An Ontario Superior Court judge ruled Thursday that the Canadian Blood Services (CBS) is justified in prohibiting sexually active gay males from donating blood. In 2002, Kyle Freeman falsely denied having had sex with other men and subsequently donated blood that tested positive for syphilis. CBS initiated a negligent misrepresentation suit against Freeman after spending [...]
The European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruled Thursday that Austria’s state gambling monopoly, which blocks foreign casino companies from the licensing process, is incompatible with EU law. The court held that allowing only domestic operators to apply for licenses constituted such a difference in treatment that it constituted discrimination on the basis of nationality. While [...]
Brett Stark, Harvard Law School ’12, interned with the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI). He writes about the virtues of organizations that promote the rights of all rather than the interests of any particular group… Israel, the West Bank and Gaza remain at the center of one of the world’s most intense and [...]
The California Supreme Court on Wednesday denied a request from a conservative group to order Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and Attorney General Jerry Brown to appeal the federal court ruling that struck down the controversial ban on same-sex marriage . The request was brought by the Pacific Justice Institute in an attempt to force a state [...]
The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit granted the Obama administration’s request for an emergency stay Thursday, lifting the ban on stem cell research . The Obama administration sought the stay Wednesday after Judge Royce Lamberth of the US District Court for the District of Columbia on Tuesday denied a motion [...]
A Chinese prison on Thursday released Chen Guangcheng , a blind Chinese human rights legal activist who has finished serving a four-year sentence for damaging property and “organizing a mob to disturb traffic.” According to Human Rights Watch (HRW) , the Chinese authorities have since placed Chen under house arrest and increased surveillance of his [...]
A Guatemalan judge ruled Wednesday that three soldiers charged in connection with a 1982 peasant massacre that left more than 260 dead will face trial. Of the 17 soldiers accused of committing crimes against humanity during the 1960-1996 Guatemalan civil war , three were captured in Guatemala and four others have been detained in the [...]
A prominent Iranian human rights lawyer has been detained for allegedly spreading propaganda and colluding against national security, her family said Wednesday. Nasrin Sotoudeh, who is most widely known for representing political activists following the controversial 2009 presidential election , was summoned to an Iranian prison last week and has not returned home. Her home [...]
A Chinese Intermediate People’s Court in Shandong sentenced former top anti-corruption official Wang Huayuan to death on Thursday for taking bribes. Wang confessed to taking 7.71 million yuan (USD $1.13 million) in bribes while he was secretary for discipline inspection for commissions in the Guangdong and Zhejiang provinces. The purpose of the bribes varied from [...]
A Somali man pleaded guilty on Wednesday to piracy charges stemming from an attack on a Danish ship carrying cargo from a Texas-based company. Jama Idle Ibrahim pleaded guilty in the US District Court for the District of Columbia to “conspiracy to commit piracy under the law of nations and conspiracy to use a firearm [...]
