A judge for Arkansas’ Pulaski County Circuit Court ruled Friday that the state’s ban on same-sex marriage is unconstitutional, striking down both the Arkansas General Assembly Act 144 of 1997 and the 2004 Amendment 83 of the Arkansas State Constitution . Reviewing not only state and federal constitutional arguments, but also interstate analysis on the [...]
The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit on Friday rejected a challenge to new Environmental Protection Agency standards for manufacturing plant air pollutant output. The petitioners had requested review of a final rule by the EPA regarding minimum National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) . NAAQS are explicitly required under the [...]
The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled Friday that programming interfaces in Oracle’s Java technology can be protected under US copyright law, allowing Oracle to pursue its legal case against Google . The litigation arose four year ago when Oracle sued Google, alleging its Android operating system infringes on patents and copyrights [...]
The Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts ruled Friday that the Pledge of Allegiance’s words “under God” do not discriminate against non-religious people since the language is patriotic and not religious. The case arose when the plaintiffs, Jane Doe and John Doe, commenced the suit in the Massachusetts Superior Court , challenging the practice by which [...]
JURIST Guest Columnist Dara Purvis of the Pennsylvania State University Dickinson School of Law discusses how salary negotiation presents itself within a marriage and is not only between employer and employee … April 8 was Equal Pay Day: on average, American women would have to work all of 2013 plus January 1 – April 8, [...]
Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett announced Thursday that the Office of General Counsel will not pursue an appeal in defense of the Commonwealth’s voter identification law. The law, passed in March 2012, required all voters to submit a government issued photo ID in order to vote in all elections. The law was immediately challenged on the [...]
Vermont Governor Peter Shumlin on Thursday signed a bill , requiring the labeling of food containing genetically modified organisms (GMOs) . This is the first legislation in the US to require food producers to disclose GMO material. Food labels must reveal GMO ingredients, such as genetically engineered corn or soy, by July 1, 2016 ,or [...]
JURIST Guest Columnist Michael J. DeBoer of the Faulkner University Thomas Goode Jones School of Law discusses the recently passed Women’s Health and Safety Act and the challenges facing this legislation… On April 9, 2013, Alabama Governor Robert Bentley signed into law the Women’s Health and Safety Act . Two months later, two abortion providers [...]
Both sides in the South Sudan conflict are committing gross human rights violations, according to a UN report released Thursday. The UN Mission in South Sudan’s (UNMISS) issued the report after compiling evidence from interviews with more than 900 civilians who were victims of and witnesses to violence after being directly targeted based on ethnic [...]
The Oklahoma Criminal Court of Appeals on Thursday approved a six-month stay of execution for a current death row inmate while an investigation is conducted into issues with last week’s lethal injection. Attorneys for Charles Warner requested the delay after the recent botched lethal injection of Clayton Lockett. Last week inmate Lockett died of an [...]
