By JOHN KELLNER & ERIK GAMM

Colorado could spare itself a reputational headache and hefty fines if it were to invest in criminal incompetency restoration, but it would need to cut mental health operating costs to make the effort worthwhile. When criminal defendants are declared incompetent, they may also be declared “restorable,” meaning they could, with counseling and mental healthcare, restore a level of mental capacity that could carry culpability. The backlog of criminal defendants waiting for mental health services has risen in the last year, as has the length of time they need to wait for an available bed. In the meantime, high-visibility cases have highlighted a pervasive problem in Colorado relating to incompetency to stand trial. This situation has been created over the last five years. In March 2019, the Colorado Department of Human Services (CDHS) resolved an eight-year federal lawsuit regarding excessive wait times for courtordered competency services. The settlement, filed as a consent decree, required CDHS to expand community-based services, speed up inpatient admissions, and provide treatment for people in jail awaiting competency services. CDHS faces up to $12 million annually in fines if it fails to meet new service deadlines. The agreement comes after years of rising demand: since 2000, inpatient competency evaluation orders increased nearly 600%, and restoration service orders rose more than 1,200%. Disability Law Colorado reopened the lawsuit after CDHS failed to meet previous settlement deadlines. In subsequent years, the backlog has not only ceased to disappear but grown. The state of Colorado has not paid the fine threshold each year but has in some, an outlay that has added to the state’s deficit. In the meantime, judges have less discretion regarding when to release accused criminals who are mentally incompetent back into the public to await restoration.

KEY FINDINGS • Since 2000, inpatient competency evaluation orders increased nearly 600%, and restoration service orders rose more than 1,200%. • As of June 2025, there are 368 Colorado inmates on the wait list to receive court-mandated competency restoration. • There are 673 total beds reserved for incompetency restoration treatment. They are always occupied, creating a wait list referred to as the state’s “backlog.” • Over the last year, 930 inmates have been referred for restoration and have spent, or will spend, an average near 110 days each on the wait list. • The Colorado Department of Human Services (CDHS) pays a fine between $100 and $500 per day for keeping an inmate ordered to undergo competency restoration waitlisted for longer than 28 days. In Fiscal Year 24, CDHS paid $12 million, which is the cap under the consent decree. • If the consent decree had not included a cap, the fines would have cost $65.2 million. • To bring wait times below 28 days, the state would need to add 209 new beds. These resources would save the state $12 million (plus annual adjustments to the cap) per year by eliminating the fines and $11.9 million per year by reducing the amount of time that inmates spend in public facilities while on the wait list. • HB22-1303 budgeted $6.2 million per year to staff and operate 16 new beds at the Colorado Mental Health Hospital in Fort Logan. At $388,279 per bed, 209 new beds would require $81.2 million of additional state spending per year. • State accreditation standards require that mental institutions dedicate about 3.7 FTE of staff to each restoration bed; this requirement alone generates 74% of the total cost per unit. • Inpatient restoration is almost seven times more expensive than incarceration, which costs just $58,000 per inmate annually. • In total, the state would face an annual cost of $57.2 million to comply with the 2019 consent decree.

Greenwood Village, CO: Common Sense Institute, 2025. 13p.

By Robert Vargas, Lauren Hagani, and Gabriel Rojas∗

This article synthesizes emerging research on the political economy of policing, conceptualized through a Gramscian framework that examines policing as an inter-institutional structure shaped by economic, political, and ideological forces. We review research on relations between police and (a) social services, (b) private firms, (c) philanthropy, and (d) academia, highlighting how each sector plays a role in legitimating or sustaining police power. By situating policing within a Gramscian political economy, we provide a framework for understanding how police functions extend beyond law enforcement into the management of social order, wealth extraction, and ideological control.We conclude by discussing future directions for research and strategies for intervening in these power relations.

