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 [...]
A judge for the US District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin ruled Tuesday that Wisconsin’s Act 23 , which requires residents to present photo identification to vote, violates the Voting Rights Act and the US Constitution. US District Judge Lynn Adelman found that the requirement violates Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act [...]
The US Supreme Court heard oral arguments Tuesday in a pair of cases dealing with warrantless searches of suspects’ cell phones. Riley v. California is a state court case that involves a challenge to searching an arrested individual without a warrant. After being arrested, police examined Riley’s cell phone, which was described as more of [...]
