Syria held a referendum Sunday to vote on a new constitution . The gesture towards the opposition by President Bashar al-Assad has widely been seen as an empty one, with much of the international community calling it a “sham” . The vote comes just one day after reportedly 89 people were killed in Homs, the [...]
Lawyers for the Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group notified the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit on Friday that they plan to appeal the ruling earlier this week in the US District Court for the Northern District of California that the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) is unconstitutional . House Speaker John Boehner, Majority [...]
A judge for the US District Court for the District of Columbia dismissed a suit on Friday from the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) , a consumer privacy group, asking the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to block Google’s proposed privacy policy changes . EPIC brought suit against the FTC earlier this month . The new [...]
A Milan court on Saturday dismissed corruption charges against former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi , finding that the statute of limitations had expired. Berlusconi was on trial for allegedly bribing his British tax lawyer, David Mills, to lie when testifying about Berlusconi and his holding company Fininvest in two trials that took place in [...]
A pro-same-sex marriage group in Maine, EqualityMaine , has gathered enough signatures to place a same-sex marriage referendum on the November ballot. The question reads: “Do you favor a law allowing marriage licenses for same-sex couples that protects religious freedom by ensuring no religion or clergy be required to perform such a marriage in violation [...]
JURIST Contributing Editor Gabor Rona, International Legal Director of Human Rights First, argues that the decision to use the legal classification of “enemy combatant” does not justify the US policy of targeted killings…
A federal immigration judge in Florida decided Thursday that former El Salvador General Carlos Eugenio Vides Casanova can be deported for war crimes and crimes against humanity committed while in El Salvador. Judge James Grim found that Vides assisted in both the killing of four American women in 1980 and the torture of two Salvadorans [...]
JURIST Guest Columnist Robert Rodes of the University of Notre Dame Law School says that while some legal recognition of same-sex relationships has gained widespread support, creating same-sex marriage rights must be left to the democratic processes…
Former Commander of the Bosnian Serb Army, Ratko Mladic , accused the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) of being “biased” against Serbs and a “puppet” of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) . Mladic faces charges of genocide and crimes against humanity, including murder, political persecution, forcible transfer and deportations, cruel treatment, [...]
Former Somali prime minister Mohamed Ali Samantar on Thursday accepted legal responsibility for war crimes and crimes against humanity before the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia . The civil suit was brought by the Center for Justice and Accountability (CJA) in 2004 against Samantar, who had been living in Washington, DC, [...]