Annu. Rev. Law Soc. Sci. 2025. 21:489–507

By Oliver Rollins, Julien Larregue, and Hannah Pullen-Blasnik

Technologies play a central role in decision-making processes within criminal legal systems, creating what we call technologies of criminalization. These tools are based on the idea of calculated truths about future riskiness, but they often reinforce structural biases that underlie the concept of criminality. Their development and use demonstrate efforts to define the abstract criminal: a notion that embodies the presumed natural realities and discoverable aspects of criminality believed to be objectively discoverable and statistically predictable. This perspective neglects the socially constructed nature of criminality and the impact of human biases in the design and implementation of these technologies. Three interlinked processes drive their adoption: quantification, prediction, and pathologization. By examining neuroscientific, genomic, and algorithmic technologies, we critically assess their social impacts and the risks of exacerbating social inequalities under the facade of technical neutrality. Finally, we emphasize the increasing involvement of private industries in criminalization processes.

Annu. Rev. Law Soc. Sci. 2025. 21:469–87

 By Benjamin van Rooij, Malouke E. Kuiper, and Alex R. Piquero

Punishment plays a major function in preventing crime. Punishment can potentially shape criminal conduct through at least 13 different mechanisms: 5 have a positive effect, reducing crime, and 8 have a negative effect, stimulating offending. This article explains what these 13 potential effects of punishment are and how they have been theorized. It further reviews the body of available empirical evidence for each of these mechanisms. It finds that for many mechanisms there is mixed and inconclusive evidence with major methodological challenges. The article further analyzes the conditions under which punishment affects crime, including the type of crime, offender, and underlying causes and correlates of crime. It also explores the time frames through which punishment affects crime, as well as the ways in which different behavioral effects of punishment interact. The conclusion develops ideas about how this body of empirical work can come to shape criminal justice practice.

Annu. Rev. Law Soc. Sci. 2025. 21:509–26

By Sarah J. Foster, Syd J. Ascione, Francesca Santaniello, Teale N. Phelps Bondaroff

Illegal wildlife trade (IWT) is a persistent and extensive threat to global biodiversity. Hundreds of marine fish species are subject to regulation under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), but it is unclear how much protection species gain from CITES because information on marine fish IWT is limited. We used online reports of seized shipments of seahorses (Hippocampus spp.) to investigate their illegal trade. Seahorses were the first genus of marine fishes to be listed under CITES. We compiled 297 unique seizure records from 192 online outlets posted from January 2010 to April 2021 and analyzed the number of seahorses seized, the value of the seized items, trade routes, and other seizure details. Dried seahorses accounted for nearly all seizures, which totaled around 5 million individuals valued at over US$21 million. The reported number of seizures and the number of seahorses seized increased over time. Reported illegal trade involved 62 countries and other jurisdictions. Seized seahorses predominantly originated in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. China was the primary destination. Seahorses were mostly intercepted in transit and in destination countries rather than source countries. Airports were the most common location for seizures, and passenger baggage represented the primary transportation method by number of seizures, but sea cargo facilitated the largest seizures. Seahorses were most commonly seized by customs, often in conjunction with other regulated wildlife products. Although seizures led to detention of actors, information on subsequent legal actions was limited. Addressing the illegal trade in seahorses requires greater enforcement in source countries and increasing the realized risks associated with smuggling. Our findings can inform intelligence-led enforcement efforts to curb seahorse trafficking and highlight data biases and gaps that should be addressed to facilitate enhanced deterrence measures.

