Knowing What We Want: A Decent Society, A Civilized System of Justice & A Condition of Dignity

Human dignity as a value to guide criminal justice reform emerged strikingly in the 2011 Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Plata. But with Justice Kennedy retired and courts generally reluctant to go far down the road to practical reforms, its future lies in the political realm shaping policy at the local, state, and national levels. For human dignity to be effective politically and in forming policy, we need a vocabulary robust enough to convey a positive vision for the penal state. In this essay, I discuss three concepts that can provide more precision to the potential abstractness of human dignity, two of which the Supreme Court has regularly used in decisions regarding punishment: the idea of a “decent society,” the idea of a “civilized system of justice,” and the idea of a “condition of dignity.” In brief, without a much broader commitment to restoring a decent society, and to civilizing our justice and security systems, there is little hope that our police stations, courts, jails, and prisons will provide a condition of dignity to those unfortunate enough to end up in them.

Freedom of Religion and Marriage Equality

This chapter seeks to explain, as a descriptive matter, when, how, and why issues of religious freedom became part of the marriage equality debates. Using a historical context, the principle of religious freedom is examined, providing a provocative analysis of religious liberty cases and the ongoing role courts have played in this debate after the legalization of same-sex marriage in the United States through the 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges Supreme Court decision. A legal analysis is provided for Supreme Court cases.

Indigenous Rights and covid-19 – Indigenous Land and Health Under Serious Threat in Brazil

This article analyses the impact of covid-19 on the rights of indigenous peoples, particularly in Brazil. It deals with the current situation of the Brazilian indigenous peoples, the impacts of the pandemic, the rights created on the adoption of protective sanitary measures for indigenous people and land rights in Brazil. Does the Brazilian government comply with international law, with constitutional rights of indigenous peoples in the current covid-19 crisis, particularly with the Brazilian Supreme Court decision on the adoption of protective sanitary measures for indigenous people? With a focus on the 2020 Report of the Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, this paper will identify and examine the gaps in protection of the indigenous peoples rights by reason of the impact of the covid-19 crisis. This paper argues that the crisis is misused as an occasion for land invasions, deforestation, forest fires and the denial of basic indigenous rights. Especially in Brazil, a transformative change, an emergency support for indigenous peoples, and a still stand agreement on logging and extractive industries operating next to indigenous communities are needed. Brazilian ngo statements give guidelines as to how to manage the threats of the present pandemic on indigenous peoples of Brazil. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, the United Nations and the International Labour Organisation all offer further relevant suggestions as to how to address the serious impacts in the response to and the aftermath of this crisis.

Judges' Legal Considerations (Ratio Decidendi) and Jurisdical Implications on the Criminal Acts of Continuous Corruption (Study of Supreme Court Decision No. 866 K/Pid. Sus/2016)

This study intends to examine the legal considerations of the judges of the Supreme Court against the criminal act of corruption continued in the Supreme Court's decision number 866 K/Pid. Sus/2016. The decision stating that the convict is proven to have committed a criminal act of corruption continues, but the continued action is not stated in the consideration of the decision. The Supreme Court's decision number 866 K/Pidsus/2016 raises a big question mark regarding the legal basis for criminal prosecution for perpetrators of continuing corruption, this is because the Corruption Crime Law does not specifically regulate acts of continuing corruption. It is said to be a continuous act in a criminal act of corruption because the act is carried out continuously, both with similar crimes in corruption. Continuing action or also called Voorgezette handeling is an act (gebeuren) in which one action with another action is interrelated and becomes a single unit, the linkage must meet at least two conditions, namely the act is the embodiment of a forbidden will decision and an act that is prohibited. happen must be the same. This journal was created with the aim of being able to find out the judge's legal considerations for the criminal act of continuing corruption which was reviewed with the Ratio Decidendi Theory and the academic requirements to obtain a Master of Law degree at the Faculty of Law, Sebelas Maret University, Surakarta. The research method used by the researcher is doctrinal research with a statutory approach and a case approach. The technique of collecting legal materials used is literature study. The legal material analysis technique used is deductive data analysis.

Religious Liberty Sacralized: The Persistence of Christian Dissenting Tradition and the Cincinnati Bible War

In 1869, the Cincinnati school board ended a forty-year tradition of Bible reading in the schools in an attempt to encourage Catholics to use them, thus provoking national controversy and a lawsuit brought by pro-Bible advocates. Scholars regularly cite the Ohio Supreme Court decision in favor of the school board as a landmark in the legal separation of church and state. This article interrogates the meaning of the secularization of law by examining expressions of juristic, pedagogic, and popular consciousness in the multiple levels and spaces where individuals raised and resolved constitutional questions on education. Dissenting Christian tradition shaped the legal brief of Stanley Matthews, the school board's lead attorney. Matthews' sacralized the religious liberty guarantee found in the Ohio Constitution within a post-millennialist framework. Ohio Chief Justice John Welch hybridized Christian dissenting tradition with deistic rationalism in <u>Board of Education v. Minor, et al</u>, thus appealing to as broad a constituency as had the right to elect justices to the Ohio Supreme Court. The limited, technical ruling allowed for a metropole/periphery divide in educational practice, so that Bible reading and prayer in Ohio public schools continued well into the 20th century. Far from a landmark in secularization of the law, the Bible War case demonstrates the persistent power of religion to frame law, including the law of religious liberty.