JURIST Guest Columnist Aaron Spencer, Temple University Beasley School of Law Class of 2015, discusses Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe’s Veto of SB 236, which would have codified the rights of students to pray voluntarily in school and at school events . . .The First Amendment begins, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of [...]
Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring wrote a letter to the state’s public colleges and universities on Tuesday declaring that undocumented children who qualify under the US Department of Homeland Security’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program will be eligible for in-state college tuition . Experts report the new policy will impact 8,000 students immediately. [...]
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay on Wednesday stated that the power struggle between Sudanese president Salva Kiir and opposition leader Riek Machar is pushing the nation towards “catastrophe.” While visiting South Sudan to investigate recent mass killings throughout the country, Pillay saidthat her findings “reinforced the view” that the country’s leaders have [...]
The US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit ruled Tuesday that Pennsylvania’s mandatory retirement age of 70 for judges is constitutional. A group of four judges from across the state, including Judges Benjamin Lerner and John Herron of Philadelphia, Leonard Zito of Northampton County and Gerald Solomon of Fayette County, appealed to the Third [...]
Amnesty International (AI) called on the Pakistani government on Wednesday to address human rights abuses against media workers in Pakistan. In a report also released Wednesday, AI documents the brutal treatment of media workers in Pakistan, claiming that many journalists have been threatened, harassed, abducted, tortured and murdered. AI’s Asia-Pacific Director David Griffiths says of [...]
The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) announced Tuesday that it would begin a fact-finding mission into allegations of the use of chlorine gas in Syria. Although both rebel forces and the Syrian government acknowledge that the chemical weapon was used on the Syrian town of Kafr Zita, both factions deny responsibility for [...]
The US Supreme Court on Wednesday heard its final oral arguments of the term. In Limelight Networks v. Akamai Technologies the court heard arguments on whether a company can be held liable for inducing patent infringement even when no one company has committed direct patent infringement. Akamai Technologies and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology sued [...]
JURIST Guest Columnist Thomas Warns, New York University School of Law, Class of 2015, discusses Georgia’s Safe Carry Protection Act and the balance it strikes between rights to private property and self-defense…Georgia Governor Nathan Deal recently signed into law a bill which expanded the rights of licensed gun owners to carry their firearms into certain [...]
Six Ohio couples on Wednesday filed a federal lawsuit challenging the state’s same-sex marriage ban. The lawsuit, filed in the US District Court for the Southern District of Ohio , challenges the constitutional prohibition against same-sex marriage, approved by voters in 2004. The lawsuit alleges that the ban violates the Equal Protection and Due Process [...]
Oklahoma death row inmate Clayton Lockett died of an apparent heart attack Tuesday shortly after doctors called off a failed attempt to execute him using a new cocktail of lethal injection drugs. According to the state corrections department, 13 minutes after administering the drug cocktail Lockett regained some level of consciousness at which point doctors [...]
