By Chad Dion Lassiter, MSW When the Supreme Court finally declared the Civil Rights Act of 1875 unconstitutional, Frederick Douglass, amid an outpouring of outrage, advised that we must first take a collective deep breath. The Supreme Court had killed the law that...
More than 60 years of work to diversify schools and provide opportunities for minorities has been undone.
NASW, through its Legal Defense Fund, filed an amicus brief in the U.S. Supreme Court case, Adoptive Couple v. Baby Girl. The case involves whether the Indian Child Welfare Act applies to a private adoption initiated by a non-Indian parent. Previously, the South...
Social workers may find themselves torn between their commitment to their clients’ interests and their responsibility to the larger society when faced with the possibility of reporting child abuse to authorities.
NASW Law Note: Social Workers as Expert Witnesses Courts of law rely on information offered in evidence as the basis for decisions rendered. Evidence comes in many forms, including photographs, recordings, devices, forensic evidence, documents, and individual...
The New Jersey Supreme Court in September ruled in favor of requiring greater specificity from prosecutors when they seek to waive youth into the adult criminal court system. The ruling is a victory for NASW and other organizations that joined in filing an amicus...
The NASW Legal Defense Fund filed an amicus brief in May on behalf of the association in support of a petition for certiorari in a death penalty post-conviction case. The brief seeks to have the U.S. Supreme Court accept the case, Abdur’Rahman v. Colson, for review....
Two major policy and legal decisions on immigration in the United States have been issued in the past two weeks. The first was the June 15 Obama administration’s policy directive to stop deportations of many children and young adults of undocumented parents. The...