The US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit held on Thursday that a 2002 reapportionment of voting boundaries in the city of Aurora, Illinois did not violate the Voting Rights Act (VRA) . The plaintiffs in Gonzalez v. City of Aurora unsuccessfully argued that having two Hispanic aldermen out of a total of twelve [...]
Ecuador's special assembly charged with rewriting the nation's constitution provisionally approved a new constitution on Thursday. The draft includes unprecedented measures giving the president the power to remove Congress in the first three years of a four-year term, to control monetary policy, and to seek re-election for an additional four year term. Ecuadorean President Rafael [...]
Senegal has formally adopted a constitutional amendment giving the nation's courts jurisdiction over the trial of former Chadian dictator Hissene Habre , according to a Thursday statement by Human Rights Watch (HRW) . The group expressed doubt that the nation has the political will to prosecute Habre, who has been accused of involvement in the [...]
New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo filed a lawsuit against financial firm UBS on Thursday for allegedly misrepresenting so-called "auction rate securities" as low-risk despite the actual volatility of such investments. In the complaint, Cuomo alleges that UBS led investors to believe they could easily divest themselves of the long-term securities, and that after the [...]
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon announced Thursday that he has appointed South African judge Navanethem Pillay as the new UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, replacing departing commissioner Louise Arbour . Pillay, a former judge of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) and a current appeals chamber judge on the International Criminal Court (ICC) [...]
Officials at the US Chamber of Commerce's affiliate, the Institute for Legal Reform (ILR) , said in a report released Thursday that the system of heavy securities class action litigation in the US is inefficient, unnecessary, and harmful to the US economy. The report says that the current securities class action system forces companies to [...]
The US Senate Indian Affairs Committee on Thursday held hearings on a bill designed to give Native American courts and law enforcement broader authority to combat violent and sex-related crimes. Senator Byron Dorgan (D-ND) and 12 co-sponsors introduced the Tribal Law and Order Act on Wednesday. If passed, the bill would give American Indian courts [...]
An immigration policy reform group Wednesday called on the Northern California US Attorney's Office to take over a murder investigation involving an illegal immigrant who previously avoided deportation under a 2007 San Francisco sanctuary ordinance . Californians for Population Stabilization (CAPS) accused San Francisco of being "repeatedly irresponsible" in its handling of the case of [...]
The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) on Thursday convicted a Kosovar journalist on contempt of court charges and fined him 7,000 euros for revealing the identity of a witness in the war crimes trial of former Kosovar Prime Minister Ramush Haradinaj . Baton Haxhiu was indicted on the charges and pleaded not [...]
A lawyer for Bosnian Serb leader and former fugitive Radovan Karadzic on Thursday threatened to sue several unknown persons whom he alleges kidnapped Karadzic last week. Serbian officials have said that Karadzic was arrested on Monday , but Karadzic disputes that date, saying he was first captured on Friday and then detained in an unknown [...]
