Week 5: More with Modules, Case Law Research, and SCOTUS (again)
I began the last week of June (already!) by tackling the judicial curriculum modules again. As I’ve previously explained, these projects are of a sort that could indefinitely be expanded, but Modules 1 and 2 are now essentially complete for my purposes. I may revisit them to polish things later in the summer, but my time is better spent now looking at the following modules. I therefore started Module 3 this week, and, after some work, found myself researching material for Module 5. Research highlights include finding (after some difficulty) the case I was looking for on the website of the Supreme Court of Iceland, browsing the website of the European Court of Human Rights for a case involving Azerbaijan, and tracking down a case (in French) from the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights.
While international research can sometimes be frustrating (I’ve been shocked at how so few online resources have a simple search function), and I have once or twice had to cut my losses, admit that I can’t find something, and move on, I genuinely do enjoy the pace and variety of this work. I never know what I’m going to get into when I open a project for the first time, and the research journey can be an entertaining one. All in all, I’m happy with the progress I made on the judicial curriculum modules this week.
On Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court released its opinion for Moore v. Harper. As with Allen v. Milligan, I dropped everything and read through the opinion as quickly as I could, then put together a brief. This case was shorter than Allen (65 pages instead of 112), so, happily, I wasn’t quite as pressed this time. Still, getting through the case as quickly as possible took most of Tuesday afternoon; I got my feedback first thing on Wednesday, and by lunchtime that day, the finalized brief was being circulated around IFES. This was the last (albeit only second) SCOTUS case that I was meant to track for IFES this summer; conclusively crossing a project off my to-do list feels great.
I ended this week by continuing with case law research for other ongoing IFES projects. This consisted primarily of looking into case law from the Inter-American Court of Human Rights—here I encountered language barrier issues. The case law was almost entirely in Spanish, and cases in English were off topic. I wasn’t sure how useful it would be for me to guess which cases would be useful, go through the process of translating, and then hope that the translated version ends up being fruitful. Happily, I was able to dig up a publication on guaranteeing freedom of expression regarding deliberate disinformation in electoral contexts that I hope will be useful for further research.
Weekend events: I traveled back to Williamsburg to run some errands. Unfortunately, I forgot that it was a holiday weekend—traffic was… very bad. I also kept my inner choir kid happy by attending choral evensong at the National Cathedral this weekend; unless I have other plans, I think I’ll make this a weekly tradition. It’s such a lovely way to wind down the weekend.