US President Barack Obama on Tuesday signed the Belarus Human Rights and Democracy Act of 2011 , which will impose new sanctions on Belarus. The law labels President Alexander Lukashenko a dictator and states that he “established himself in power by orchestrating an illegal and unconstitutional referendum that enabled him to impose a new constitution, [...]
A judge for the US District Court for the District of Arizona on Wednesday granted an American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) motion to dismiss a lawsuit challenging Arizona’s voter approved medical marijuana law, the Arizona Medical Marijuana Act . The challenge , filed by Governor Jan Brewer, argued the law makes state officials vulnerable to [...]
Former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert was indicted Thursday on bribery charges over the construction of a luxury apartment complex called the Holyland towers. As Jerusalem’s mayor from 1993 to 2003, Olmert, along with other city officials, allegedly accepted millions of dollars in bribes to assure the approval of plans for Holyland, which dominates a [...]
The US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit Wednesday heard arguments in an appeal by the state of Texas to lift a lower court’s preliminary injunction against a state abortion law that requires doctors to show sonograms to patients before performing the procedure. The three-judge panel did not immediately rule on the state’s request [...]
Washington state Governor Chris Gregoire announced Wednesday that she plans to introduce legislation that would not deny marriage licenses to couples based on their sexual orientation and would permit same-sex marriages to be performed in Washington. If the legislation is passed, Washington would be the seventh state in the nation to legalize gay marriage, including [...]
JURIST Guest Columnist Arthur Hellman of the University of Pittsburgh School of Law says the Federal Courts Jurisdiction and Venue Clarification Act significantly clarifies the law of federal court jurisdiction and venue but was passed after removing some beneficial but controversial provisions…
A panel of three judges in the US District Court for the Southern District of West Virginia ruled 2-1 Tuesday that West Virginia’s congressional redistricting plan, signed into law last August, is unconstitutional. The Jefferson County Commission brought suit in November to challenge the constitutionality of the plan, which created a disparity of more than [...]
The Spanish government has approved a new law that creates a government agency with the authority to force Internet service providers to block certain websites that are involved in pirating copyrighted material, reports said on Tuesday. Under the Sinde law , the new government agency will take claims of infringement against websites that have copyrighted [...]
The Libyan National Transitional Council (NTC) published a draft law Monday establishing guidelines for the election of the assembly that will create Libya’s new constitution. The law would ban any former members of the regime of deceased former dictator Muammar Gaddafi as well as those educated in his political manifesto, the Green Book . This [...]
A three-judge panel of the Provincial Court of Justice of Sucumbios in Lago Agrio, Ecuador, on Tuesday upheld a multi-billion dollar fine against Chevron for polluting the Amazon Jungle in the 1980s. The USD $18 billion fine, one of the largest in the history of environmental contamination suits, was originally set at $8.6 billion but [...]
