Our Rights, Our Future

NCRCR Interview Series: The Ban on Islamic Law in Oklahoma

Muneer Awad of the Council on American-Islamic Relations spoke with Tricia Perry about the recent ballot initiative in Oklahama, where voters approved a measure prohibiting state courts from considering international and Islamic ("Sharia") law. Listen as they discuss the potential impact of the law and pending legal challenges.

Listen to the full interview series here.

Supreme Court Roundup: What Is at Stake for Civil Rights

Yet again we have reached the end of a Supreme Court term and important rulings are being released in short succession.  Below is a roundup of some of the term’s most significant cases involving civil rights. While the cases vary in subject matter, all illustrate that the way the Court rules (and correspondingly, who is making the decisions) has a serious impact on our lives.

THE GOOD

We touched upon the Lewis v. City of Chicago case in our March audio interview. Last month, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously in favor of the black firefighters seeking redress for racial discrimination in hiring. The case will be sent back to appeals court to be tried once again.

The Supreme Court also ruled that teenagers may not be locked up for life without chance of parole if they haven't killed anyone. Of course, that any teenagers get life sentences in the United States is still astounding and unusual from an international perspective. It’s worth noting, though, that the juvenile offender case was a 5-4 ruling (written by Justice Kennedy), which serves as yet another reminder of how important the selection of the justices is in preserving basic rights.

THE BAD

The big news last week was the 5-4 ruling on “Miranda rights,” having to do with the right to remain silent when under arrest. Though NCRCR largely focuses on access to the courts to enforce anti-discrimination law, the rights of workers and our ability to protect the environment (among other things), this case is a big deal and serves as a reminder of the important role of the court system. The Supreme Court ruled that criminal suspects seeking to protect their right to remain silent must actually speak up in order to invoke it, redefining the court’s 1966 ruling in Miranda v. Arizona.

Another 5-4 ruling in April further restricted fees that lawyers can receive under laws that were intended to encourage attorneys to take on civil rights cases.  Though many people may not be so interested in the issue of attorneys' fees, the question  whether attorneys can receive payment when they take on civil rights cases is an important one.  Clients in these cases are often low-income and thus cannot pay for legal services. The way the law is structured, when people who are discriminated against win their case, they’re entitled to fees, so that the lawyers can get paid something for their work and so there will be an incentive for lawyers to take these cases in the future, which helps to ensure that the law is enforced and benefits us all.   Perdue v. Kenny A. dealt with how judges should determine how much the losing side has to pay.  Though the Court didn’t rule out the possibility that attorneys might be recognized for extraordinary work, they set the standard so high that it’s hard to see what might qualify.  (In this case, the judge increased fees in light of the fact that, as he put it, it was the best performance he had seen in his 28 years on the bench.  This apparently wasn’t good enough to meet the Court’s new standard). Perdue is one of a number of cases over the last decade that raise questions about when the prevailing party is entitled to fees and how much they can get, cutting back on when lawyers can get an award (see Buckhannon, for example) and how much they can get.

THE UGLY

The Supreme Court announced that visitors to its courthouse will no longer be allowed to enter through the front door. The New York Times describes this decision as “ripe with symbolism about access to justice in the age of terror.”

THE YET UNDETERMINED

In March, the Supreme Court heard a case challenging the way the government interprets immigration laws. The case involves a lawful permanent resident (with four children who are US citizens) who had been convicted of a misdemeanor for possession of marijuana and one Xanax pill. José Angel Carachuri-Rosendo was subsequently located and ordered to be deported on grounds that he “could have” been convicted of a felony. Kevin Johnson writes on the ACSblog that, “The U.S. government's tortured interpretation would have a devastating impact on immigrant communities, especially long-time residents with deep family and community ties to the United States.” We are awaiting a ruling.

Also still pending a decision is McDonald v. Chicago, a challenge to the authority of state and local governments to regulate individual possession of guns.  Legally, the question is whether or not the right to bear arms, which the Court has recently ruled restricts the federal government’s latitude, also applies to state and local governments. It’s a tricky issue for people who have been fighting against gun control and, at the same time, argue for “strict constructionism” or a more “textual” reading of the Constitution, which has no explicit language suggesting that the states can’t regulate possession of guns.  Invalidating the Chicago law at issue in the case would require a broad interpretation of the due process clause or other restrictions on states found in the 14th Amendment, something that “strict constructionists” have been staunchly against. 

