Search Results for: Puerto Rico

Hannah Brem is JURIST’s News Managing Editor, and a 3L at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law. She files this dispatch from New York City.  Human rights activists gathered Monday in front of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) to protest the visit of Philippines president Ferdinand “Bongbong” Romualdez Marcos Jr.’s to New York [...]

Miami federal prosecutors Friday charged British Virgin Islands (BVI) Premier Andrew Alturo Fahie and two others with drug trafficking and money laundering, the US Department of Justice (DOJ) said. Fahie, BVI Ports Authority Managing Director Oleanvine Maynard and his son Kadeem Maynard were charged with cocaine trafficking and money laundering conspiracies for agreeing to facilitate [...]

In an 8-1 decision, the US Supreme Court Thursday ruled that Congress does not have to provide Supplemental Security Income (SSI) benefits to residents of Puerto Rico. The decision impacts the residents of Puerto Rico and other US territories who are applying for government benefits. In United States v. Vaello-Madero, Jose Luis Vaello-Madero, a US [...]

JURIST is launching a new series of dispatches from major US states written by JURIST correspondents “on the ground” in those jurisdictions. JURIST Operations Director Ram Eachambadi files this report from Los Angeles. Earlier this month, Los Angeles County filed a petition in California Superior Court to hold Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva in [...]

The White House and the Justice Department announced Friday that 99 law schools across 35 states and Puerto Rico answered the attorney general’s call for action to help communities during the housing and eviction crisis. In August 2021, Attorney General Merrick Garland issued a letter to the legal community calling for help. He noted that [...]

A judge for the US Bankruptcy Court for the District of Puerto Rico Tuesday gave final approval to a plan for Puerto Rico to exit bankruptcy after nearly five years. The restructuring plan, signed by Judge Laura Taylor Swain, marks the largest public-sector debt restructuring deal in US history, reducing the island territory’s debt by [...]

Samuel Moyn’s vicious and unprincipled attack on Michael Ratner, one of the finest human rights attorneys of our time, was published in the New York Review of Books (NYRB) on September 1. Moyn singles out Ratner as a whipping boy to support his own bizarre theory that punishing war crimes prolongs war by making it [...]

The US Supreme Court granted certiorari Monday in two cases involving Supplemental Security Income (SSI) and the Social Security Act. The case United States v. Vaello-Madero involves an equal protection challenge, while Babcock v. Saul involves the Social Security Act’s windfall elimination provision. In United States v. Vaello-Madero, the court will address whether Congress violated the [...]

El gobernador de Puerto Rico, Pedro Pierluisi, dijo el domingo que Estados Unidos está “moralmente obligado” a tomar medidas después del reciente referéndum del territorio a favor de lograr la condición de Estado estadounidense. A pesar de que los puertorriqueños han votado repetidamente sobre el tema de la estadidad en los últimos años, la votación [...]

Puerto Rican Governor Pedro Pierluisi said Sunday that the US is “morally obligated” to take action following the territory’s recent referendum in favor of achieving US statehood. Although Puerto Ricans have voted repeatedly on the issue of statehood in recent years, the November vote finally garnered majority approval with high enough voter turnout. Congress has [...]