Conservation Biology, volume39, Issue5

October 2025

e70047

By Ailie Rennie In partnership with the Building Futures programme

This report forms part of the Prison Reform Trust’s Building Futures programme, funded by the National Lottery Community Fund, that since 2020 has been exploring the experiences of people serving longterm prison sentences. The programme has defined its long-term cohort to include men who spend 10 or more years in prison and women who spent eight years or more. This report is based on in-depth interviews with 20 people who have been released from prison and returned to the community after serving long-term prison sentences. This report aims to: • Understand more about the experience of release, re-entry, and resettlement for those who serve the longest periods in custody, including the challenges they face and their experiences of being on licence or under supervision. • Explore the availability of pre- and post-release support and assistance offered to people released from long prison sentences, highlighting both evidence of good practice and identifying areas for improvement. • Develop insights and ideas that will inform policy and practice through-the-gate in line with the Prison Reform Trust’s vision of a just, humane, and effective penal system. The report and its context Despite the common understanding that most prisoners – even those who are serving long-term and indeterminate periods of imprisonment – will eventually be released back into the community, there is currently very little known about the experiences of release for such individuals. We know strikingly little about the process of release itself as it exists in England and Wales, the challenges it presents, and the ways in which people begin to create a life for themselves after having spent many years separated from the outside world. Similarly, we know very little about what support might be available to assist people on their re-entry journeys or how the challenges they face might change over time. Given the increasing number of people subject to long-term sentences, the likely subsequent rise in people being released from them, and the staggeringly high current rate of recall, this is problematic as we may be failing to understand the unique re-entry needs of this population and providing insufficient support, setting them up to fail. The need to understand individuals’ experiences of release from long sentences is also particularly relevant given policy changes that have occurred in recent years wherein release and progression to open conditions have been severely curtailed. In 2022, for example, the then justice secretary Dominic Raab introduced controversial changes that limited the transfer of indeterminate prisoners from closed to open conditions and introduced new ministerial powers to refuse the release of the ‘highestrisk prisoners’. In effect, these procedural changes sought to keep a greater number of individuals imprisoned for longer by making it harder for specific types of prisoners to be released. Despite the reversal of Dominic Raab’s policy changes by Alex Chalk in 2023, many long-term and indeterminately sentenced prisoners are still denied the opportunity to access open prisons and progress towards release. For example, in 2024, more than 100 indeterminate prisoners were blocked from moving to open conditions by justice secretary Shabana Mahmood, despite their transfers being approved by the Parole Board.1 Without the opportunity to access the benefits of open conditions, including release on temporary licence, and to demonstrate how they have lowered their risk, more people serving long-term and indeterminate sentences are likely to stay in prison for longer beyond the expiry of their tariff, further increasing pressures on the prison population. The importance of these changes, for the purposes of this report, is to highlight the achievements of those who were granted release within this context, including participants in this study. Whilst most of the participants were released before these policy changes came into effect, just under half were released – or rereleased – in accordance with these frameworks. Those who were released prior to this, however, also experienced a series of policy changes both prior to and post-release which impacted their progress, including the declining use of release on temporary licence, Transforming Rehabilitation, and the increased length of supervision from four to 10 years. As the entire Building Futures programme has sought to demonstrate, being sentenced to and progressing through long-term imprisonment is a tumultuous process of navigating complex – and often contradictory – policy changes without knowing when they could change again. The intention of this report is to detail how the ‘rollercoaster’ of policy changes also impact the release and resettlement processes, continuing long after an individual exits the prison gates

London: Prison Reform Trust, 2025. 84p.

By Ruth Vollmer, Clara Schmitz-Pranghe

This article analyses the interactions between inequalities and reintegration assistance, looking at the examples of Serbia and Kosovo. It proposes an approach for examining the reintegration assistance practices of frontline providers by (a) viewing them through the lens of street-level bureaucracy acting mainly on behalf of the returning state and (b) as locally situated agents within the networks of their own distributive relations and embodying their own social positioning. Street-level implementers play an active role in shaping outreach, effectiveness, and sustainability of reintegration assistance, not always in the intended ways. This article traces their navigation of institutional, organisational, and relational contexts, internalised social norms, and perceptions of social divisions, as well as the micro-dynamics of asymmetrical interactions during service delivery. It finds that strategies applied by street-level assistance providers have ambivalent but rather minor effects on pre-existing inequalities. Even though they often naturalise prevalent social divisions, the interactions and allocation of assistance are determined more by their practical experiences, availability and type of support, as well as general programme design and working conditions. The inability to bridge the mismatch between available support and needs can even endorse inequality-normalising perceptions.

