Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad al-Maliki said Thursday that he had presented documents to the International Criminal Court (ICC) to assist in the investigation of alleged Israeli war crimes. The documents describe the Israel occupation of the West Bank, treatment of Palestinian prisoners, and alleged war crimes committed during fighting in the Gaza Strip last year. [...]
The US House of Representatives voted 286-138 to approve a trade law that provides assistance to workers who lose their jobs to international trade and renews President Barack Obama’s authority to negotiate trade deals on behalf of the country. It also establishes programs to increase trade between the US and Africa. The Trade Preferences Extension [...]
The US Supreme Court on Friday ruled 8-1 in Johnson v. United States that increasing sentences on certain felons found in illegal possession of a firearm under the Armed Career Criminal Act (ACCA) violates the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment. The ACCA allows for an increased punishment if a criminal has committed three [...]
The US Supreme Court on Friday ruled 5-4 in Obergefell v. Hodges that states must issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples and also must recognize same-sex marriages that take place in other states. The ruling strikes down same-sex marriage bans in 15 US states. Those defending the laws had argued both that justifications for opposite-sex [...]
The California State Assembly on Thursday passed legislation requiring schoolchildren to be vaccinated unless there is a medical reason not to do so. The measure ends exemptions among parents opposed to vaccination due to personal or religious reasons. California is now the largest state to mandate vaccination , joining Mississippi and West Virginia which have [...]
The US Supreme Court on Thursday ruled 5-4 in Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs v. The Inclusive Communities Project that Texas’s biggest housing subsidy has been reinforcing segregated housing. The project claimed that even if Texas did not treat minority applicants differently, the subsidy program had the effect of disadvantaging them, under a [...]
A Kansas judge for the Shawnee County District Court blocked a law on Thursday that would have effectively banned most second-trimester abortions performed in the state. Judge Larry Hendricks stated that the first-in-the-nation law would have created too large of an obstacle for women in the state seeking an abortion. Opponents call the process “dismemberment [...]
Human Rights Watch (HRW) on Wednesday released a report containing evidence that many Colombian army generals and colonels knew about or should have known about extrajudicial killings of civilians between 2002 and 2008. According to the group, prosecutors are investigating a total of 3,000 cases involving military troops killing civilians to boost death counts to [...]
JURIST Guest Columnist Albert Scherr of the University of New Hampshire School of Law, discusses the UN Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice’s new rules regarding torture… For the past four and a half years, the UN Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice (the “Commission”) has been working on a revision of the [...]
The US Supreme Court on Thursday ruled 6-3 in King v. Burwell that tax credits available to those who buy health insurance through state exchanges are also available to those who buy it through the federal exchange. At issue was language in the Affordable Care Act (ACA) , which made tax credits available to those [...]
