San Francisco sex workers in California filed a complaint for declaratory and injunctive relief against the district attorney, arguing that the criminalization of sex work violates several constitutional rights, including the right to sexual privacy and free speech. The Ninth Circuit rejected the sex workers’ arguments, concluding, in part, that there is no fundamental liberty interest to engage in prostitution. In addition, the Ninth Circuit relied on the lower court’s determination that there is an established link between prostitution and trafficking. A feminist opinion could offer much more insight into the nature of sex work, the question of sexual privacy, and the reliance on claims that sex work is inherently dangerous.

Animal protection organizations and lawmakers continue to invest in carceral responses to animal cruelty. This chapter argues that carceral responses will fail to meaningfully address animal cruelty because prisons are not human-only spaces. Instead, prisons prescribe a multiude of human-animal relationships, some of which train prisoners for labour fields that are explicitly premised on cruelty against animals. The chapter focuses on relationships between prisoners and liminal animals, farmed animals, and animals used in prison animal programs, such as wild horse and dog training programs. The human-animal relationships that structure the prison are also placed within the contexts of settler colonialism and enslavement that are inseperable from the making of race and species in the Americas.

The U.S. “War on Terror” has produced a little discussed but very important casualty: the international reputation of U.S. Supreme Court jurisprudence. Today, many scholars both within the United States and abroad note the dwindling influence of the U.S. Supreme Court. For example, on September 17, 2008, the front page of the New York Times declared, “U.S. Court Is Now Guiding Fewer Nations.” The article observed that in recent years, citations to the Canadian Supreme Court and European Court of Justice have been on an upswing, especially in cases involving human rights, whereas the number of citations to the U.S. Supreme Court has declined (Liptak, 2008). The bottom line is that much of the world views U.S. Supreme Court jurisprudence as antiquated and out of step with modern constructions of global rights and obligations. Although several aspects of American legal practice had garnered international disfavor even before September 11, notably the nation's continued legal support for the death penalty, the “War on Terror” and its concurrent destruction of civil liberties, embrace of torture and indefinite detention, and contempt for procedural justice have led many to view the American government as the prototypical abuser of rights rather than a guarantor. This chapter examines why Supreme Court opinions in the recent terrorism cases have not served to repair the international reputation of American civil rights jurisprudence, despite the widespread belief among U.S. legal academics that the cases represent civil libertarian victories.