Stay tuned for more information and feel free to comment on which cases you think are most important!

(Photo by The Library of Congress.)

Guest Blogger: Senators, Start Asking Supreme Court Nominees the Right Questions.

By Richael Faithful

Today, President Obama announced the nomination of Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court. For the past few weeks, legal and political commentators have speculated widely about the President's prospective Court choices, potential procedural barriers facing judicial nominees, and have already been debating the candidate's pros and cons. Justice Stevens’ replacement -- the President’s second Supreme Court nomination during his short tenure -- is certainly significant. Recent Court decisions on corporate campaign spending, DNA evidence in criminal cases, and federal government voters’ rights enforcement, demonstrate the Roberts Court’s  hostility toward core civil rights principles. Many insist that a new Supreme Court Justice must be an individual who will maintain some ideological balance in the Court, blocking Justice Roberts’ assault on constitutional protections.

However, it can be argued that the nomination process itself, as it currently exists, impedes civil rights progress in the United States.

First, the current confirmation process dissuades the President from choosing the strongest candidates for the job -- nominees with truly robust pro-civil rights records. Before the process even begins, many excellent Supreme Court candidates decline nomination offers because they do not want to undergo the accompanying public scrutiny. In this media-driven age, many prospective candidates simply do not want to have every aspect of their lives turned over for scandal-fodder. Pro-civil rights candidates who have written progressive judicial opinions, those whose decisions reflect pro-civil rights philosophies, and/or those who have displayed pro-civil rights leanings that have nothing to do with their judicial records have come to be proverbial sitting ducks for character assassins. Although the confirmation process is not responsible for the current political environment, Senators often do not exercise prudential restraint in their questioning, arguably using the nominations venue for personal political grand-standing.  We cannot know for sure the number of outstanding potential nominees we have lost before the nominations process even started, due to the very nature of the process. 

Once a candidate is nominated, she or he faces the radicalization of their judicial persona by Senate members. Civil rights supporters are attacked by the Right as being “outside the mainstream” or “supportive of special rights.” Oftentimes these charges are heavily coded, as they were during Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s Senate confirmation. Justice Sotomayor underwent relentless criticism for her opinion in the well-known Ricci decision, which upheld settled employment discrimination law designed to protect minorities from systemic workplace bias through facially neutral practices. Senators made baseless charges that her opinion revealed some secret anti-white sentiment. These charges gained some traction among the white viewing public who are suspicious of certain civil rights policies, which some see as a form of government-sanctioned favoritism. In fact, this spin-campaign was so effective that it emboldened Senator Tom Coburn to make highly-inappropriate, racist statements about the distinguished judge. Such comments, in my opinion, are much more than faux-pas -- they are invitations to a powerful, mobilized political base and to the general public, asking them to marginalize civil rights issues as [undeserved ‘special rights’ that positively impact only a few].

Finally, the current confirmation process diminishes the relevance -- indeed, the importance -- of today’s civil rights movements. Nominees are routinely asked about their views on landmark cases, their stock answers tend to placate those who will only be satisfied by politically-correct answers. We know, of course, that the next Supreme Court Justice nominee supports Plessy v. Ferguson and Brown v. Board of Education. Professing allegiance to important yet old cases suggests that civil rights is an ancient agenda — one that was sought and achieved during the time of Dorothy Height’s prominence. The Senate’s disengagement with nominees on “live” civil rights issues allow nominees to slip into high-court seats with little accountability or knowledge about their true judicial philosophies. This has a very real impact on all of us; especially America’s most marginalized people. Senators rarely level sophisticated, fair-minded questions on modern civil rights issues such racial profiling against communities of color, women’s right to equal pay, government discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people, or the status of American Indian tribal sovereignty. Rather, they tend to hammer through hyper-partisan questions to either grand-stand on “their” issues or tip-toe into a “gotcha” moment. This sort of exchange does little to advance civil rights in this country.

