Category: Legal

NC ‘Compromise’ on HB2 and LGBT Discrimination

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“Many activists working on the ground in North Carolina for HB2’s repeal see the compromise as a disgrace,” says Gabriel Rosenberg, a professor of gender, sexuality and feminist studies. “Gov. Cooper and the state Republican Party are horse-trading with the basic human rights of their constituents. … The compromise takes basic rights from LGBTQ citizens and gives them access to accommodations that never should have been denied in the first place. So it’s a give and take just like when a bully steals your wallet but lets you keep bus fare home.”

  Read More at Outsports

 

 

North Carolina’s HB142: Repeal? Compromise? What Does it all Mean?

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Once North Carolinians saw the economic impact of HB2 and realized it put the state out of step with federal and most state laws, “people just saw this as unnecessary, unforced error,” says Pope “Mac” McCorkle, a former Democratic consultant said. North Carolina’s bill also left other Southern states — such as South Carolina, which rejected a bathroom bill, and Georgia, whose governor vetoed a religious freedom bill, last year — looking “more progressive, reasonable, sensible,” he says.
Read More at CNN

Is Repeal of Bathroom Bill a Good Deal for Anyone?

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The NCAA’s deadline was “the symbolic hammer that finally worked,” says public policy professor Pope “Mac” McCorkle, a former lawyer who has worked as a policy consultant for North Carolina’s representatives. He says the deal worked out Thursday looks more like “a plea bargain. “The NCAA isn’t liberal or conservative (by nature) so it became kind of the default judge in this case.”

Read More in The International Business Times

Bathroom Law Repeal Leaves Few Pleased in North Carolina

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Public policy professor Pope “Mac” McCorkle called the deal an “awkward compromise.” He says it would ultimately be judged by how many of the sports events, entertainers and businesses who had turned on the state would eventually change their minds. Law professor Jane Wettach says that beyond schools, few institutions had ever policed people’s bathroom choices. “Which is what made the law sort of symbolic,” she says, referring to House Bill 2.

Read More in The New York Times

North Carolina’s Bathroom Bill Repeal Won’t Bring the NCAA Back

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“The state could lose more than $3.76 billion over the next 12 years due to boycotts and lost business opportunities stemming from the bill, which takes aim at LGBT anti-discrimination policies, according to an Associated Press analysis. … It will take strong action to convince national and global organizations that have cut ties with the state to return …,” writes Dorie Clark, an adjunct professor at The Fuqua School of Business and a former presidential campaign spokeswoman for Howard Dean.

Read More in Fortune

Admiral: U.S. Relies Heavily On Allies in Latin America

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The biggest security challenge facing the U.S. in in the Caribbean and Central and South America is monitoring the smuggling networks that operate there and have connections to other parts of the word, says Adm. Kurt Tidd, the U.S. Navy admiral in charge of the region. Also speaking at the event this week at Duke were U.S. Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, retired Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman and a Duke alum who’s now a researcher at the university. Political scientist Peter Feaver moderated the talk.

Read More in the Herald-Sun

 

Why the Foreign Policy Sky is Not Falling

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“In my view, it’s vitally important for national security law professionals to separate whatever personal dislike they may harbor for the president from their assessments of what the U.S. government writ large is doing. Moral outrage has its value, but it can also be counter-productive,” writes law professor Charlie Dunlap, a former deputy judge advocate general of the U.S. Air Force. “Likewise, we need to recognize that reflexively and indiscriminately opposing every initiative of the Trump administration creates the very real danger of throwing out the proverbial baby with the bath water.”

Read More in Just Security

Can Judiciary Recover From Political Battles Over Supreme Court Seat?

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The empty seat on the U.S. Supreme Court from the death of Justice Antonin Scalia has been one of the most contentious political footballs in Washington. But the confirmation hearings of President Tump nominee Neil Gorsuch may have somewhat mitigated political damage to the judiciary.“The quality level of our top judges, both as lawyers and as people, is incredibly high in this country, and when you see what these folks are really like, it tends to settle people down a bit,” says law professor Ernest Young.

Read More in The Christian Science Monitor

Gorsuch Hearings: Should Agencies – Or Courts – Decide the Law?

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“Executive power issues are the most important that the (Supreme) Court will face in the next decade,” says law professor Ernest Young. “The executive must abide by statutory limits set by Congress, but if the executive gets to define those limits (and courts have to defer to its definitions) then those limits are a lot less meaningful.”

Read More in The Christian Science Monitor

Is Judge Gorsuch An Originalist, Or A Living Constitutionalist?

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“Why does any of this matter? Because if Judge Gorsuch is an originalist in the strict sense that Justice Scalia was not, then the implications for constitutional law going forward are quite significant. If, as seems more likely, Judge Gorsuch (like Justice Scalia) is instead more of a living constitutionalist than an originalist, then one is left to wonder why he publicly embraces the originalist label when he otherwise eschews labels,” writes law professor Neil Siegel.

Read More at American Constitution Society