“People hearing without listening.” These words, immortalized in the Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel song “The Sound of Silence,” highlight an important distinction in the human condition, that hearing and listening are not one and the same.

Law influences virtually every aspect of the world and works, in theory, to ensure equality and justice for those which it governs, serving as a safety net for societal values.

When I was five, I had a charming habit of running full force into Lake Washington with all my clothes on, whenever I got the chance.

I was sweating profusely. Was it the sweltering heat, the spicy kimchi, or the nerves? I’m convinced it was a combination of all three.

Nadia invited me to her apartment for what she described as a small “book club” meeting. Instead I found myself in a room overflowing with rural Moroccan women, dusty from hours of travel, eager to discuss the Qu’ran, women’s rights, and their relationship to democracy.

The dust swirls around our Land Rover as we roll down the bumpy streets of Kailahun, the town on the eastern border of Sierra Leone where the brutal civil war erupted over sixteen years earlier.

An old, dough-faced woman with white-blond hair and soft, sagging limbs spots us from a distance and darts inside her home.

I arrived at Zulaa’s home as her moans of pain filled the one-room house, blood soaked the bed, and the dogs and goats outside started barking and bleating.