The system of checks and balances serves as a procedural safeguard against executive branch abuse, however, the current nomination and confirmation process has negative implications for civil rights.  Courageous Senators, advocates, and members of the general public must push the President to choose a nominee with a solid civil rights record and a strong voice on the issues that affect us all.  Senators must delve into the nominee’s judicial record to ask pointed, non-partisan questions about their rationales. In doing so, they can more forcefully challenge  those who insist on portraying civil rights as a “special interest” legacy that is longer necessary, while  re-introducing congeniality and  restoring professionalism and integrity to the confirmation process.  Most importantly, Senators must be independent -- they must refuse to support nominees who are soft on civil rights regardless of party affiliation. Values-based tenacity is the true character of the modern civil rights movement. Now, we just need congressional leaders who exemplify that character. 

Richael Faithful is a second-year student at American University Washington College of Law. She is Editor-In-Chief of The Modern American, a legal publication dedicated to diversity and the law. She is also a former community organizer with the Virginia Organizing Project. As a law student she continues organize and advocate for radical, transformative change.

(Photo by dsearls.)

Justice Stevens to Retire from Supreme Court

Today, Justice John Paul Stevens announced that he will resign, calling an end to an illustrious 34 years with the Supreme Court.  Justice Stevens’ departure will give President Obama his second high court appointment, and set up a potential partisan election-year Senate confirmation battle.

While Stevens' resignation does not come as a complete surprise, the timing of his announcement is earlier than expected. In a letter to President Obama, Stevens noted, "It would be in the best interests of the court to have my successor appointed and confirmed well in advance of the commencement of the court's next term."

The New York Times reported on the trajectory of Stevens' career on the Court, stating that, beginning in 1994, "the language of his dissents started to become noticeably sharper, with a theme running through them: that the Supreme Court had lost touch with fundamental notions of fair play." Stevens will be remembered for his leadership in a time in which the Court has moved further and further away from equity.

Thank you, Justice Stevens -- you leave some impressive shoes to fill.

(Photo by NCinDC.)

A New Era of Freedom...for Polluters

Last month, the New York Times ‘Toxic Waters’ column published an article on the impact of Supreme Court rulings on the regulation of water pollution.  It begins:

Thousands of the nation’s largest water polluters are outside the Clean Water Act’s reach because the Supreme Court has left uncertain which waterways are protected by that law, according to interviews with regulators.

As a result, some businesses are declaring that the law no longer applies to them. And pollution rates are rising.

Companies that have spilled oil, carcinogens and dangerous bacteria into lakes, rivers and other waters are not being prosecuted, according to Environmental Protection Agency regulators working on those cases, who estimate that more than 1,500 major pollution investigations have been discontinued or shelved in the last four years.

The Clean Water Act was intended to end dangerous water pollution by regulating every major polluter. But today, regulators may be unable to prosecute as many as half of the nation’s largest known polluters because officials lack jurisdiction or because proving jurisdiction would be overwhelmingly difficult or time consuming, according to midlevel officials.

The article goes on to discuss the two Supreme Court cases that are collectively responsible for the decline in regulation of waterways. In 2001, the Court ruled in Solid Waste Agency v. Army Corps of Engineers that the Clean Water Act only applies to bodies of water that run between states and not those that are within states. This decision has left a good deal of intrastate bodies of water utterly without defense -- and, really, who’s to know if what flows underground in Kansas City, Missouri, will wind up in Kansas City, Kansas!

The 2006 decision in Rapanos v. United States further muddied the water. Five members of the Supreme Court -- four Justices who came to agreement plus Justice Kennedy, who wrote his own opinion --  limited the enforcement of the federal Clean Water Act, dismissing a lawsuit against a developer who was building a mall on a wetland. The bigger question before the Court, though, was whether federal law applies to wetlands, and if so, which wetlands can be regulated. 

Justice Stevens, who wrote a dissenting opinion, was critical of the Court for departing from thirty years of tradition in interpreting the Clean Water Act and also from the intent of the law, which was to protect the environment. He commented:

The broader question is whether regulations that have protected the quality of our waters for decades, that were implicitly approved by Congress, and that have been repeatedly enforced in case after case, must now be revised in light of the creative criticisms voiced by the plurality and Justice Kennedy today….

