Georgia officials executed Kenneth Fults Tuesday after the US Supreme Court Tuesday denied the application for stay of execution. His attorney argued that the jury which sentenced Fults, an African American man, was tainted by the racial bias of at least one member, after Fults pleaded guilty to murdering his neighbor, Cathy Bounds, in 1996. [...]
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein and Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon expressed concern on Wednesday over reports coming out of the Republic of Congo regarding an apparent Government security operation in an area of southern Brazzaville known as the Pool. The reports flow from suspected police action taken against civilians, after the [...]
A New Jersey administrative law judge, Jeff Masin, ruled on Tuesday that presidential hopeful Ted Cruz is a natural-born citizen of the US and is thus eligible to be placed on the New Jersey primary ticket. Masin ruled that Cruz is a natural-born citizen because his mother is a US citizen but noted that his [...]
The US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit Court ruled Tuesday that the district court must review Wisconsin’s voter ID law to determine whether broad application constitutes an equal protection violation. The law requires “certain identification in order to vote at a polling place or obtain an absentee ballot.” The American Civil Liberties Union [...]
Religious groups including the Little Sisters of the Poor , and the US Department of Justice (DOJ) on Tuesday filed supplemental briefs with the US Supreme Court Tuesday in the case of Zubik v. Burwell . In a rare move, the parties were ordered by the court to file supplemental briefs following oral argument in [...]
A judge in Changsha, China, on Wednesday refused to allow a same-sex couple to register as married. The two men attempted to register their marriage last June. After being denied, the couple filed the lawsuit in December. The judge decided to hear China’s first legal challenge over a refusal to issue same-sex marriage applications in [...]
Human Rights Watch (HRW) and KontraS on Tuesday urged the US to release government files regarding the anti-communist massacres in Indonesia from 1965-1966, which killed half a million individuals. HRW Executive Director Kenneth Roth and KontraS National Coordinator Haris Azhar held a press conference in Jakarta to make the request. Roth stated that a factual [...]
Twenty-five states, led by West Virginia, filed a friend of the court brief on Monday to argue that the War World I monument in the shape of a white cross does not violate the constitution. At issue is the fact that the Bladensburg World War I Veterans Memorial in Bladensburg, Maryland, is maintained by government [...]
The President of Macedonia on Tuesday ended an investigation into allegations of government corruption and abuse of power, also pardoning all politicians involved in a 2015 wiretapping scandal. According to President Gjorge Ivanov , the move came in an effort to defend national interests, but it has been called illegal by opposition leader Zoran Zaev. [...]
JURIST Guest Columnist Jeremiah A. Ho of the University of Massachusetts School of Law, discusses the recent anti-LGBTQ legislations in several conservative states and suggests that marriage equality is not enough to protect the LGBTQ minority group… If it had not been clear enough since last spring’s brief controversy over Indiana’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act, [...]