The US Chamber of Commerce filed an amicus brief on Tuesday asking the Supreme Court to agree to resolve the deepening legal conflict over the constitutionality of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) . The National Chamber Litigation Center (NCLC) , the Chamber of Commerce’s public policy law firm, wrote the brief, which [...]
Brazil’s High Court of Justice on Tuesday upheld the same-sex marriage of two women. The court voted 4-1 in favor of recognizing same-sex marriages. The ruling was necessary following a number of disparate rulings by lower courts on petitions from couples seeking to have their civil unions recognized as full marriages. The union at issue [...]
The family of former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi announced Wednesday that they plan to file a complaint against NATO with the International Criminal Court (ICC) for its alleged role in Gaddafi’s death . Lawyer for the Gaddafi family, Marcel Ceccaldi, spoke to France-based radio station Europe1 and indicated that the complaint stems from information suggesting [...]
A judge for the US District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina on Tuesday issued a preliminary injunction , blocking part of the state’s abortion law that required a physician to perform an ultrasound and describe the images to the patient. The judge ruled that the plaintiffs were likely to prevail on their [...]
The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit on Tuesday reinstated a lawsuit by Papua New Guinea citizens against mining company Rio Tinto on claims of genocide and war crimes. Allowing the suit under the Alien Tort Statute , the court ruled that it may proceed due to the Australian mining company’s substantial operations [...]
A judge for the US District Court for the Southern District of New York on Monday ordered the federal government to release a memorandum concerning the Secure Communities Program , a controversial immigration program that forces the release of local law enforcement information on detainees to the federal government. The memorandum allegedly contains the reasoning [...]
The lawyer for suspected USS Cole bomber Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri has filed a challenge to the method in which Guantanamo Bay military tribunals are conducted. Navy Lt. Cmdr. Stephen Reyes asserts that the Pentagon will never release prisoners like al-Nashiri , thus rendering trials moot. In the motion, released to the public on Monday, Reyes [...]
JURIST Guest Columnist Kevin Govern of Ave Maria School of Law says that the death of Muammar Gaddafi and one of his sons exemplifies an emerging trend towards the use of targeted and extrajudicial killings instead of attempts to capture and prosecute…
Human Rights Watch (HRW) warned on Tuesday that Egypt’s Supreme Council of the Armed Forces may attempt to cover up various aspects of the killing of more than two dozen mostly Coptic Christian demonstrators on October 9. The protests, which began in Maspero when approximately 1,000 Christians attempted a sit-in outside of the state television [...]
Human rights defenders are still harassed, attacked and killed more than a decade after the international declaration adopted for their protection, a UN rights expert said Monday. UN Special Rapporteur Margaret Sekaggya presented her fourth report on the right to defend human rights, which is aimed to increase understanding of the 1998 UN Declaration addressing [...]