In my view, the proper analysis is straightforward. The Army Corps has determined that wetlands adjacent to tributaries of traditionally navigable waters preserve the quality of our Nation’s waters by, among other things, providing habitat for aquatic animals, keeping excessive sediment and toxic pollutants out of adjacent waters, and reducing downstream flooding by absorbing water at times of high flow. The Corps’ resulting decision to treat these wetlands as encompassed within the term “waters of the United States” is a quintessential example of the Executive’s reasonable interpretation of a statutory provision.…

While the Court did vote to dismiss the case against the developer, the justices couldn’t agree on which waters are covered by the Clean Water Act. This, in turn, created confusion at the Environmental Protection Agency regarding what the agency can regulate and, also, among potential polluters.

While these two cases may seem technical, they are very important in that they have brought about a new era of freedom for polluters. These court decisions present  another chapter in the recurring narrative of court actions that are weakening laws intended to protect Americans.

Access to a clean and safe environment is a basic civil and human right. The Clean Water Act's  objective is “to restore and maintain the chemical, physical, and biological integrity of the Nation’s waters”.  The law further states that “it is the national goal that the discharge into the navigable waters be eliminated by 1985.” Twenty-five years later, the Clean Water Act has made a big difference in our water quality -- but the past few years have seen a steady decline in enforcement.

Protecting the environment is not a partisan issue.  It's not Democratic or Republican. As Americans, we are all responsible for protecting the environment -- but we also assume that our government has the power to protect the air we breathe and the water we drink. It's upsetting to think that the majority of our top judges are protecting the economic rights of polluters and developers rather than the safety of our planet.

(Photo by tracyyxx.)

National Campaign to Restore Civil Rights Spurs National Youth Dialogue

Today, the National Campaign to Restore Civil Rights (NCRCR) is launching a national contest intended to draw thousands of young people into a dialogue on civil rights. The contest, entitled “What Does Equality Mean to You?” asks youth aged 14-18 across the United States to define equality from their unique perspectives. 

This contest seeks the opinions of a generation entering civic life. “Equality has meant different things to different people at different times,” said Marianne Engelman-Lado of NCRCR. “We invite America’s youth to share their perspectives and tell us what equality means to them.” Young people can submit either a written entry or a visual image such as a drawing, cartoon or photograph. The contest will run until April 12, 2010. Contest winners will receive prizes including a $500 cash award, and a trip for two to New York City. Entries will be judged by a panel of celebrity judges, including Congressman Keith Ellison, Congressman Gregory Meeks, and Benjamin Todd Jealous, President and CEO of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

Please go to http://www.rollbackcampaign.org/contest2010/ for more details.

EPA Answers a Supreme Court Challenge, Declares Greenhouse Gases a Threat

In a surprising announcement on Monday, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) declared that greenhouse gases threaten public health and the environment. The decision came as advocates and world leaders gathered in Copenhagen this week to redefine international policy on climate change. 

EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson stated:

“These long-overdue findings cement 2009’s place in history as the year when the United States Government began addressing the challenge of greenhouse-gas pollution and seizing the opportunity of clean-energy reform…business leaders, security experts, government officials, concerned citizens and the United States Supreme Court have called for enduring, pragmatic solutions to reduce the greenhouse gas pollution that is causing climate change. This continues our work towards clean energy reform that will cut GHGs and reduce the dependence on foreign oil that threatens our national security and our economy.”

To what do we owe this shift in environmental policy? In large part, we can thank the courts. In Massachusetts v. EPA (2007), the Supreme Court questioned the Bush Administration’s stance that the EPA did not have the right to regulate carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act. The Court ruled 5-4 that given the requirements of the Clean Air Act, the only way the EPA could refuse to regulate greenhouse gas emissions was “if it determines that greenhouse gases do not contribute to climate change” or if it could provide a good explanation for why it could or would not do so. 

Happily, the EPA appears to be taking the Court up on its challenge. We hope to see the agency fulfill the mission for which it was created.

Despite the Fine Print, the Courts in Washington State Are Open!

By Paula Z. Segal

When you buy a computer or any other complicated piece of consumer electronics, you also receive a bundle of infinitesimally small print type, that many of us all too often skip reading. Some of that small print is written specifically to protect the companies from you: a future, frustrated version of you, who might decide to sue the company for selling a defective product.