International MigrationVolume 63, Issue 4

August 2025

By Min Xie, Preeti Chauhan, Michael Rempel, and Jeremy Travis 

This study relies on data from the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) and presents trends from 1996 to 2022 in crime victimization, rates at which victims report crimes to the police, confidence in the police, and victims’ use of services in New York City. This is one of two studies falling under the umbrella of the Crossroads Project. Its goal is to trace New York City’s trends in crime victimization, enforcement, incarceration, and racial disparities from the 1990s to the early 2020s in the hopes that empirical data over a long timeframe might provide a much-needed perspective capable of informing future policy. Both of the two resulting reports and a joint executive summary may be found at the project landing page. What is the NCVS, and why is it important for studying crime? Crime data for cities and communities across the country relies primarily on criminal complaints reported to local police agencies. The many crimes that victims never report to law enforcement are omitted. However, by collecting data directly from crime victims, the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) can provide estimates of both reported and unreported crime. The NCVS is the world’s largest and oldest national victimization survey (Xie, Lynch, & Lauritsen, 2025). It has provided information on the criminal victimization of the U.S. household population for over 50 years (1973 to present). It surveys persons aged 12 years or older from a nationally representative sample of U.S. households randomly selected from a stratified multistage cluster sampling design, with the goal of getting an accurate and representative count of crime victimization in the United States (Cantor, 2025). The U.S. Census Bureau administers the interviews for the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS). The primary information from the NCVS includes nonfatal violent crimes (rape or sexual assault, robbery, aggravated assault, and simple assault) and household property crimes (i.e., burglary, motor vehicle theft, and other types of theft), both reported and not reported to the police. Therefore, the estimates for nonfatal violence crimes are by persons, and the estimates for property crimes are by households. The NCVS data is an important complement to the Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Summary program and the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS). The UCR and NIBRS databases, which rely on crimes reported to the police, are often used to follow crime trends by policymakers, journalists, and the general public, and to guide public safety decision making. But nationwide, the NCVS shows that more than 50% of crimes are NOT reported to the police (Xie, Ortiz Solis, & Chauhan, 2024). This is known as the dark figure of crime and shows that relying on police-recorded crimes provides an incomplete picture of crime trends (Lynch & Addington, 2007). The NCVS also provides critical information such as why the crime was not reported to the police. Much information in the NCVS is not available from the UCR summary program or NIBRS, such as the circumstances of crimes based on the victims’ descriptions, the consequences of the victimizations, the victims’ responses to victimization, and their interaction with the criminal justice or victim service systems or lack thereof. These data are critical to policymakers as they think of responses to crime and how to enhance public safety.  

New York: Data Collaborative for Justice, at John Jay College, 2025. 18p.   

By Chandler Hall and Alice Hamblet

  We all have a right to feel safe and be free from violence as we go about our daily lives. However, when violence does occur, few are prepared for the unexpected trauma, injury, and expense that can result. When someone experiences violence in the United States, the criminal legal system too often neglects the immediate and long-term needs of survivors of violence, instead disproportionately focusing resources on punishing the person or persons responsible for causing the harm. To address this imbalance, Congress passed the Victims of Crime Act (VOCA) in 1984, which established the Crime Victims Fund (CVF) to provide financial support to state crime victim compensation (CVC) programs and victim service providers. Currently, there is a 75 percent federal match for state CVC programs, meaning that for every dollar that a state spends on victim compensation grants to survivors, it receives 75 cents from the federal government. Despite the key role that financial relief can play in healing after violence, America continues to fail to make necessary investments supporting victims and survivors of violence. In fiscal year 2021, state and local governments spent a combined $274 billion on police, corrections, and criminal-legal proceedings. That same year, the federal CVF was capped at slightly more than $2 billion. Too often, survivors are left to deal with the lasting and compounding effects of their victimization without support; the results—which can include bankruptcy, chronic illness, depression, and anxiety—are devastating. While financial support alone cannot eliminate the lifelong pain and trauma associated with victimization, research shows that financial-induced stress following harm is a stronger predictor of the development of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) than victimization itself. As such, victim compensation can be lifesaving. By federal law, CVC programs must cover out-of-pocket expenses such as medical bills, burial costs, and lock replacement that are not covered by other means, including private insurance, Medicare, or Medicaid. As such, CVC programs have the potential to aid survivors who have no other means of support. Moreover, victim compensation programs can help to break cycles of violence. The adage “hurt people, hurt people” rings true. While most survivors do not engage in future violence, the fact remains that people who commit violence often have experienced it themselves. This may be the case especially for people living in neighborhoods that experience frequent violence and who, due to systemic disinvestment and inequities, do not have access to healing resources such as adequate social services or medical or mental health care. When survivors receive the support they need to heal, they are less likely to commit harm. What is more, healed people, heal people. Providing survivors with victim compensation to meet unexpected costs associated with experiencing violence opens doors for intergenerational and community healing, as the impacts of untreated trauma and economic instability can ripple and compound to their families and communities at large. Victim compensation programs, therefore, have the potential to not only deliver on the promise to make survivors safer, but to help break cycles of violence, thereby making entire communities safer.   

