The French National Assembly on Tuesday unanimously adopted a new sexual harassment law that criminalizes the act, imposing a punishment of up to three years in jail. The new law comes three months after the Constitutional Council of the French Republic ruled in May that the country’s sexual harassment law was unconstitutionally vague . The [...]
Saif al-Islam Gaddafi , the son of former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi has said that he believes he should be tried by the International Criminal Court (ICC) , according to a court document filed Tuesday. Saif al-Islam has said that while he would prefer to be tried in Libya, he does not believe the current [...]
JURIST Guest Columnist Julie Nice of the University of San Francisco School of Law says that concerns about federalism principles should lead the Supreme Court to review current litigation surrounding the Defense of Marriage Act, and to hold that the Act is unconstitutional…
JURIST Guest Columnist Virginia Brown Keyder of the State University of New York at Binghamton and Sabanci University in Istanbul, Turkey, says that traditional olive oil producers have lately turned toward advocating for a more strict regulator regime as global competition increases…
A judge for US District Court for the District of Connecticut on Tuesday ruled that the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) is unconstitutional. Judge Vanessa Bryant granted summary judgment for the plaintiffs, six married same-sex couples and one widower from the states of Connecticut, New Hampshire and Vermont who were denied federal tax, social security, [...]
The Bahrain government’s indiscriminate use of tear gas against protesters is resulting in severe injuries and civilian deaths, according to a report released Wednesday by Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) . According to PHR Deputy Director Richard Sollom, the report’s lead author, tear gas “can cause permanent injuries, miscarriages, birth defects, and even fatalities as [...]
The Somalia constituent assembly on Wednesday approved a new constitution for the country, which has been without a stable central government since former president Siad Barre was ousted in 1991. The draft constitution passed with over 96 percent of the 645 ballots cast in the special 825-member assembly, which took eight days to debate and [...]
Supporters of Proposition 8 , California’s same-sex marriage ban, asked the US Supreme Court on Tuesday to uphold the law after two federal courts found it unconstitutional. In their nearly 500-page petition , backers of the ban stressed the necessity for the court to decide “whether the ancient and vital institution of marriage should be [...]
The High Court of Fiji on Tuesday found Laisenia Qarase , the country’s last democratically-elected prime minister, guilty of nine counts of corruption under the Fiji Penal Code . Suva Court Justice Priyantha Fernando’s ruling upholds the findings of a panel of assessors, convicting Qarase of six counts of abuse of office and three counts [...]
The Court of Appeals in Kenya on Tuesday upheld a lower court’s decision to set the date of the upcoming presidential and parliamentary elections for March 4, 2013. Four of the five judges sitting for the Court of Appeals, Judges Erastus Githinji, Kalpana Rawal, Hannah Okwengu and David Maranga, affirmed the High Court’s January decision [...]
