After President Joe Biden took office on January 20, 2021, legal analysts expected “breaking” constitutional news to die down a bit. After all, former President Donald Trump punctured too many legal and constitutional boundaries to count, and with a supine Republican Party in Congress, the impacts will be felt for generations. But somewhat surprisingly, 2021 brought its own fair share of blockbuster legal news — much of it fallout from the Trump years.
Here are five highlights, in review.
1. The new 6-to-3 conservative majority on the U.S. Supreme Court refused to step in — even temporarily — to halt the execution of a blatantly unconstitutional state law. The Texas law, SB8, happens to be about abortion, which the court held is protected from government interference until the point of viability, around 24 weeks gestation, in a decades-old pair of mega-cases, Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey. But from a legal standpoint, the subject matter of the Texas law is really beside the point.
According to its own website, the court is charged “with ensuring the American people the promise of equal justice under law and, thereby, also functions as guardian and interpreter of the Constitution.” In this moment, SB8 violates the Constitution because it restricts abortions as early as six weeks. That remains true unless and until Roe and Casey are gutted, an event that’s entirely feasible come June 2022 when the court issues its decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health...
Mombasa County Commissioner Mohamed Noor said investigations conducted so far have found no evidence that any victim had actually lost their genital organs despite widespread rumours circulating ...