Washington, DC: Center for American Progress, 2025. 73p.

By Rene Reyes

Free speech is under siege. This is not to say that all speakers and viewpoints are at equal risk—some voices receive support and protection, while others are subject to threats and suppression.  Pro-Palestinian speech falls into the latter category.  Critics argue that there has long been a “Palestine Exception” to free speech, but efforts to silence pro-Palestinian advocacy on university campuses and elsewhere have dramatically increased since Israel began its assault on Gaza in October of 2023 in response to incursions by Hamas militants.  Many supporters of Israel contend that such restrictions on pro-Palestinian advocacy are justified, and have suggested that there is a double standard between racism and antisemitism at play when universities fail to condemn at least some forms of pro-Palestinian speech. The implication seems to be that anti-Black and Brown speech would never be tolerated on campuses, and that racialized minorities have been a special favorite of legal and institutional protections against hateful expression. The problem with this argument is that it is demonstrably false.  Indeed, this Essay argues that free speech doctrines have consistently functioned to give white people the liberty to engage in hateful speech and to deny Black, Brown, and other racialized individuals the kinds of protections from fear and harm that supporters of Israel are now demanding.  In other words, the Palestine Exception to free speech is real—and it is part of a deeper legal tradition that has enshrined free speech as an element of white privilege.

Virginia Law Review ,Vol 111, June 2025.

Epistemic Oppression 

By Lark Mulligan

he police murdered Alton Sterling on camera.2 They also murdered Eric Garner, Laquan McDonald, and many others; the videos of their deaths garnered millions of views.3 Information about some horrors of the criminal legal system is spreading widely, yet White mainstream media outlets frequently dismiss, erase, or demonize Black, Indegenous, and People of Color (“BIPOC”) communities who protest and organize to demand justice through the abolition of or radical changes to the policing and prison systems.4 In response to these racist atrocities and within the broader context of criminal legal reform, activists and academics frequently craft ethical arguments such as: “Solitary confinement is immoral because it inflicts psychological and physical torture” or “Incarceration is unethical because prisons are inherently violent places.”5 Many ethical arguments centeron the racist injustices and harm that affronts human dignity and agency caused by prisons and police.6 Others critique the racist and retributive ethics of “law and order” rhetoric.7 Each argument is well-supported by accessible data that can be found in numerous studies, books, articles, and media.8 However, people often erroneously dismiss these data-driven, logical, ethical reasonings as factually inaccurate, or many respond with a deeply racist ethical-legal rationale, for example: “While there may be abuses in prisons, some people need to be put in solitary or prison and deserve it because [insert classical legal rationales for punishment: deterrence, retribution, rehabilitation, etc.].”9 Ethical and legal arguments are severely limited, however, when they lack an epistemological interrogation into the power structures that determine what qualifies as “knowledge” within the ethical-social conversation. This article demonstrates why anti-prison activists’ ethical arguments generally do not receive the due credibility and weight they deserve unless they pair critical liberatory epistemic practices with material, institutional, and social transformations. Abolitionists claiming to fight the confines of carceral epistemologies cannot merely sit back and point out the already-existing logical contradictions in the criminal legal system—it is not enough. ..continued 

St. Mary’s Law Review on Race & Social Justice , v. 27(2) 2025.

