A federal judge Wednesday rejected several claims in a legal challenge to Arizona's voter ID law filed by the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF) , including a claim that the ID law amounted to an unconstitutional poll tax. Judge Roslyn Silver ruled that the fees associated with procuring the documents required by [...]
Andrew Wood, Pitt Law '08, files from Manila: The Philippines has a number of laws on the books that are geared towards protecting the environment, but effective enforcement of those laws is another story. This fact is evident in the aquarium fishing industry. The Philippines is one of the world's leading exporters of ornamental fish. [...]
The High Court of Australia on Thursday struck down an amendment to Australia's Commonwealth Electoral Act passed in 2006 that took voting rights away from all prisoners regardless of the length of their sentence, finding that the amendments stripped prisoners of a constitutional right in an arbitrary manner. The court found that the 2006 amendment [...]
Vickie Lee Roach v. Electoral Commissioner and Commonwealth of Australia, High Court of Australia, August 30, 2007 . Read the full text of the order . Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.
The Chinese National People's Congress passed anti-monopoly legislation Thursday aimed at protecting China's economic security and easing the Chinese economy away from state-run monopolies. The new law establishes a series of national security checks for when a foreign company acquires or invests in a domestic company and the transaction involves a national security issue. A [...]
The US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit on Wednesday blocked the Attorney General of Louisiana from filing suit on behalf of nearly 35,000 Hurricane Katrina victims against the US Army Corps of Engineers under the Federal Tort Claims Act . A district court judge had appointed Louisiana Attorney General Charles Foti guardian ad [...]
Hezbollah recklessly and sometimes intentionally fired rockets at civilian targets during the summer 2006 Lebanon conflict , according to a 128-page report released Wednesday by Human Rights Watch (HRW). Hezbollah was not legally justified in firing on civilians simply because Israel launched attacked Lebanese towns, HRW concluded, because the international rules of war prohibit indiscriminate [...]
Russian prosecutors have released two of the 10 suspects who were arrested Monday in connection with last October's killing of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya , and a third person is no longer under investigation. Russian Prosecutor General Yuri Chaika announced that five of the suspects were police officers and are thought to have followed Politkovskaya [...]
Lawyers for the North Carolina Medical Board argued in court Wednesday that a lawsuit filed against them earlier this year by the North Carolina State Department of Corrections was filed prematurely and should be dismissed. The lawsuit alleges that recent medical board policy changes preventing doctors' participation in lethal injections impede the corrections department in [...]
A widespread strike by UK prison guards Wednesday ended the same day after the Prison Officers' Association (POA) agreed to negotiate new pay terms with the government this coming Friday. The surprise strike, which began with a full walkout of staff members early on Wednesday morning, affected all 129 prisons in England and Wales, causing [...]
