Legal Affairs

It only does away with certain buzzwords.

Nebraska and Oklahoma have a problem with Colorado's lax marijuana laws.

How national affiliation became such an important part of our personal identity.

The George Zimmerman trial has provoked a national conversation on race. The NSA probably doesn't want one on security.

As facial recognition on the fly becomes more and more possible, are there any uses that don't send chills up the spines of civil libertarians?

How far does the writ of the military run? Only to the highway's verge, argue professional peace protesters who will make their case before the Supreme Court.

The U.N. wants to hit pause on autonomous killing machines right now—before the robotic cat is out of the bag.

Did you miss the president's important speech about the War on Terror? Here's the one response you should make some time for.

Sweatshops are great political targets for unions, who have incentives to drive up the price of manufacturing abroad. But better building inspectors is a rare union demand, at least compared to longer break times and higher wages.

Why we should be treating gun violence as a disease—and why most states can't.

Tolokonnikova received a two-year sentence for her participation in a protest in Moscow's main Orthodox church last year.

Low-slung speedboats from Mexico are smuggling millions of dollars' worth of marijuana along the California coast. And we can't do a thing about it.

In Europe and most of the rest of the world, gay marriage arrives via legislatures, not courts. But the U.S. is different, as always.

The weird story of one Tyrannosaurus' journey from Mongolia to a Manhattan courtroom

Despite debates over its depiction of torture, Zero Dark Thirty became the most-watched movie in America this week, and looks to be heading for another strong weekend. How reliable the film’s portrait? Does it give an accurate picture of how the CIA anti-terrorism efforts really work? Nada Bakos, who spearheaded the CIA’s Zarqawi Operations team from 2004-2006 as a targeting officer, weighs in. Prior to the operations position, Bakos served as an analyst for the agency primarily in the Counterterrorism Center, and was a member of the team charged with defining the relationship between Iraq, al Qaeda, and 9/11.

Forensic scientists are working to identify the anonymous corpses of thousands of unlucky immigrants along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Opinion: A professor of disabled-rights law argues that U.S. Senate efforts to block ratification of a United Nations treaty confirming those rights is seriously wrong-headed.

Drone assassinations? Guantanamo? Why civil libertarians can’t win in the fight against an expanded security state. And why we can blame Caesar.

A sampling of the many achievable reforms now being used to help avoid wrongful convictions

Opinion: Three legal experts who have worked with victims of human trafficking argue that Prop 35, a laudable effort on California's ballot to address sex slavery, will actually set back existing efforts to fight the trade.

Because police, detectives and forensic scientists are only human, and it's all-too natural to be inexplicably reluctant to admit to – or even to see – some of their mistakes.

DNA testing has overturned many wrongful convictions but the vast majority of criminal cases have no DNA to test. And some of those inmates’ convictions are also flawed.

The single biggest cause of wrongful convictions is mistaken eyewitness identification. Is there a better way to find the right perpetrator?