The Conversation

The Supreme Court’s historically low public standing has prompted a national conversation about the court’s legitimacy. It’s even drawn rare public comment from three sitting Supreme Court justices. What’s referred to by experts as the problem of “judicial legitimacy” may seem abstract, but the court’s faltering public support is about more than popularity.

Is student debt cancellation unfair? It isn’t as simple as yes or no answer. It seems to violate the moral principle of following through on one’s promises. Fairness and respect, however, also demand that society address the magnitude of student debt today, and especially the burden it imposes on low-income, first-generation and Black borrowers.

Humans can best protect sea turtle hatchlings as they make their way from the beach to the sea if they know precisely when the baby turtles will appear. But predicting emergence has been difficult. By placing a simple sensor disguised as a turtle egg in the nest, it indicates when the baby turtles would emerge from the sand and swarm toward the water.

The current volume of state election litigation also has the potential to derail the safeguards that state courts can provide. When every aspect of an election becomes a lawsuit, negative effects may follow – including destabilizing elections, overwhelming already strained courts and imposing significant costs on states.

There have been shootings at U.S. schools almost every year since 1966, but in 2021 there were a record 250 shooting incidents – including any occurrence of a firearm being discharged, be it related to suicides, accidental shootings, gang-related violence or incidents at after-hours school events.

Sunak was born in the southern English port city of Southampton in 1980. His father, Yashvir, was a family doctor and his mother, Usha, a pharmacist. They were born and brought up in present-day Kenya and Tanzania, respectively, before moving to the UK. Sunak’s grandparents on both sides were from India and had migrated to East Africa.

Halloween is a time to embrace all that is disgusting, from bloody slasher films to haunted houses full of fake guts and gore. But the attraction to stuff that grosses us out goes beyond this annual holiday.

Pit bulls are not inherently dangerous. Like other dogs, they can become dangerous in certain situations, and at the hands of certain owners. But there is no defensible rationale, other than canine profiling, for condemning not only all pit bulls, but any dog with a single pit bull gene, as some laws do.

A pilot study of several hundred athletes (of all genders) at both large and small schools has revealed troubling examples of abusive coaching behavior. Data and research strongly suggest that abusive behavior is widespread and baked into the very essence of organized sports.

Government agencies and private security companies in the U.S. have found a cost-effective way to engage in warrantless surveillance of individuals, groups and places: a pay-for-access web tool called Fog Reveal.

The United States leads the world in its use of solitary confinement, locking away in isolation more of its population than any other country. The authors interviewed 100 people confined or employed in solitary confinement units to better understand what it is like from both sides of the bars. The interviews form the basis of “Way Down in the Hole,” a book published on Oct. 14, 2022.

In 1962 environmental scientist Rachel Carson published “Silent Spring,” a bestselling book that asserted that overuse of pesticides was harming the environment and threatening human health. Carson did not call for banning DDT, the most widely used pesticide at that time, but she argued for using it and similar products much more selectively and paying attention to their effects on nontargeted species.

Trump led Canadians to be more receptive to progressive policy orientations — if only as a means of distinguishing themselves from Trump’s America: he motivated Canadians to work towards a more inclusive and egalitarian society, while attempts by conservative politicians to brand themselves as the Canadian Trump led to failure.

Since nine states already have bans on affirmative action, it’s easy to know what will happen if affirmative action is outlawed. Studies of college enrollment in those states show that enrollment of Black, Hispanic and Native American undergraduate students will decline in the long term.

With the opening of the U.S. Supreme Court’s new session on Oct. 3, 2022, Clarence Thomas is arguably the most powerful justice on the nation’s highest court. He’s the longest-serving sitting justice and on track to have the lengthiest court tenure ever.

Conservative Party members who chose Liz Truss as prime minister are wondering whether their choice (and the abrupt change of direction in economic policy it enabled) will cost them the next election. And they are right to be worried.

Shouts of “death to the dictator” and “woman, life, freedom” are reverberating throughout the streets of Iran following the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old woman, while in custody of the “morality police” in Tehran.

The Supreme Court’s new supermajority overturned abortion rights and expanded gun rights in 2022. Upcoming cases focus on the future of affirmative action, equal treatment of LGBTQ people, and the control of election laws.

Even a modest system of solar plus one battery can power critical loads in a home for days at a time, practically anywhere in the country. But providing backup for cooling and heat can be a challenge, though not an insurmountable one.

Evidence shows that even in coastal cities, ocean desalination may not be the best or even among the best options to address water shortfalls. It’s expensive. It kills aquatic life. It negates better options.

Plug-in vehicles are making great progress, with their share of U.S. car and light truck sales jumping from 2% to 4% in 2020-2021 and projected to exceed 6% by the end of 2022. But sales of gas-guzzling pickups and SUVs are also surging. This other face of the market subverts electric cars’ carbon-cutting progress.

There are tens of billions of super-Earths in habitable zones where liquid water can exist in the Milky Way alone. To date, astronomers have discovered two dozen super-Earth exoplanets that are, if not the best of all possible worlds, theoretically more habitable than Earth.

A professor from the United States who tweeted a critical comment of the queen has been subject to significant public backlash. Police in Britain have questioned protestors expressing anti-monarchy sentiments, and in some cases, arrested them.

Unlike other advertisements for goods and services – for example, what a car manufacturer tells a customer about expected fuel efficiency – there are no federally set standards for measuring broadband service speeds. This means there is no clear way to tell whether customers are getting what they pay for.

Less than 30% of high school students sleep the recommended amount. Among middle schoolers, nearly 60% do not get enough sleep at night. The causes: too- early school start times, lack of morning exposure to daylight and excessive exposure to bright electric light and screens late in the evening.

The United States may regard itself as a “leader of the free world,” but an index of development released in July 2022 places the country much farther down the list, ranking between Cuba and Bulgaria. Both are widely regarded as developing countries..