The Florida Supreme Court on Tuesday stayed the execution of Cary Michael Lambrix amid growing concern about the constitutionality of Florida’s death penalty scheme. The stay comes after the US Supreme Court determined in Hurst v. Florida that the death penalty was being improperly administered in the state and that the state’s capital sentencing statute [...]
The US House of Representatives failed Tuesday to garner enough votes to override the president’s veto of the Restoring Americans’ Healthcare Freedom Reconciliation Act of 2015 , the most recent legislative effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and defund Planned Parenthood . Congress passed HR 3762 in January to “clear the way for [...]
The US Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Michigan on Tuesday announced that the FBI will join a criminal investigation into the contaminated drinking water in Flint, Michigan. The FBI will join a multi-agency team in the ongoing investigation. In 2014 Flint’s drinking water supply was switched from Lake Huron water treated in Detroit [...]
The High Court of Australia ruled Wednesday that the country’s offshore detention policy for asylum seekers is legal, rejecting a challenge that it violates the Australian constitution. The challenge was brought by lawyers for a female Bangladeshi detainee who was brought to Australia for medical reasons. Under the controversial policy, those who seek asylum in [...]
JURIST Guest Columnist Veronica Reyes of St. John’s University School of Law, Class of 2016, is the tenth author in a twelve-part series from the staffers of the Journal of Civil Rights and Economic Development. Reyes discusses why warrantless searches of cell phones by the police may not be the best solution in protecting our [...]
An Egyptian appeals court on Wednesday overturned death sentences for 149 supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood accused of executing an attack on a police station near Cairo in 2013. Last year an Egyptian court sentenced the defendants to death in a series of mass trials that were used to denounce the ex-president Mohamed Morsi and [...]
The UK Supreme Court ruled Wednesday in favor of a lesbian woman seeking the return of her IVF-born daughter to the UK from Pakistan, giving her the right to fight for custody. The seven-year-old child was taken to Pakistan by her biological mother and legal parent after her relationship with the appellant ended in 2011. [...]
JURIST Guest Columnist Dimitrina Petrova of Equal Rights Trust discusses the need to reduce inequality as a development goal in order to reach a prime Sustainable Development Goal (SDG)… As we entered 2016, a new resolution to “transform our world” by 2030 came into effect. On January 1, the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) replaced [...]
The chief prosecutor of Zimbabwe was charged Tuesday with obstructing justice after he dropped a case against the men accused of plotting to bomb a dairy operated by members of President Robert Mugabe’s family. He was officially charged with “abuse of office and obstructing justice” after authorizing the release of two of the four suspected [...]
A court in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday overturned a death sentence for an “apostate” poet who renounced the Muslim faith, giving him eight years in prison instead. The court quashed the previous court’s ruling that poet Ashraf Fayadh was to be sentenced to death for, what human rights activist Mona Kareem states was posting a [...]
