Of the seven individuals whose death sentences the Attorney General had identified as having been obtained in violation of equal protection, Mr. Buck is the only one who has not been resentenced at a trial free from consideration of his race as a basis for imposing death. The only change that has taken place since the Attorney General identified Mr. Buck's case as being similar to the Saldano case is that a different person now holds the position of Attorney General. That is an insufficient legal basis on which to treat Mr. Buck differently from the six other cases that the former Attorney General had identified as being similar. Capriciousness in the administration of the death penalty is intolerable. Mr. Buck has been twice-subjected to equal protection violations, once when the government asked the jury to sentence him to death, and a second time when the government arbitrarily treated him differently from similarly situated defendants. Texas promised to remedy Mr. Buck's racially-based death sentence, then reneged on that promise, then hid its promise from the federal courts to avoid its enforcement in Mr. Buck's case.

The Supreme Court received international criticism for not staying a Texas execution earlier this year. UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay [official profile] criticized the US execution of Mexican national Humberto Leal Garcia [advocacy website], saying that the sentence violated international law [JURIST report]. Pillay said that the US denied consular access [press release] to Leal Garcia, which was his right under Article 36 of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations [text, PDF]. Although the State of Texas convicted and sentenced Leal Garcia for murder in 1998. The US Supreme Court refused [JURIST report] to stay the execution, with the majority in a split per curiam opinion rejecting the Obama administration's arguments that Leal Garcia's execution would be detrimental to foreign policy to the degree that they needed to introduce a stay. Texas officials executed [KTSM report] Leal Garcia an hour after the decision.

Today's ... opinion resoundingly vindicates the First Amendment rights of day laborers throughout the western United States. The dozens of similar ordinances through out the region that purport to prevent day laborers from speaking on sidewalks are now even more plainly violative of the Constitution. ... The longstanding principle that the right of free speech belongs to everyone has been significantly bolstered by this decision.

Rights groups have also asserted the free speech rights of day laborers in their challenge to Arizona's immigration reform bill [SB 1070 text; JURIST news archive], which provides similar restrictions on solicitation. In January, a coalition of six rights groups filed a petition [JURIST report] in the US District Court for the District of Arizona [official website] seeking to block the provisions, arguing that "solicitation speech is expression entitled to full protection under the First Amendment." Last month, the state of Arizona filed a petition for writ of certiorari [JURIST report] with the US Supreme Court [official website] seeking to overturn a lower court decision enjoining four provisions of the immigration law. The provisions were blocked through a preliminary injunction order issued by the Arizona district court in 2010 and upheld [JURIST reports] by the Ninth Circuit in April.

In July, Schneiderman filed an amicus curiae brief [JURIST report] challenging the constitutionality of the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) [text; JURIST news archive], which bars recognition of same-sex marriages. Schneiderman filed the brief in the case of Windsor v. United States, arguing that DOMA violates the Equal Protection Clause [Cornell LII backgrounder] by precluding same-sex couples from the same rights and privileges of opposite-sex couples, and that it intrudes on what had previously been the exclusive right of the states to define marriage. President Barack Obama has expressed support [JURIST report] for the repeal of DOMA and also support for the Respect for Marriage Act [text], which was introduced by Congressional Democrats [JURIST report] in February to repeal DOMA. In March, House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) [official website] announced that he was launching a legal advisory group [JURIST report] to defend DOMA. Democrats introduced the Respect for Marriage Act following February's announcement by the US Department of Justice (DOJ) [official website] that it will no longer defend the constitutionality [JURIST report] of Section 3 of DOMA, which restricts the federal definition of marriage to heterosexual couples, in court cases challenging the provision. The announcement came just one month after the DOJ filed a brief [JURIST report] with the US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit [official website] defending the constitutionality of DOMA.

We have held that an "accident" is commonly understood to mean "an event which creates an effect which is not the natural or probable consequence of the means employed and is not intended, designed, or reasonably anticipated." Kivalina alleges that AES intentionally released tons of carbon dioxide and greenhouse gases into the atmosphere as part of its electricity-generating operations. We have held that "[a]n intentional act is neither an 'occurrence' nor an 'accident' and therefore is not covered by the standard policy." ... If a result is the natural and probable consequence of an insured's intentional act, it is not an accident. However, even though the insured's action starting the chain of events was intentionally performed, when the alleged injury results from an unforeseen cause that is out of the ordinary expectations of a reasonable person, the injury may be covered by an occurrence policy provision. In such a context, the dispositive issue in determining whether an accidental injury occurred is not whether the action undertaken by the insured was intended, but rather whether the resulting harm is alleged to have been a reasonably anticipated consequence of the insured's intentional act. Thus, resolution of the issue of whether Kivalina's Complaint alleges an occurrence covered by the policies turns on whether the Complaint can be construed as alleging that Kivalina's injuries, at least in the alternative, resulted from unforeseen consequences that a reasonable person would not have expected to result from AES's deliberate act of emitting carbon dioxide and greenhouse gases.

In July, the UN Security Council [official website] made its first official statement [JURIST report] implicating climate change as a serious threat to world peace and security. At the urging of Germany, which released a Concept Note [text] to lead the discussion, the Security Council debated global warming for the first time since 2007. The US Supreme Court [official website] ruled [JURIST report] in American Electric Power Co. v. Connecticut [Cornell LII backgrounder] that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) [official website] and the Clean Air Act [text] displace claims made under the federal common law of nuisance regarding whether electric utilities contributed to global warming. All eight justices agreed in rejecting the claims by eight states, New York City and three private land trusts invoking the federal common law for public nuisance against four power companies and the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) [official website]. The plaintiffs sought to control greenhouse gas emissions by creating a annually declining cap on emissions. The court held that to challenge greenhouse gas emissions the plaintiffs may file petitions for rulemaking with the EPA to set emissions standards. Currently, the EPA is undergoing rulemaking on the issue and is set to issue new standards by May 2012.