Kristin Cariedo bought a new Dell laptop for $1300. Catherine Candler paid $1700 for hers. Neither computer worked the way it was supposed to. Ms. Cariedo and Ms. Candler wanted to sue Dell to get their money back but the fine print that accompanied their laptops said that by simply buying and keeping the computers, Ms. Cariedo and Ms. Candler and all other consumers buying Dells laptops waived their right to ever sue Dell. Dell had written an “agreement” that said that any disputes between consumers and Dell were to be settled through arbitration by a private arbitrator that Dell had selected (the National Arbitration Forum); Dell also said that no class actions were permitted, meaning that consumers could not get together to bring Dell to court for selling defective products. The “agreement” that Ms. Cariedo and Ms. Candler had entered into with Dell when they bought their computers was designed to keep them out of court.

The National Arbitration Forum (NAF), the arbitrator that Dell chose, turned out to not be a neutral arbitrator; rather, it turned out to be intimately tied to the country’s largest debt collection firms, which profit directly from deciding cases against consumers. A House of Representatives investigation report on NAF documented its abuses, and lawsuits have been filed against NAF nationwide. The Center for Responsible Lending issued a report calling NAF’s neutrality into question in May 2009, and finding that NAF decisions tend to favor companies – like Dell – that give them business. In the midst of all this controversy, NAF stopped accepting consumer arbitrations in July 2009.

On October 26, 2009, the highest court in Washington State, where Ms. Cariedo and Ms. Candler brought their case against Dell, ruled that the mandatory arbitration agreement written into the fine print of their computer purchase agreements could not be enforced because NAF, the arbitrator, was not available. The court refused to appoint a different arbitrator.

The Washington court also said that the provision prohibiting class action lawsuits could not be enforced. Class actions are important because they allow individual consumers to use their collective resources to hire experts to testify at trial. In consumer cases, where the amount at stake is usually the price of the purchased item, the expense added by hiring an expert makes the lawsuit unreasonable to fund. When the expense is shared by many consumers of similarly defective products, the lawsuit becomes possible.

Now Ms. Cariedo, Ms. Candler and everyone else who purchased defective computers from Dell can go to court to ask for their money back (at least in Washington State). They can come together in a class action to bring the best case possible against Dell and other corporations selling defective products. This ruling, opening the courts to consumers despite the fine print designed by companies to keep them out, recognizes that consumers’ ability to sue is crucial to preventing widespread misconduct by corporations.

Paula Z. Segal is a second year student at City University of New York School of Law and a Haywood Burns Fellow in Civil and Human Rights. Before law school, she taught English to Speakers of Other Languages and continues to develop materials for ESOL instructors to connect language and life skills. She is also working with the New York Civil Liberties Union to reduce the school to prison pipeline and coordinates the CUNY Street Law Team, which brings the law to New York City high school students and community groups. For more on the school to prison pipeline, go to http://www.nyclu.org/issues/youth-and-student-rights.

Judges: Modern-Day Superheroes?

The state of California recently descended into such financial difficulties that British paper The Guardian questioned whether it might prove to be the first failed US state: “Desperate to pay off a crippling budget deficit, California is slashing spending in education and healthcare, laying off vast numbers of workers and forcing others to take unpaid leave.” The California Progress Report, a local forum for progressive advocates, listed the extent of permanent state budget cuts in social services as including developmental services, Medi-Cal, SSI/SSP (Supplemental Security Income/State Supplemental Payment Program), programs for senior citizens, mental health services, and programs for students with disabilities in community colleges.

Amidst the reductions, cutbacks in the In-Home Supportive Services (IHSS) program were particularly disappointing to disability advocates. The In-Home Supportive Services program currently serves approximately 450,000 children and adults with disabilities and mental health needs, people who are blind and low-income senior citizens. The Department of Health Care Services also plays a big role in overseeing the program for the state, because the program receives matching federal Medicaid (Medi-Cal) funding as well as state and county resources. The IHSS program is administered locally at the county level.

Beginning November 1st, the state of California decided to eliminate all IHSS services for an estimated 40,000 low-income senior citizens and people with disabilities. Another 90,000 people were slotted to lose services such as food shopping and assistance and help with laundry and housecleaning. These services are often crucial to a person’s ability to live independently, outside of more costly and generally inappropriate institutional settings.

