Law & Public Policy Blog

Carrie Weaver, JD Anticipated May 2023, Law & Public Policy Scholar The 1970 textbook Wigmore on Evidence, which can still be found in print in Temple University’s library reserves, posits essentially that every woman who raises allegations of sexual abuse should be subject to a psychological assessment for risk of delusion: No judge should ever let a sex offense charge go to the jury unless the female complainant’s social history and mental makeup have been examined and testified to by …

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Ellie Holzman, JD Anticipated May 2023, Law & Public Policy Scholar Over the past several decades, the LGBTQ rights movement has secured several historical wins for their community. There are a number of accomplishments from the late 20th and early 21st century that stand out. The U.S. Supreme Court has decided landmark cases in favor of LGBTQ rights, such as invalidating anti-sodomy laws,  upholding the right to same-sex marriage, and reading “sex” for purposes of Title VII of the Civil …

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JJ Larkins, JD Anticipated May 2023, Law & Public Policy Scholar On November 30, 2021, the first two government-approved overdose prevention sites (OPSs) in the United States opened in New York City (NYC). The sites opened amidst a tragic opioid overdose crisis: more than 2,000 people in NYC died from fatal overdoses in 2020. In 2021, drug overdose deaths in the United States exceeded 100,000 deaths in a single year for the first time. To combat the crisis, NYC opened …

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Amanda Wagner JD Anticipated May 2023, Law & Public Policy Scholar In November, Facebook announced that it was planning to shutter it’s eleven-year-old facial recognition system, deleting more than one billion users’ facial scan data in the process. Some may have believed the move signaled broader consensus regarding the potential privacy abuses, threats to civil liberties, and questionable accuracy of facial recognition technologies. After all, the announcement comes after a period of significant public discourse about the technology’s intrusive and …

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Patrick Zancolli JD Anticipated May 2023, Law & Public Policy Scholar In the last two weeks, two young men were shot and killed around the Temple University campus in North Philadelphia. The first victim was an eighteen-year old member of the North Philadelphia community, and the second was a Temple University senior. While these regrettable incidences of gun violence may have hit closer to home than others that have occurred this year, they must be squared within a larger backdrop. …

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Paul Loriston, JD Anticipated May 2022, Law & Public Policy Scholar One evening during my senior year of college I was catching up with friends from the old neighborhood and explaining what I was doing in college. It was in the middle of explaining these lofty concepts that I picked up while earning my degree in economics that I was struck by how little this degree had anything to do with my life. Not the life I was still working …

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Peter Konchak ’21, Law & Public Policy Scholar             August 30, 2021 marked the end of nearly two decades of continuous U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan. A little more than two weeks after Taliban militants seized the Afghan capital, Kabul, following a rapid offensive and the wholesale collapse of the Afghan security forces, the last U.S. military forces in Afghanistan completed their ignominious withdrawal from that country. As a consequence, to the extent that the war in Afghanistan constituted a …

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Kate Steiker-Ginzberg, JD Anticipated May 2022 For years, I’ve been fortunate to enjoy the quaint Long Beach Island home that has been the summertime retreat of my friend Rebecca’s family since the 1950s. Beach Haven, New Jersey, has changed dramatically since her father Steve was growing up. Since the 1980s, developers have been replacing bungalows and empty lots with mega-mansions, each with a roof deck higher than the last. Even after Hurricane Sandy wreaked havoc on the New Jersey coastline, …

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Kathleen Killian ’21, Law & Public Policy Scholar The following is the first part in a series on systemic racism in the United States and the manner in which it implicates several crimes against humanity under international criminal law. The United States has, while flouting its reputation as the “land of the free,” has continued to implement government policies that furthers the systemic oppression of Black Americans. Although civil rights advocates in the country have achieved milestones for equality, the …

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Benjamin Whitney, JD Anticipated May 2022 Among President Biden’s very first acts as the nation’s forty-sixth chief executive was to recommit the United States to the Paris Climate Agreement (Paris). This move comes after the United States’ four-year absence from that international agreement under the Trump Administration. Paris is a watershed multilateral-treaty that brings together 196 adopting nations for one common, fundamental goal––limiting global warming to “well below 2ºC and preferably to 1.5ºC.” The treaty, notwithstanding the temporary absence of …

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