Law

After the deadly mass shooting in an El Paso Walmart earlier this summer, Walmart announced it no longer wants customers to open carry firearms in their stores. Since then several other national chains have followed suit, including Boise-based Albertsons. The company announced on Twitter over the weekend that they will now request all of their customers to not open carry inside their stores.

But do these requests or bans carry the force of law? We tread into the murky waters and legalities of this issue with University of Idaho law professor Shaakira Sanders.

Idaho's new trespassing law was one of the most controversial bills of the 2017-18 legislative session. It increased the penalties for trespassing on private property and changed the codification of signage. We parse out the bill and look at other new laws going into effect from the previous session.

Tuesday, the Idaho House rejected a bill that would have barred people convicted of misdemeanor domestic violence from owning guns for two years. Similar laws have been passed in 28 states, including the Republican dominated Utah Legislature.

Imagine you’re facing the U.S. court system. You’ll spend the next several years steeped in a case that will decide your fate or the fate of someone you love. Now imagine you have no lawyer, no one to help you navigate the arcane twists and turns of this alien world. Now imagine you have to do this all in a language you don’t speak.

When voters in Idaho go to the polls on November 8 they'll be asked to change the state's constitution. H.J.R. 5 comes from legislators, who want to take a power they already have and make it stronger, by enshrining it into the constitutional framework.

On a summer morning in July 1915, thousands of poor factory workers lined the Chicago docks, waiting to board ships for the much anticipated annual picnic hosted by Western Electric Company. But as 2,500 passengers flooded aboard the first ship, the SS Eastland, disaster struck. The huge liner flipped onto its side, drowning more than 800 people in the filthy Chicago River, including 22 whole families.

The Boise City Council is set to vote on a contract worth more than $1.4 million that will equip police officers with body cameras.

Warning: This is the most "Public Radio" Halloween story possible.

Andrew Kim, a professor at Concordia University School of Law in Boise wrote a paper that will be published in an upcoming edition of the Savannah Law Review. What does that have to do with Halloween? Well, the paper is about law on the TV show The Walking Dead.

The Walking Dead is about survivors of a zombie apocalypse who battle the undead as well as fight other people over scarce resources. It’s both popular and gruesome but Kim thinks it reveals a lot about the rule of law versus the rule of nature.

This interview was originally broadcast in November, 2005.

The ACLU of Idaho is suing the state over its public defense system. Public defenders represent people accused of crimes who can’t afford a lawyer, a principle enshrined in the constitution.

On February 11, 2015, KBSX hosted four panelists and members of the public for a discussion on the state of police and community relationships in Idaho.

Police-involved controversies in Ferguson, Mo. and New York City last year served as the impetus for the discussion.

Longtime Idaho attorney Allen Derr passed away in Boise Monday. He was a founding member of the Idaho Press Club and a champion of equal rights. He may be best remembered for a 1971 U.S. Supreme Court case involving Sally Reed of Boise.  Her son had committed suicide a few years earlier.