that job involves acting on behalf of people’s rights. The initiative must come from a popular movement, which should not permit itself to be co-opted.”

Sidebar January 2023

The history of discriminatory laws in the U.S. against individuals emigrating from China goes back to the 1800s. The Chinese challenged these laws in more than 10,000 filings, including the landmark United States v. Wong Kim Ark, which established the Fourteenth Amendment's guarantee of U.S. citizenship by right of birth.

By Alan Leveritt

July 2022

The author, founder of a newspaper in Little Rock, Arkansas, decries anti-boycott laws that require businesses seeking contracts with the State to sign a pledge, e.g. not to boycott Israel. He refused to sign this pledge on the grounds of Free Speech, although it cost him advertising. He points to the growing number of anti-boycott laws on such concerns as climate change, fossil fuels and firearms and observes that if this approach continues, no Constitutional right is secure.

By Erwin Chemerinsky, Esq.

January 2022

Dozens of Americans, disproportionately men of color, have died from police use of chokeholds. The Supreme Court’s ruling in City of Los Angeles v. Lyons has blocked challenges to the use of the chokehold, thus enabling continuation of this lethal practice.

By Bob Zellner

October 2021

The author, a native Alabamian whose father and grandfather had been members of the Ku Klux Klan, became a charter member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and was personally recruited by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., as an organizer in the Civil Rights Movement. In this article, Mr. Zellner recounts witnessing the brutal reaction of racist mobs the day that “Freedom Riders” rode interstate buses into Montgomery, Alabama to challenge segregation in public transportation. For a young Bob Zellner, it was a life-changing event which helped cement his enduring commitment to the fight for civil rights.

October 2021

Sidebar

History of the black codes followed by the Jim Crow laws that continued the enslavement of Black people in the South after the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment purportedly freeing the slaves.

By Eric A. Seiff, Esq., and Marc Ramirez, Esq.

January 2020

Public defender and New York State CCLP member Marc Ramirez, Esq., interviews NYS CCLP volunteer Eric Seiff, Esq., attorney for Central Park Five defendant Korey Wise on the successful motion that overturned the convictions of the five young men. Mr. Seiff discusses the devastating miscarriage of justice in the high-pressure, rush-to-judgment atmosphere in New York City.

By Jonathan A. Weiss, Esq., and Otis H. King, Esq.

April 2012

By 2012 eleven states had passed laws making it more difficult for minority and poor citizens to register to vote. In an election year where the “SuperPACs” are channeling billions in corporate campaign donations into elections, the rights of those with the least money is of special concern. The authors discuss measures to protect the rights of minorities and the poor to vote.

By Dianne Feinstein (deceased)

April 2012

On New Year’s Eve, 2011, President Obama signed into law the National Defense Authorization Act. The act authorizes the U.S. military to arrest and detain American citizens indefinitely without trial and to ship them anywhere in the world. The law obliterates the constitutional guarantees that support our adversarial system of justice. Senator Feinstein, one of the few outspoken opponents of these provisions, has introduced the Due Process Guarantee Act to repeal this effort to vest the military with unbridled power to arrest and hold individuals incommunicado.

By John Girardi, Esq.

October 2007

NCCLP Board member John Girardi, Esq., interviewed the well-respected attorney Dicky Grigg, Esq., from Austin, Texas, concerning Grigg’s representation of detainees at the United States’ facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Grigg provides a gripping description of the restraints facing any counsel attempting to represent a defendant in the custody of the United States who has been labeled an “enemy combatant” or who is “awaiting such a determination.” He further details through his experience the United States government’s abandonment of basic constitutional standards of due process and its abrogation of standards under the Geneva Conventions.

By Ora Prochovnick, Esq.

January 2006

The June 2005 decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in Kelo v. City of New London, approving the use of eminent domain power for purely private uses as long as it promises economic gain, has set off a storm of opposition in the media and in federal and state legislatures. In this article, the author examines the decision in light of both prior legal precedents and the history of economic development of projects and suggests an alternative approach to development rooted in CCLP’s own history.