An article in American Lawyer Media described the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision which struck down the provisions of the federal Violence Against Women Act that allowed women to sue abusers in federal court. The majority decision said that by giving women a federal court remedy, the law went far beyond the constitutional limits on the power of Congress to regulate interstate commerce and to enforce the 14th Amendment. This Court, unlike any Court since the New Deal, is prepared to take a careful look at congressional enactments and second-guess Congress,' said University of Chicago law Professor Cass Sunstein, who helped write a brief supporting the law. She is the lead attorney of a lawsuit challenging the housing of mentally ill prisoners at Tamms Correctional Center in southern Illinois. At super-maximum facilities, inmates spend nearly every waking and sleeping moment in small cells staring through heavy metal mesh doors at the prison wall to glimpse the occasional guard who comes by.
Inmates spend all day alone.
The only time they feel a person's touch is when the leathered glove of a guard shackles their legs and handcuffs their wrists to move them outside their prison unit. They do not know why they were sent to Tamms or when they will leave. The piece included Patricia H. Lee, Director of the IJ Clinic, as well as Chanton Walker of Walker's Rehabber's, Inc., one of the IJ Clinic's first clients, who now operates her own construction and rehabbing business. Picker discusses recent federal court decisions involving Beam-it and Napster, two software programs that facilitate music reproduction and transmission. Neo-Napster is Picker's proposal to cut down Napster's illegal use.