The Law School's Social Justice Initiative hosted some law profs and a couple of other All Stars - Steve Shapiro (see pic), The ACLU's Legal Director and Shayana Kadidal, counsel for Gitmo detainees - for a look back at the year's big cases. The big ones - Gun Control (Heller) and Habeas for detainees (Boumidiene) - were on their docket but they also mentioned some important ones that might have fallen off our radar. As always, the faculty were on the top of their games. Coherent and well-spoken. Also, the event was surprisingly friendly to the uninitiated undergrad, with very little Legal Latin Jargon to roll your eyes at.

First up was Steve Shapiro, the ACLU's legal director since 1993, to talk about this year's civil liberties cases. He went over Crawford v. Marion County Election Board, which he argued in front of the court earlier this year. Indiana passed law which Shapiro argued would disenfranchise 43k eligible voters by forcing every voter to present some valid form of state id at the polls. The court rejected the challenge because it had not been brought by any of these supposedly disenfranchised voters. To the court. this made the ACLU's claim of disenfranchisement purely speculative and not worth the hassle. Shapiro will probably bring the case again when he finds someone who has been disnefranchised by the law.

Next, Jeffrey Fagan, a law prof talked about this year's death penalty cases. In Baze v. Rees, the court rejected a challenge to the lethal injection procedure, denying that it risked pain. Fagan made the "killer" point that the most logical death penalty procedure would be guillotine, since it is painless and immediate. In fact, Chief Justice Roberts addressed this in the opinion and said that it would be undignified. But for who? Fagan replied - the convict is dead, so it's really us, the society, that can't bear the gruesomeness. Fagan pointed out that a big concern with the death penalty is the "aesthetics of punishment" Also - In Kennedy v. Louisiana, the court voted 5-4 that child rapists could not be punished with the death penalty.

Next, Jamal Greene, A Constitutional Law prof talked about the year's big gun control case, Distict of Columbia v. Heller. The court struck down a d.c law that basically bans private ownership of handguns. In so doing, it made clear that the second amendment guarantees an individual right to bear arms, not just a right to militia-related arms. Greene says that both the majority and dissenting opinions concern with the amendment's meaning for the founders and the history of gun rights point to a new prestige for "originalism" on the court, though more for the conservatives - Scalia esp - than others.

Shayana Kadidal, an attorney with the Global Justice Initiative, talked about Boumidiene v. Bush, a case which argued that detainees in guantanamo bay have a right to habea corpus - i.e to argue for their release in court. The court, 5-4, agreed with Kadidal's arguments for the detainees. The decision was significant because it established that the habeas right in the constitution applies to non-citizens outside U.S borders and that the Bush admin's prevailing procedure for detailing with detainees - secret military tribunals - were not an adequate substitute.