By Michael Rempel, Olive Lu, & Sarah Monaghan

In January 2020, New York’s landmark bail reform law went into effect. This report provides a definitive examination of how bail reform reshaped the pretrial landscape after five full years of implementation. Covering all regions of the state, and drawing on court data from 2018 to 2024 (spanning pre- and post-reform timeframes), the report examines bail reform’s impact on:

• Pretrial Decision-Making at Arraignment: Rates of release on recognizance, supervised release, bail, and pretrial detention; and estimated numbers of cases not resulting in pretrial detention due to changing practices under bail reform.

• Affordability of Bail: For cases that continue to be assigned bail, median bail amounts, bail posting rates, and judges’ use of “alternative” payment methods (partially secured bonds and unsecured bonds) that legislators intended to ease people’s ability to pay.

• Racial and Ethnic Disparities: Disparities among Black, Hispanic, and white people in judges’ rates of continuing to set bail or remand people directly to jail.

• Three Rounds of Bail Amendments: Effects of amendments respectively put into effect in July 2020, May 2022, and June 2023 (entailing a first-ever analysis of the 2022 and 2023 amendments).

New York: Data Collaborative for Justice, 2026. 47p.

By C.J. McKinney

In 2025, the government announced that it intends to make changes to asylum appeals.1 These would include a new appeals body staffed by adjudicators, replacing the current First-tier Tribunal staffed by immigration judges.2 This briefing examines previous changes to the structure of asylum appeals over the years. A September 2025 briefing by Amnesty International captures the main shifts: In May 1969, Parliament created a two-tier system to deal with appeals against various Home Office decisions. Appeals were generally made to and decided by people called adjudicators. If permission was granted, an adjudicator’s decision could be appealed, including by the Home Office, to the Immigration Appeal Tribunal. This two-tier appeals system was later formally constituted as the Immigration Appellate Authority (IAA). The rules governing appeals procedures were made by the Home Secretary, a power which was later transferred to the Lord Chancellor. On 4 April 2005, the IAA was replaced by the Asylum and Immigration Tribunal (AIT). The change involved changing the title of the people who decided appeals from adjudicators to judges. The change gave the appearance of merging a two-tier system into one. However, the system remained two-tier. If permission was granted, a more senior judge could review a decision of the first tier of that system. This process was called reconsideration rather than appeal but was essentially the same. On 15 February 2010, the AIT was abolished, and its functions passed to the current appeals body. The change involved moving the judges from the AIT to the current body. The second tier of this body (the Upper Tribunal) has a higher status making it more difficult to seek judicial review of its decision to refuse permission to appeal against a decision of the first tier (the First-tier Tribunal). This appeals body also has more independence from government, including over the rules that govern the appeals for which it is responsible. 3 This briefing goes into more detail on all these developments. It does not cover changes to the substance of appeal rights over time; these are For general context: claims for asylum are usually based on the United Nations Refugee Convention, which the UK has ratified.summarised in a 2019 report of the Joint Committee on Human Rights. 

London: UK Parliament, House of Commons Library 2026. 16p.

By The Youth Endowment Fund

The Youth Endowment Fund (YEF) surveyed nearly 11,000 children aged 13–17 in England and Wales to hear directly about their experiences of violence. The findings are being shared across several reports, each exploring a different theme. This third report focuses on mental health and experiences of violence. For the first time, we asked detailed questions about mental health, including using the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ), a 25-item questionnaire that measures the scale of children’s struggles. Combined with data on victimisation and perpetration, this provides an unprecedented picture of how violence and mental health are linked — and the complex ways they shape young people’s lives. Here’s what we found. Teenage children affected by serious violence face a dramatically higher risk of mental health problems. The scale of poor mental health among teenagers is alarming. More than one in four 13-17-year-olds reported high or very high levels of mental health difficulties, as measured by the SDQ — the equivalent of nearly a million teenage children struggling with their well-being. Behind this figure lie serious and often complex needs. A quarter of teenage children reported a diagnosis of at least one mental health or neurodevelopmental condition, such as depression, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder or speech and communication difficulties. A further 21% suspected they had a condition but had not been formally diagnosed — suggesting large numbers of teenage children are facing difficulties without recognition or support

By Daniel M. Klerman

Judges appointed by President Trump are more likely to vote in favor of the government in cases challenging the second Trump administration's immigration policies. While Trump's Supreme Court nominees behave like other Republican nominees on the Court, Trump's lower court nominees are twice as likely to vote in favor of the government as nominees of other Republican presidents; in contrast, other Republican nominees to the lower courts are statistically indistinguishable from Democratic nominees. The difference between Trump nominees and other judges is driven almost entirely by judges 55 years old or younger, who may be influenced by the prospect of promotion to the Supreme Court.

