Constitutional law — Online Journal — Columbia Undergraduate Law Review

The Abrogation of Article 370 and the Fate of Kashmir: Can States Stop Being States?

Nestled between India and Pakistan, Kashmir has been involved in a tug of war between the two countries since its formation on October 26, 1947. As a Muslim majority state which acceded to India, a Hindu majority nation, Kashmir was given special status and considerable autonomy as conditions to this accession. For years, this arrangement allowed Kashmir to preserve its cultural autonomy. However, on August 5, 2019, the Indian government revoked this special status, rendering Kashmir’s constitution invalid and demoting it from the status as a state to that of a union territory.

Karuna VikramJune 8, 2020constitution, Constitutional law, Kashmir, India, Article 370

Prison Labor: Modern-Day Slavery under the Thirteenth Amendment

As numerous wildfires tore across California, approximately 1,500 inmates worked alongside professional firefighting crews to quell the flames. Typically, professional firefighters earn around $74,000 a year, excluding benefits. Prisoners working as firefighters earn about $1.45 a day for their work, roughly thirteen percent of the hourly minimum wage in California. [1] The discrepancy between the pay of salaried and incarcerated firefighters reduces firefighting costs by $100 million dollars a year for the state, and incarcerated firefighters, who must volunteer to participate, are compensated with a two-day reduction of their sentence for every day of good behavior. [2]

Jake GrayJanuary 6, 2019Thirteenth Amendment, Constitutional law, prison, ACLU, firefighting, minimum wageComment

The Age of Cyber Federalism

Rebecca Buckwalter-Poza woke up one morning in 2017 to find she had been blocked by @realDonaldTrump on Twitter. Dani Bostick woke up to the same news later that year, as did Annie Rice, an author, William LeGate, a tech entrepreneur, and Caroline Orr, a researcher. Soon, a contingent of Twitter dissenters emerged who all had been banned from the president’s official Twitter page.[1]