A unanimous three-judge panel for the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit on Tuesday held that, pursuant to the equal protection clause, sexual orientation is not a permissible basis upon which to exclude jurors during the federal “voir dire,” or jury selection, process. SmithKline Beecham filed suit against Abbott Laboratories in federal court [...]
A three-judge panel for the Supreme Court of India ruled Tuesday that a death sentence can be commuted to a life sentence based upon the government’s delay. In ruling, the court nullified the death sentences of 15 prisoners, some of whom were convicted of aiding in the murder of former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi and [...]
The US Supreme Court on Tuesday affirmed the case of Kostick v. Nago without issuing an opinion, upholding the Hawaii state legislature’s redistricting plan. The case was on appeal from the US District Court for the District of Hawaii , which ruled in favor of the redistricting plan. The plan’s opponents claimed the state failed [...]
JURIST Guest Columnists Esha Bhandari and Jennifer Sokoler, both of the Center for Reproductive Rights, discuss the recent legal challenges to a Texas abortion law…
The Council of State , Greece’s top administrative court, on Monday ruled that the country’s wage cuts for police, military and firefighters as part of its austerity measures are unconstitutional. The Greek government was required to make certain cuts as a condition of its international bailout plan. According to recent reports, the decision was leaked [...]
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) , in conjunction with a private law firm, filed a lawsuit in the Third Judicial District Court for the State of Utah Salt Lake County on Tuesday on behalf of four same-sex married couples in Utah. The couples were legally married in Utah after a judge for the US [...]
The US Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a collective bargaining case as well as a laches case on Tuesday. In Harris v. Quinn the court heard arguments on whether a state can “compel personal care providers to accept and financially support a private organization as their exclusive representative to petition the state for greater [...]
JURIST Guest Columnist Samar Warsi, a legal fellow at the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding, says that, even after implementing the changes proposed by President Barack Obama, the NSA’s surveillance program is still constitutionally problematic…
New legislation has been proposed to tighten regulations on chemical storage facilities following a chemical spill that contaminated the water supply for 300,000 West Virginia residents. 7,500 gallons of coal-cleaning chemicals leaked from an above-ground storage tank in Charleston owned by Freedom Industries and entered the Elk River on January 9. In response, West Virginia [...]
The Cairo Criminal Court on Monday sentenced outspoken ultraconservative Islamist leader and former presidential hopeful Hazem Salah Abu-Ismail to a year in prison for comments allegedly made at another trial. In that trial, during which he stood accused of attempting to conceal the US citizenship of his mother in order to qualify for a presidential [...]