 USC CLASS Research Paper No. 2522, 2025, 

By Bruce Ackerman

From the days of the Federalist Papers and Marbury v. Madison, the Court’s commitment to reasoned elaboration of constitutional principle has served as the justification for its role in the system of checks-and-balances. Yet the very foundations of judicial legitimacy are at stake in two cases that the Roberts Court has scheduled for expedited consideration during the early months of its 2025-26 Term. These cases deal with the continuing legitimacy of Humphrey’s Executor’s unanimous decision upholding the constitutionality of “independent agencies” – most notably, the Federal Reserve and the Federal Trade Commission. This prospect has provoked a great deal of scholarly debate over the implications of relatively recent decisions by the Roberts Court on these issues. In contrast, my essay puts these decisions in a larger framework – emphasizing the crucial role played by the President and Congress in constructing “independent agencies” during the half-century preceding Humphrey’s unanimous decision upholding their constitutionality in 1935. It demonstrates that, after the breakthrough creation of the Interstate Commerce Commission by the Cleveland Administration, every President – from Theodore Roosevelt through Woodrow Wilson through Herbert Hoover – gained Congressional support for the creation of new independent agencies self-consciously organized to restrict presidential power in order to assure the deployment of impartial and expert regulation over crucial areas of socio-economic life. Justice Sutherland’s unanimous opinion of 1935 represents the self-conscious recognition of the legitimacy of this bipartisan affirmation of the role of expertise in modern government – and should not be cast aside without a principled confrontation with its historical foundations in American constitutional development.

Yale Law School, Public Law Research Paper, 2025

By Sarah Pierce

The White House has painted so-called “sanctuary” jurisdictions as lawless safe havens that “harbor criminals” and “block” federal enforcement. The reality is far different. In fact, no state or city stands in the way of federal immigration of cers doing their jobs. Instead, local law enforcement agencies make careful choices about how and when they aid federal immigration enforcement—balancing the demands of limited resources, public trust, and local priorities. Even those that affirmatively call themselves “sanctuary” jurisdictions participate in federal immigration enforcement in meaningful ways. For example, every jurisdiction shares data with the FBI that gets run through ICE and informs the agency of unauthorized or potentially removable immigrants in custody. But the Trump administration’s aggressive focus on ensuring local participation in federal immigration enforcement begs the question of how far Washington can go to force local police to serve as a national force—and what such a power grab risks. In this paper, we explain the different ways states and localities tailor their participation in federal immigration enforcement, including highlighting the ongoing participation of several of the administration’s most vili ed, so-called “sanctuary” jurisdictions. We also explain why some jurisdictions limit or tailor their enforcement more than others and what local public safety measures may be lost as a result of the administration’s hyper xation on hitting numerical deportation quotas. 

