The Third Appellate District of the California Court of Appeal Wednesday ruled that a plan to ease prison overcrowding by transferring prisoners to out-of-state facilities does not violate the state constitution . The California Correctional Peace Officers Association and Service Employees International Union had challenged the plan, alleging that Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger had exceeded his [...]
Elisa Mari, Pitt Law '10, files from Athens: Tuesday morning at 7:30 am, Tasos Aliferis, the Mayor of Tilos – a small Greek island in the eastern Aegean – formally married two homosexual couples. The first couple to get married at dawn were gay, the second couple was lesbian. The whole ceremony happened without any [...]
Terror suspects should be tried in military commissions, not federal courts, US Attorney General Michael Mukasey said in a Wednesday speech to judges at the 2008 DC Circuit Judicial Conference . Mukasey said that sending terror cases to civilian courts could require the release of sensitive national security information, but human rights groups have argued [...]
JURIST Guest Columnist Benjamin Davis of the University of Toledo College of Law says that the processes and procedures of the United States military commission system being used to try alleged terrorists at Guantanamo Bay (GTMO) are a betrayal of the high standards for international criminal justice pioneered by American officials at the Nuremberg trials [...]
The Virginia-based National Black Farmers Association (NBFA) brought a class action lawsuit against the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) Monday, alleging on behalf of over 800 black farmers that the USDA improperly discriminated against them in its allocation of resources. The new Farm Bill expressly permits the new claims, but the Farm Bill's future is [...]
The International Court of Justice (ICJ) Wednesday rejected Djibouti's attempt to obtain records concerning murdered French judge Bernard Borrel . Djibouti claimed that France had breached its obligation under the 1986 Convention on Mutual Assistance in Criminal Matters to execute Djibouti's request, but the ICJ held that the Convention imposed no obligation. The Court found [...]
The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) will complete its caseload before its mandate expires in 2010, Serge Brammertz promised in his first address before the UN Security Council as ICTY Chief Prosecutor Wednesday. Brammertz said: I cannot think of a situation in which the Tribunal, which has been established to try those [...]
The Supreme Court of Japan Wednesday struck down part of a law which denied Japanese citizenship to children born out of wedlock to Japanese fathers and foreign mothers. The Court found that Article 3 of the Nationality Law, which restricts citizenship based on the parents' marital status, violated equal protection guarantees in Article 14 of [...]
The Supreme Court of California Wednesday denied bids by two conservative groups to stay the Court's May 15 decision overturning a ban on same-sex marriage in the state. Last month, the Proposition 22 Legal Defense and Education Fund and the Campaign for California Families had petitioned the Court to stay its ruling pending a November [...]
Bangladesh police have thusfar arrested at least 10,000 people in a major security sweep ahead of elections slated for later this year, national police chief Nur Mohammad told AFP Wednesday. The arrests, which began last week , are part of an expected month-long operation to suppress criminal and corruption-related activity. Bangladeshi political parties the Awami [...]
