The US Supreme Court granted the first two cases of the 2013 term on Tuesday, including one on campaign finance . In McCutcheon v. FEC the court will consider whether the Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA) limit on individual contributions should be found unconstitutional as unsupported by a sufficient government interest. The court previously held [...]
The US Supreme Court ruled unanimously in Chafin v. Chafin that a parent can appeal a custody ruling when a district court has determined the child’s habitual residence is another country and the child has already been removed from the US. The issue in this case stems from a custody dispute between US Army Sergeant [...]
The US Supreme Court ruled Tuesday in Florida v. Harris that an alert from a well-trained narcotics detection dog certified to detect illegal contraband is sufficient to establish probable cause for the search of a vehicle. The ruling reversed the Florida Supreme Court , which held that training alone is insufficient to establish the reliability [...]
UN Independent Expert on human rights and the environment John Knox stated Tuesday that international governments must acknowledge and account for human rights when formulating environmental regulations. Knox delivered his remarks in Nairobi at the First Universal Session of the Governing Council/Global Ministerial Environment Forum , a gathering hosted by the UN Environmental Programme (UNEP) [...]
The US Supreme Court ruled Tuesday in FTC v. Phoebe Putney Health Systems, Inc. that federal antitrust laws regulating competition among health service providers apply to an anticompetitive transaction in Georgia because the state law regulating the activity did not clearly articulate authority for the entities to act anti-competitively. In this case, a government entity [...]
The Arkansas Senate on Monday voted 25-7 in favor of a bill that would ban all abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy except in cases of rape, incest or to save the mother’s life. The bill, commonly referred to as The Pain Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, will now be sent back to the House [...]
An Iraqi judicial panel has rejected the Justice and Accountability Committee’s recent decision to remove chief judge Medhat al-Mahmoud from office. The Committee decided remove al-Mahmoud last over alleged ties to Saddam Hussein’s Baath party . The judicial panel, which reviews decisions made by the Justice and Accountability Committee, did not find strong evidence of [...]
Former Ivory Coast president Laurent Gbagbo appeared before the International Criminal Court (ICC) on Tuesday to determine whether the case against him will proceed to trial. Gbagbo’s lawyers urged the court to rule that the ICC does not have jurisdiction, and that Gbagbo should be tried by the Ivory Coast authorities currently conducting their own [...]
The Federal Constitutional Court of Germany on Tuesday ruled that same-sex couples in a civil union can legally adopt the non-biological children of their partners. The challenge to the existing adoption rules was brought by a woman who was denied permission to adopt a Bulgarian girl previously adopted by the woman’s same-sex partner. The court [...]
The Supreme Court of Mexico on Monday published the written judgment for its December decision striking down Oaxaca’s same-sex marriage ban. In its reasoning the Mexican high court compared the Oaxaca law to US legislation held to be unconstitutional in two US Supreme Court cases. First, in the 1967 case Loving v. Virigina , the [...]
