The US Supreme Court handed down opinions in two cases Wednesday, including Smith v. Texas , where the Court held that the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals incorrectly required Smith to show "egregious harm" before correcting the constitutional violation found by the Supreme Court in an earlier decision in the same case. LaRoyce Lathair Smith [...]
Virginia Gov. Timothy M. Kaine said during a Tuesday radio interview that he may be able to issue an executive order to close the loophole that allowed Virgina Tech gunman Seung-Hui Cho to purchase a firearm despite having been ordered to receive psychiatric treatment by a Virginia court in 2005. A federal law prohibits persons [...]
The constitutional crisis in Ecuador deepened Tuesday as the country's Congress struck back at high court judges who on Monday had ordered the reinstatement of 50 lawmakers opposed to President Rafael Correa and sought to have those legislators arrested, prompting some to flee the country. Earlier Tuesday Correa deployed a police cordon around the Congress [...]
Convicted civil rights lawyer Lynne Stewart was disbarred from the New York Bar after her request to voluntarily resign from practicing law was rejected. Stewart was convicted in 2005 of conspiracy and providing material support to terrorists for helping imprisoned Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman communicate with his terrorist followers. Stewart was also convicted of defrauding the [...]
Authorities in Iraq are failing to guarantee due process and other basic human rights of some 3,000 detainees arrested after a new security plan was instituted in Baghdad in mid-February, according to a new report released Wednesday by the UN Assistance Mission in Iraq (UNAMI) . The report, the tenth in a series issued by [...]
JURIST Guest Columnist Richard Garnett of the University of Chicago Law School says that alleging that the Catholic judges in the majority in the Carhart partial birth abortion case failed to respect a fundamental difference between religious belief and morality misses the point that for a judge to credit the legislature's conclusion that human fetuses [...]
Mexico City legislators Tuesday passed a bill 46-19 that would legalize abortion within the city. The bill, proposed by the Democratic Revolution Party (PRD) , will require city hospitals to provide the procedure in the first trimester, although abortions after 12 weeks would still be illegal. Girls under 18 would have to get their parents' [...]
The US Appeals Court for the Federal Circuit ruled Tuesday that Internet phone company Vonage can subscribe new customers while it appeals a lower court finding that it infringed three patents held by Verizon Communications, Inc. . In the wake of the finding, US District Judge Claude M. Hilton issued an order prohibiting Vonage from [...]
US military authorities Tuesday formally referred to a military commission charges of murder, supporting terrorism, conspiracy and spying in "violation of the law of war" against Omar Khadr , a Canadian detainee held at Guantanamo Bay since 2002. Khadr, the son of alleged al Qaeda financier Ahmad Khadr, allegedly threw a grenade that killed one [...]
The US Supreme Court Tuesday heard oral arguments in Permanent Mission of India v. New York , a case in which the justices will determine whether US courts can hear claims against foreign governments regarding unpaid property taxes for diplomatic residences. The city of New York brought the claim against India and Mongolia in 2003, [...]
