The Supreme Court has not yet decided whether the...individual right to bear arms at home under the Second Amendment extends beyond the home. The panel's split decision in these cases goes farther than the Supreme Court has gone and is the first decision by a federal court of appeals striking down legislation restricting the carrying of arms in public.

Illinois lawmakers, particularly those in Chicago, have struggled to limit firearm possession and advance gun control [JURIST news archive] initiatives in the city without violating the Constitution. In June the US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois [official website] struck down [JURIST report] a portion of the Chicago Firearms Ordinance [text, PDF] that prevents firearm purchase by individuals who have "been convicted by a court in any jurisdiction of ... unlawful use of a weapon that is a firearm" because such a standard is unconstitutionally vague. The ordinance was unanimously approved [JURIST report] by the Chicago City Council in July 2010, and imposes strict regulations on firearm possession. In particular, residents who possess firearms are required to keep them inside their homes, and are not permitted to take their guns into the yard, garage or porch of the home. The legislation was enacted four days after the Supreme Court ruled in McDonald v. Chicago [opinion, JURIST report] that the Second Amendment right to bear arms is applicable to the states as well as the federal government. The decision effectively struck down Chicago's former handgun ban, as it prohibited citizens from keeping handguns in their homes under any circumstances.

The UN has been increasingly concerned about the abuses by both M23 rebels [JURIST news archives] and Congolese troops against civilians over the past several months. In December, a UN probe found [JUIRIST report] that at least 126 people were raped and two civilians were killed during violence in the region last November. A month earlier, the UN condemned M23 [JURIST report] for guerrilla attacks on the DRC and called for an end to all support of the group. Human Rights Watch [advocacy website] also released a report [JURIST report] in September alleging that M23 had been responsible for numerous war crimes, including summary executions, rape and forced recruitments. In June, a leaked UN report [JURIST report] revealed that Rwanda had been helping to create and support M23 and similar rebel groups that have been known to violate human rights.

Windsor is a widow who had a legal same-sex marriage under Canada and New York law, but was denied spousal deduction for federal estate taxes when her wife died. Prior to her challenge, the US Department of Justice (DOJ) [official website] announced that it would no longer defend DOMA in courts and, in response, members of the House formed [JURIST reports] the Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group (BLAG) to defend the law. In July,132 members of the House who support the law's constitutionality filed an amicus brief [JURIST report] in another case arguing that statutory classifications based on sexual orientation should be subject to heightened judicial scrutiny and that DOMA should be overturned as unconstitutional under any level of judicial scrutiny. The brief was filed in the appeal of Karen Golinski v. Office of Personnel Management, the landmark case in which the US District Court for the Northern District of California [official website] ruled that DOMA is unconstitutional [JURIST report]. In June, 10 US senators filed their own amicus brief in the case, arguing in the opposite [JURIST report] that the federal government had a legitimate interest in creating a uniform federal definition of marriage to "[avoid] massive legal uncertainty."

Laws concerning Uruguay's dictatorship era have been the subject of judicial controversy in recent years. In 2011, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR) [official website, in Spanish] condemned the Uruguayan government for its role in the abduction and death of an Argentinean woman in the 1970s, effectively overturning the country's amnesty law [JURIST report]. In 2010, the Uruguayan Supreme Court ruled [JURIST report] that amnesty granted for crimes committed by the country's 12-year dictatorship was unconstitutional. Months earlier, Bordaberry was sentenced to 30 years in prison [JURIST report] for his role in the country's 1973 military coup. Bordaberry was arrested in 2006 on charges of murder and was later charged with violating Uruguay's constitution [materials, in Spanish]. The Uruguay Supreme Court also addressed the Expiry Law in a 2009 ruling, finding it unconstitutional [JURIST report] as it applied to the case of Nibia Sabalsagaray, who was allegedly murdered by the military in 1974. The court concluded that the law violated separation of powers and constitutional sovereignty [El Pais report, in Spanish].