The New York Court of Appeals , the state's highest court, ruled Thursday morning that New York's ban on same-sex marriage is not unconstitutional. The ruling comes in four consolidated cases where attorneys representing 48 gay and lesbian couples argued that a 97-year-old statute limiting marriage to a union between a man and a woman [...]
Georgia's latest attempt to implement photo identification cards for voters was challenged Wednesday by the ACLU and other voting rights advocates, who filed a motion in federal district court seeking a preliminary injunction, arguing that the bill authorizing the cards violates the Equal Protection Clause of the US Constitution's Fourteenth Amendment as well as the [...]
Ugandan rebel leader Joseph Kony must be arrested, a spokesman for the International Criminal Court (ICC) said Wednesday, a day after Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni promised Kony conditional amnesty . The ICC spokesman told the Integrated Regional Information Networks (IRIN), the UN's editorially independent humanitarian news agency, that Uganda, Sudan and the Democratic Republic of [...]
The Russian Duma , the lower house of parliament, overwhelmingly passed a draft law Wednesday that would give Russian President Vladimir Putin the right to use Russia's armed forces and secret services abroad for counterterrorism measures. Putin asked parliament for greater counterterrorism powers last week after five Russian diplomats were abducted and murdered in Iraq, [...]
JURIST Contributing Editor Nancy Rapoport of the University of Houston Law Center says that the sudden death of Enron founder Kenneth Lay before he was even sentenced has a variety of legal implications, but its greatest consequence may be the loss of any opportunity for his redemption by appeal or rehabilitation… It's safe to say [...]
JURIST Guest Columnist Chandra Lekha Sriram, Chair of Human Rights at the University of East London School of Law (UK), says that the favorable response by Senegal's president to an African Union call that former Chadian president Hissene Habre be tried in Africa for alleged torture and mass killings committed by his regime in the [...]
US Army prosecutors charged 1st Lt. Ehren Watada late Wednesday in connection with his refusal to deploy to Iraq with the rest of his unit last week. Watada announced in early June that he would not deploy because he believes the Iraq war is unlawful , adding that he would go to Afghanistan if called [...]
New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg testified at the outset of congressional field hearings on federal immigration reform Wednesday that competing bills passed by the US House and Senate are both unrealistic. Speaking before a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in Philadelphia, Bloomberg described the House bill , which makes unlawful presence in the US a felony [...]
Thirty-eight people were convicted of corruption Wednesday for rigging public works contracts to finance political parties while now-French President Jacques Chirac was mayor of Paris in the late 1980s and early '90s. Prosecutors alleged that companies kicked back money spent by the regional Ile-de-France Council for secondary school construction to political parties including Chirac's Rally [...]
UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the Palestinian Territories John Dugard told an emergency session of the UN Human Rights Council Wednesday that Israel's military offensive in the Palestinian-populated Gaza Strip launched Tuesday in response to the seizure of an Israeli soldier by militants, violates "fundamental norms" of human rights and humanitarian law. According [...]
