Impeachment proceedings were opened against Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff on Wednesday for allegations of violating fiscal laws and manipulating finances. Rousseff’s political enemy and speaker of the Chamber of Deputies Eduardo Cunha accepted a request from opposition lawyers to begin the impeachment process . Rousseff denies any wrongdoing and “received with indignation” the decision. A [...]
The US Supreme Court hears oral arguments Wednesday in Gobeille v. Liberty Mutual Insurance Company to determine whether the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) preempts a Vermont statute in setting minimum standards for employee health care services. The US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit reversed a district court ruling, finding that ERISA [...]
Egyptian researcher and freelance journalist, Ismail Alexandrani, was detained and interrogated upon his arrival in Egypt Tuesday for spreading false news. After an eight-hour interrogation Alexandrani was ordered to be jailed for 15 days pending an investigation into claims that he joined and campaigned for an illegal organization and spread false news with the intent [...]
A German court on Tuesday allowed the trial of a 95-year-old German man, Hubert Z, accused of being an accessory to the murder of 3,681 people at Auschwitz. Hubert Z. had previously been deemed too fragile to stand trial, but Tuesday’s decision reversed the lower court. Because of Germany’s privacy laws, Hubert Z’s last name [...]
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed a personal privacy violation complaint on Tuesday with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) against Google . The complaint outlines that the default “sync” setting of Chromebooks sold to schools allows Google to track and maintain the records of all student Internet activity conducted while using the product, including sites [...]
According to an official US government document , a man who fought for the Taliban in Afghanistan and has been held without charge at Guantanamo Bay for 13 years was a victim of mistaken identity. Mustafa Abd-al Qawi Abd-al-Aziz al-Shamiri was held as a courier and trainer for Al Qaeda. The Department of Defense (DOD) [...]
Human Rights Watch (HRW) called Monday for the criminal prosecution of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and other US government officials for their participation in torture programs following the September 11, 2001, terrorist attack. The report found that the Obama administration faces no legal obstacles that would serve as impediments preventing investigation of torture allegations [...]
A UN human rights expert on Monday urged states to reexamine their unilateral coercive measures (UCMs) imposed on Sudan, which impact innocents instead of political elites. Idriss Jazairy, UN Special Rapporteur on human rights and international sanctions, asserted that UCMs adversely impact the enjoyment of human rights. He maintained that there was a lack of [...]
JURIST Guest Columnist Keith King of St. John’s University School of Law Class of 2016 is the sixth author in a twelve-part series from the staffers of the Journal of Civil Rights and Economic Development. King discusses the advantages of state-sponsored banking systems such as the Bank of North Dakota and the need to serve [...]
The US Supreme Court ruled Tuesday in OBB Personenverkehr AG v. Sachs that a California woman injured in a train accident in Austria fell outside the commercial activity exception of the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act and was barred from recovery in the US. Berkeley, the victim, believed she was entitled to sue in federal court [...]
