A judge for the US District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina upheld the state’s voter ID law on Monday. House Bill 589 requires that any “qualified voter voting in person … shall present identification” to a “local election official at the voting place before voting.” The law also provides, however, that those [...]
JURIST Guest Columnist Nicholas Johnson of the Fordham University School of Law discusses the recent suit filed by the families of the Newtown victims… Some of the families who survived the horror of the Newtown, Connecticut, shooting are suing the manufacturer and distributors of the Armalite Rifle Model 15, or “AR-15” that was used by [...]
A panel of experts released on Sunday its second and last report on its inquiry into the 43 undergraduate students from a teachers college in Ayotzinapa who went missing in Iguala, Guerrero, Mexico in 2014, stating that the Mexican government has hampered the investigation. Consisting of Latin American lawyers and human rights activists, the panel [...]
The US Supreme Court heard oral arguments Monday in two cases. In Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. , the court must determine what constitutes the standard for awarding attorney’s fees under § 505 of the Copyright Act . Under the act, the district court is permitted to use its discretion in awarding attorney’s [...]
UN Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights Kate Gilmore urged Iraq on Monday to take concrete steps to plan for “the day after” the defeat of the Islamic State (IS). The statements come after a week-long visit to Iraq that included the cities of Baghdad, Najaf, Erbil and the Shariya camp for internally displaced people [...]
The US Supreme Court granted certiorari in Shaw v. United States to determine the level of intent that must be proven for a bank fraud conviction. The Supreme Court ruled in 2014 in Loughrin v. United States that prosecution under subsection (2) of the federal government’s anti-bank fraud statute does not require proof that a [...]
Civil rights lawyer Ni Yulan told Western media Monday that the Chinese government has put her under house arrest, presumably for her work as an advocate for citizens being evicted to make way for development. Foreign diplomats from the EU, Germany, Canada, France and Switzerland sought to meet with Ni at her home over the [...]
International Criminal Court (ICC) Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda on Monday announced a “preliminary investigation” into allegations that the Burundi government, headed by President Pierre Nkurunziza, committed various human rights violations over the past year. In a statement to the media, Bensouda said that “more than 430 persons were reportedly killed, at least 3,400 people have been [...]
UN Special Rapporteur on the right to housing Leilani Farha warned on Friday that homelessness is India is a major problem. Farha called on the government of India to take immediate action to ensure adequate housing for the disadvantaged within the country. She stated, “I am extremely concerned for the millions of people who experience [...]
Bangladeshi workers gathered Sunday on the third anniversary of the Rana Plaza garment factory disaster to demand justice for the incident that took the lives of more than 1,000 people. A court in Dhaka ruled that 41 defendants can be tried for murder for the April 2013 garment factory collapse. Initially charged with culpable homicide, [...]
