The US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit heard arguments on the constitutionality of Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) Wednesday, in the first appellate hearing on the law. Although the US Department of Justice (DOJ) filed its initial brief in the case in January 2011, it announced a month later [...]
JURIST Guest Columnist Martinho Lucas Pires is a LL.M. Candidate at the Católica Global School of Law, a Lisbon-based faculty of the Catholic University of Portugal. In the third entry of a four-part series on the realities and priorities of Portuguese sovereign debt management, Pires examines the constitutional dimension of a Portuguese debt restructuring, concluding [...]
Former commander of the Bosnian Serb Army Ratko Mladic pleaded not guilty to all charges in a pre-trial brief released Wednesday by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) . Mladic is not obligated to put forth his defense in the pre-trial briefing, although the brief describes the charges as “general” and states [...]
The US Department of Defense (DOD) referred charges to a military commission on Wednesday against Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other alleged 9/11 conspirators being held at Guantanamo Bay . Mohammed, along with Muhammad Salih Mubarak Bin ‘Attash, Ramzi Binalshibh, Ali Abdul Aziz Ali and Mustafa Ahmed Adam al Hawsawi, have been charged pursuant to [...]
JURIST Guest Columnist Trevor Burrus, a legal associate for the Cato Institute, argues that despite claims by critics of the Supreme Court, “partisanship” is nothing more than an epithet with little descriptive content and will not be the driving factor behind the final decision on the Affordable Care Act…
Roma , Jews and Ukrainians in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) face exclusion from politics and public institutions, Human Rights Watch (HRW) reported Wednesday. The report identified the 1995 Bosnian Constitution as the root of the discrimination against minority groups. The constitutional provisions that enable political positions for Bosniaks, Croats and Serbs are now used to [...]
The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) on Wednesday agreed to strengthen human rights protections during its annual summit. ASEAN Chairman Hun Sen , who is also Prime Minister of Cambodia, proclaimed several new initiatives by ASEAN to protect human rights in southeast Asia, a region often criticized for human rights violations. Sen announced that [...]
A Brazilian federal prosecutor on Tuesday filed a second $11 billion lawsuit against Chevron after the company reported a new leak in its Frade oil field in the Campos Basin. Eduardo Santos de Oliviera filed the first lawsuit after a 2,400 barrel oil spill polluted the Campos Basin last November. Last month, he also filed [...]
The Mali junta issued a statement Tuesday accusing rebels in the northern town of Gao of grave human rights violations, particularly the kidnap and rape of local women and girls. Last month the military overthrew President Amadou Toumani Toure and ended 20 years of democracy because they felt Toure had failed to properly respond to [...]
The Ankara 12th High Criminal Court on Wednesday began the trial of the last two surviving leaders of Turkey’s 1980 coup d’etat that led to three years of military rule, during which 50 people were hanged and half a million arrested. The two retired generals, 94-year-old Kenan Evren , who held the presidential office for [...]
