Feature

Is the Death Penalty Unconstitutional?

Is the Death Penalty Unconstitutional? Is the Death Penalty Unconstitutional?

Following a controversial ruling over lethal injections, Justice Breyer suggested that capital punishment may violate the 8th Amendment. It’s time to bring that case to court.

Sep 24, 2015 / Feature / George H. Kendall

Crosstown commute: From 1978 to 1999, a busing program helped improve the racial mix in Seattle’s public schools. (Credit: Museum of History & Industry, Seattle Post-Intelligencer Collection [2000.107])

Parents Tried to Desegregate Their Schools. The Roberts Court Said No. Parents Tried to Desegregate Their Schools. The Roberts Court Said No.

The conservative majority rewrote decades of equal protection law in the name of a fictional color-blind Constitution.

Sep 24, 2015 / Feature / William Yeomans

Word made flesh: A demonstrator awaits the Court’s decision in the Hobby Lobby case, June 30, 2014.

How ‘Hobby Lobby’ Launched a Right-Wing Crusade How ‘Hobby Lobby’ Launched a Right-Wing Crusade

The 2014 ruling has enabled corporations and Christian zealots to claim “religious liberty” as an excuse to deny women’s rights and skirt the law.

Sep 23, 2015 / Feature / Dahlia Lithwick

The Case Against the Roberts Court

The Case Against the Roberts Court The Case Against the Roberts Court

In the decade since John Roberts was appointed chief justice, the Supreme Court has favored the powerful at the expense of everyone else.

Sep 23, 2015 / Feature / Nan Aron and Kyle C. Barry

The Second Amendment Was Never Meant to Protect an Individual’s Right to a Gun

The Second Amendment Was Never Meant to Protect an Individual’s Right to a Gun The Second Amendment Was Never Meant to Protect an Individual’s Right to a Gun

How the Supreme Court upended the well-established meaning of the Second Amendment.

Sep 23, 2015 / Feature / Dorothy Samuels

Illustration by Philip Burke

The Kissinger Effect The Kissinger Effect

Leftists often describe Henry Kissinger as a unique moral monster, but his intellectual framework pervades the entire national security state, from the neocons to Obama.

Sep 10, 2015 / Feature / Greg Grandin

How Pope Francis Is Reviving Radical Catholic Economics

How Pope Francis Is Reviving Radical Catholic Economics How Pope Francis Is Reviving Radical Catholic Economics

Some Catholics have been quietly practicing them all along.

Sep 9, 2015 / Feature / Nathan Schneider

Young mothers at a health clinic in Manila. In 2012, the Catholic Church opposed a bill guaranteeing access to birth control and sex education in the Philippines. Credit: Erik de Castro / Reuters

If Pope Francis Really Wanted to Fight Climate Change, He’d Be a Feminist If Pope Francis Really Wanted to Fight Climate Change, He’d Be a Feminist

The world will never be healed of its ecological ills as long as women cannot control their fertility.

Sep 9, 2015 / Feature / Katha Pollitt

Pope Francis confronts the environmental crisis.

How Pope Francis Came to Embrace Not Just Climate Justice but Liberation Theology How Pope Francis Came to Embrace Not Just Climate Justice but Liberation Theology

And how that poses a radical challenge to both climate deniers and mainstream liberals.

Sep 9, 2015 / Feature / Wen Stephenson

How the Atheist Son of a Jewish Rabbi Created One of the Greatest Libraries of Socialist Literature

How the Atheist Son of a Jewish Rabbi Created One of the Greatest Libraries of Socialist Literature How the Atheist Son of a Jewish Rabbi Created One of the Greatest Libraries of Socialist Literature

Books with Marx’s handwritten notes; volumes annotated by Lenin; newspaper clippings from displaced Yiddish journalists—Chimen Abramsky’s book collection had it all.

Aug 27, 2015 / Feature / Sasha Abramsky

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