Rather than let this happen, a coalition of lawyers and advocates filed a class action lawsuit on October 1st, in hope that the court would stop the cuts before they went into effect. The state had chosen October 19th as the date it would begin to inform the 130,000 people that they would be losing all or some of their services under the program.

In V.L. v Wagner, a federal judge named Claudia Wilken ruled that the state must suspend its proposed cuts to the IHSS program, because they would result in substantial harm, damage and injury. The judge objected to the arbitrary withdrawal of essential services, saying that the indicators that the state used to revise program eligibility were clearly not based on need, and, as such, “people could lose something irreplaceable – the ability to remain safely in their homes.” Judge Wilken argued that the plaintiffs were likely to show at trial that the cuts to services violate federal law.

Melinda Bird of Disability Rights California, the attorney leading the legal battle, spoke about the significance of the victory: “We are convinced a humanitarian disaster would have resulted from the precipitous and arbitrary withdrawal of essential services approved by the legislature and the administration in the budget, and are delighted that the Court agreed with us.”

This is a great example of the way in which our system of checks and balances works.  In this case, the court system came through to protect 130,000 Californians from an arbitrary government action that would have had real consequences for their well-being. Yet again, our access to justice makes a difference.

(Photo by Borya.)

InJustice of the Peace

By Naoma Nagahawatte, NCRCR Director

More than 40 years after the passage of milestone civil rights legislation in the US, an ugly vestige of the Jim Crow era emerged last week in Tangipahoa Parish, Louisiana. Keith Bardwell - a parish justice of the peace - refused to issue a marriage license to an interracial couple. After the initial shock segued into a dim awareness that we may not actually live in a ‘post-racial’ America, I realized that it might be appropriate to delve a bit deeper into the issue for some clarification:

Clarification # 1) It is illegal to deny people the right to marry based on race, isn’t it?

In 1967, the Supreme Court decided the landmark case Loving v. Virginia, striking down Virginia's anti-miscegenation statute, the Racial Integrity Act of 1924.  The Loving decision overturned an earlier Supreme Court ruling that had upheld anti-miscegenation laws, finally ending all legal sanctions for race-based restrictions on marriage in the United States.

Clarification # 2) If race-based restrictions on marriage are illegal, how could Keith Bardwell deny an interracial couple a license to marry?

According to an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Louisiana, ''He knew he was breaking the law, but continued to do it.'' Bardwell, who has worked as a justice of the peace for 34 years, refused applications to four interracial couples in the past two-and-a-half years.

Clarification # 3) Keith Bardwell told the Associated Press, “I'm not a racist. I just don't believe in mixing the races that way.”

By denying two people of different races the right to marry because of race, Bardwell has discriminated against them on the basis of race.  Discrimination on the basis of race is a dictionary definition of racism… you do the math.

Clarification# 4) Bardwell also said he didn’t perform interracial marriages because, “In my heart, I feel the children will later suffer.”

Guess what? Anticipated prejudice is NOT a sufficient basis upon which to deny a marriage license. 

In 1984, a case called Palmore v. Sidoti came before the Supreme Court.  In Palmore, a Florida lower court ordered the removal of custody from a birth mother, as a result of her relationship and marriage to a member of another race. The lower court held that removal of custody was in the children’s best interest, given the hostility that the court expected the community might have towards interracial families.  The Supreme Court held that the effects of racial prejudice could not justify removing a child from the custody of a birth mother otherwise found to be an appropriate and fit parent, and that this classification on the basis of race is a violation of the Constitution. The Palmore theory can extend to marriage licenses. Denying a marriage license to an interracial couple on the contention that the effects of racial prejudice will cause their child to suffer is insufficient, violating the 14th Amendment of the Constitution. Put another way, the “for the kids” argument holds no water.

Still, there is reason to take heart. Steps against Mr. Bardwell have been taken. The ACLU of Louisiana sent a letter to the Louisiana Judiciary Committee, which oversees the state justices of the peace, asking it to investigate Bardwell and recommending ''the most severe sanctions available, because such blatant bigotry poses a substantial threat of serious harm to the administration of justice.'' In addition, the recently-denied couple is seeking to file a case against Bardwell with the U.S. Department of Justice. Our structure of checks and balances remains intact, allowing those like Bardwell, who slip through the system’s cracks, to be brought to justice.