Stanford Law School Professor and Executive Director of the SLS Rule of Law Impact Lab Amrit Singh and Expert Advisor Adriana Garcia co-authored an opinion essay, "Electing Judges in Mexico? Bad Idea," published by The New York Times. Based on a recent report conducted by the Rule of Law ...Impact Lab, Mexican Bar Association, and Inter-American Dialogue, this piece discusses the ongoing developments in Mexico relating to so-called "judicial reforms" that threaten the country's judicial independence and the rule of law.

"For weeks, Mexico has been in turmoil over President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s proposed constitutional amendment for judges to be elected by popular vote. Fifty-five thousand judicial employees went on strike as legislators pushed the law forward; the peso fell, and international banks issued dire warnings about the effect of the proposal on the economy," Singh and Garcia write.

Read more here: https://stanford.io/4cQAINi

A recent New York Times opinion piece poses the provocative question: “Who Gets to Kill in Self Defense.” The essay recounts the author’s collaboration with SLS’s Debbie Mukamal on a groundbreaking study from Stanford’s Criminal Justice Center, titled “Fatal Peril.” The study, ...released on September 4, provides extensive documentation of the “IPV-to-Prison Pipeline”—the pathways through which women who are survivors of intimate partner violence (IPV) find themselves serving long prison sentences for acts of survival. The study represents the first time the Composite Abuse Scale and Danger Assessment, two validated instruments used to assess intimate partner violence and intimate partner homicide, have been used in the study of an incarcerated population. “Used globally but unevenly by police, health care workers and advocates in the domestic violence field, the danger assessment can help predict, with startling accuracy, which domestic abuse victims are at risk of being killed by their partners,” according to the essay’s author.

Read more here:

Opinion | Who Gets to Kill in Self-Defense?

Self-defense laws were written for men. This is how they fail women who fight back.

stanford.io

Stanford Law School Lecturer Glenn Fine published an opinion essay, "Inspectors General Are Doing Essential—And Unpopular—Work," for The Atlantic. Fine reflects on his years of government service working as an Assistant United States Attorney in Washington, D.C., to discuss how ...agencies have been made more accountable, efficient, and honest.

Fine served as the Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Justice from 2000 to 2011, and also as the Acting Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Defense from 2016 to 2020. He has testified more than 50 times before congressional committees about this work and has written articles on inspectors general, federal investigations, and the management of federal agencies.

Read his opinion essay here: https://stanford.io/47ews9h

In the latest episode of the Stanford Legal Podcast, Stanford Law School Professor Jeffrey Fisher and Assistant Professor Easha Anand, co-directors of the Supreme Court Litigation Clinic, join Pam Karlan to discuss the Supreme Court’s last term and the blockbuster rulings with far-reaching ...implications for American democracy and law.

The Supreme Court’s latest term was marked by decisions of enormous consequence. However, the way the Court has communicated about these rulings far undersells the gravity they carry. While “expressing itself in extremely modest terms,” Professor Jeffrey Fisher says, the current Supreme Court has “[handed] down decisions that have enormously consequential effects for our democracy, people’s rights, and everything in between.” He and Assistant Professor Easha Anand, co-directors of the Supreme Court Litigation Clinic, agree that these recent decisions could reshape American law and politics for years to come.

Listen to the episode here: https://stanford.io/3yZ6Kc1