The US Supreme Court on Monday denied review of two cases involving local ordinances that sought to deny housing to undocumented immigrants. The court’s denial will will let stand lower court rulings that the ordinances are unconstitutional and prohibited from taking effect in their proposed locations of Hazleton, Pennsylvania and Farmers Branch, Texas . The [...]
The US Supreme Court heard oral arguments Monday on the legal standard for assessing whether an individual is mentally retarded in order to determine that person’s eligibility for the death penalty. In Hall v. Florida the court will decide “whether the Florida scheme for identifying mentally retarded defendants in capital cases violates Atkins v. Virginia [...]
Five veterans of the Vietnam War filed a class action lawsuit on Monday in the US District Court for the District of Connecticut accusing the military of failing to upgrade the discharges of veterans who developed post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The complaint , which names the US Army, Navy and Air Force as defendants, argues [...]
A judge for the US District Court for the Eastern District of California ruled Friday that two state laws are unconstitutional because they alter the sentences of crimes that were committed before the laws came into effect. Marsy’s Law , otherwise known as the “Victims’ Bill of Rights,” was passed in 2008, mandating that inmates [...]
JURIST Guest Columnist Shanshan Liu, American University Washington College of Law Class of 2015 explores the legal analysis surrounding current antitrust litigation in regards to online search engines and monopolization… The field of antitrust litigation has focused on the settlement between the world’s largest search engine, Google Inc. (Google) and the European Union Commission (EU [...]
A gun and suicide bomb attack on Monday on a court complex in Islamabad, Pakistan, left 11 people dead and 25 injured. Additional Sessions Judge Rafaqat Awan, senior advocate Rao Abdul Rashid, advocate Tanveer Ahmend Shah, and several other members of court staff were among those killed in the first suicide attack in Islamabad since [...]
Croatia said Monday at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) that acts of violence committed by Serbia in the 1990s constituted genocide under the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide . The Convention was breached, Croatia argues , when forces from the former Federal Republic of Yugoslavia tried to [...]
The US Supreme Court on Monday granted certiorari in five cases slated for argument during the October 2014 term. In Integrity Staffing Solutions v. Busk , the court will address whether time spent passing through post-work security screenings is compensable in the form of overtime pay pursuant to the Fair Labor Standards Act . On [...]
Amnesty International (AI) on Friday urged members of the UN Security Council, including France, the US and UK, to throw their full weight behind proposals to address the crisis in the Central African Republic (CAR). UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon will present his assessment report on the possibility of transforming the African-led peacekeeping force in the [...]
During a phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Saturday, US President Barack Obama condemned Russia’s violation of Ukrainian sovereignty after Russian forces had taken up positions in Ukraine. Earlier that day, Russian lawmakers unanimously authorized the use of armed forces to protect their national interests and ethnic Russians in Ukraine, after Russian troops [...]
