The first few months of this year have been eventful and dramatic for legal and judicial matters on either sides of the Atlantic: while France renewed a third of its magistrates - which has gone largely unnoticed - US Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia's sudden death caused a political earthquake. 

Both the Paris attacks and the San Bernardino shooting reopened the wound of terrorism in the United States.  Although President Obama has not shifted his stance or his strategy on the issue, public opinion is worried and populist rhetoric is ever more present in the campaign for the 2016 election.

Since the 1980's the incarceration rate in the United States has climbed to unprecedened levels. Today, the United States incarcerates a higher proportion of its population than any other country in the world. Activists have long called for sentencing reform, recognizing the criminal justice system's racial bias and failure to rehabilitate. President Obama's recent call to action propelled the debate on the issue forward at an unprecedented pace but will proposed reforms be enough to end mass incarceration ?

Canada and the United States enjoy one of the most fruitful relationship in the world. Yet, several points of contention have appeared in recent years over the Northwest Passage and, more importantly, the Keystone XL pipelines. Such disagreements must be analyzed in order to fully grasp the state of the bilateral relationship in 2015.