Washington, DC: Third Way, 2025. 11p, October 10, 2024

By Apratim Vidyarthi

Academic freedom is an essential principle undergirding education in the United States. Its purpose is to further the freedom of thought and inquiry in the academic profession by advancing knowledge and the search for truth. Academic freedom goes back more than a century, and is now intertwined with First Amendment doctrine. Yet today’s academic freedom doctrine suffers from serious problems, some of which perpetuate discrimination in the classroom and systemically in educational institutions. The definition of academic freedom in theory is misaligned with that in case law. Courts have done little to analyze what protections academic freedom provides, and case law generally provides too much protection in some cases, and too little in others. Worse, academic freedom for universities and professors has been hotly debated and thus well-defined and protected in case law, whereas students’ academic freedom has received less attention, making it a “second-tier” academic freedom. Often, protecting university and professors’ academic freedom comes at the expense of students’ academic freedom, though courts have never truly struggled with multistakeholder academic freedom questions or tried to create a clear process to determine whose academic freedom prevails when the two conflict. This results in academic freedom being used as a sword to promote discriminatory behavior, and as a shield to protect acts of discrimination from being punished. Existing constitutional and statutory antidiscrimination protections do not provide adequate support against discrimination, especially for students’ academic freedom. Constitutional protections for students’ academic freedom often take the back seat to free speech doctrine, and antidiscrimination protections are often parried by using academic freedom to protect problematic behavior. A few solutions abound: first, the definition of academic freedom is nearly a century old, and needs to be redefined to incorporate antidiscrimination principles to be relevant for the present. Second, students’ academic freedom rights need to be understood and defined more clearly. Third, courts must find a way to balance competing stakeholders’ academic freedom interests, ultimately looking to the purpose of academic freedom to advance knowledge. Finally, universities must play their part by creating systems and structures to ensure that discrimination is remedied as early as possible, and that university processes help clarify the extent of academic freedom definitions and support application of antidiscrimination law.

JOURNAL OF CONSTITUTIONAL LAW [Vol. 26:2, 2024. . 79p.

By Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Center

Addressing arbitrary and wrongful detention through advocacy and litigation is an area of extensive expertise and experience for RFK Human Rights. In the last decade, we have worked with families of arbitrarily and wrongfully detained individuals, including US persons, to facilitate their release and return home. A central reflection from our engagements with other practitioners and family members of arbitrarily or wrongfully detained persons is that the policy and legal architecture for the United States Government (USG) response to arbitrary and wrongful detention is complex and convoluted. Despite the successes in reuniting detained individuals with family members and the positive posture of the government toward negotiations, many stakeholders believe that clarity about the role each office or agency plays in the government’s response and uniformity in the government’s engagement with the families could facilitate even more positive outcomes.

In 2023, RFK Human Rights started a project aimed at steering USG and Congress towards more decisive action to address arbitrary and wrongful detention around the world and enhancing awareness around the government’s response architecture. Through the generous support from Open Society Foundations – United States, the project included advocacy engagements with the USG, litigation before the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (UNWGAD), and publication of the Guide for Engaging the United States Government on Arbitrary and Wrongful Detention Cases.

About the Guide

The Guide on Engaging the United States Government on Arbitrary and Wrongful Detention Cases provides clear and concise information regarding advocacy strategies and engagement with the United States Government on arbitrary and wrongful detention cases. While every case is unique, this Guide aims to ease the burden of the engagement and advocacy process by shedding light on ways that the USG can engage on these cases and offering a set of best practices for advocating before the USG to secure the victim’s release. The Guide is based on RFK Human Rights’ institutional knowledge and experience working on arbitrary and wrongful detention cases, desk research, and a large number of interviews with experts and victims of arbitrary detention.

Washington, DC; New York: Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights, 2025. 68p.

By The Center for Human Rights, The Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies, University of Washington

The University of Washington Center for Human Rights's newest report, “Compliance Theater: The NWDC’s Unenforced Contract," looks at ICE’s use of enforcement mechanisms in its $700 million contract with GEO Group, Inc., the private company that runs the Northwest Detention Center (NWDC) in Tacoma, Washington.

How does ICE enforce the contract to operate the NWDC, and what happens if GEO fails to meet contract standards? Report findings include:

The contract between ICE and GEO Group for operation of the Northwest ICE Processing Center/NWDC expires in September 2025; it is likely to be renewed.

The contract includes extensive enforcement mechanisms and references to ICE standards, which are cited by ICE in response to criticisms of conditions at the facility.

UWCHR has filed multiple FOIA requests for various categories of records mandated under the facility’s contract, but in many cases ICE has responded that the required records do not exist; Members of Congress have also been unable to obtain records required under the contract.

Despite documented failures to uphold contract standards, GEO Group has never been sanctioned by ICE under the terms of the contract.

Seattle: Center for Human Rights, The Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies, University of Washington, 2025