Argentine President Cristina Fernandez on Wednesday signed a same-sex marriage bill into law. The signing ceremony comes one week after the bill was approved by the legislature , making Argentina the first Latin American nation to legalize same-sex marriage. The legislation, which includes adoption rights for same-sex couples, was approved after 14 hours of debate, [...]
A judge for the US District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana on Wednesday refused to reinstate a six-month drilling moratorium issued in May by the Obama administration in response to the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill . Judge Martin Feldman issued a preliminary injunction against the moratorium last month, holding that the drilling [...]
The Botswana High Court ruled Wednesday that the indigenous Bushmen , or San, people will not be able to reopen a water well or dig new wells in their village in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve . The Bushmen applied for permission to use a borehole , originally dug by diamond company De Beers in [...]
A German appeals court announced Wednesday that the government’s Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (OPC) will be permitted to continue surveillance of members of the country’s Left political party. The decision overturned a lower court ruling , which prohibited the monitoring of a member of the Left. In its ruling the, court [...]
The Israeli Knesset on Wednesday voted 53-13 to extend a law limiting the ability of Arab-Israelis to bring Palestinian family members into Israel. The Citizenship and Entry into Israel Law, first passed by the Knesset in 2002, allows only Palestinian women 25 years or older and men 35 years or older to join their families [...]
Human Rights Watch (HRW) on Wednesday urged the country of Chad to arrest Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir during his visit to the country. Al-Bashir was charged last week by the International Criminal Court (ICC) with three counts of genocide in relation to the Darfur conflict . The genocide charges were added to seven counts of [...]
Two lawsuits were filed Wednesday seeking injunctive relief against a Fremont, Nebraska ordinance banning the hiring, harboring or renting property to illegal immigrants . The ordinance, passed by city voters in a referendum last month, requires all employers in the city to register for the E-Verify program and makes it a crime to rent to [...]
US President Barack Obama on Wednesday signed the Restoring Financial Stability Act into law. The legislation, which focuses on increasing regulation in the financial sector following the recent economic crisis , received final approval by the Senate last week after being approved by the House of Representatives earlier this month. The law will create a [...]
The Guinea Supreme Court on Tuesday announced the final election results in last month’s presidential election, in which no candidate received enough votes to avoid a runoff. The ruling comes after allegations of fraud in the election, which has been described as Guinea’s first free election since attaining independence in 1958. Chief Justice Mamadou Sima [...]
Megan McKee, Pitt Law ’12, is currently an intern with Montreal’s Social Justice Committee (SJC). She writes about the SJC’s advocacy for corporate accountability in the extractive industries… In May I began working for the Social Justice Committee (SJC) of Montreal as a corporate accountability intern. The SJC is an independent human rights organization promoting [...]
