New Zealand rolls out community-focused model in mainstream courts
New Zealand is rolling out a community-focused justice model in its District Courts, one of four major courts in the mainstream hierarchy, according to a statement from the Chief District Court Judge Heemi Taumaunu published Sunday. The model is known as the Te Ao Mārama model, meaning “the enlightened world.” The model “signals a deliberate [...]
Canada court finds man who drove van into crowd of people guilty of murder
The Ontario Superior Court of Justice found a man guilty of murder on Wednesday for driving a van into a crowd in Toronto, killing 10 and injuring 16 people. The court refused to name the man, calling him John Doe instead, because he committed the act of violence in order to achieve fame. Thus the [...]
Federal judge blocks exclusion of thousands of Georgia voters before runoff election
A US federal judge in Georgia Monday granted an emergency motion to block Georgia from excluding 4,185 voters from voting in the Georgia Senate runoff election. The voters were excluded based on findings that they were no longer living in Georgia. Judge Leslie Gardner of the US District Court for the Middle District of Georgia [...]
On 27 November 2020, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was killed while traveling in his car just east of Tehran. It is understood that Fakhrizadeh was Iran’s foremost nuclear scientist and that he led the country’s efforts to develop a nuclear bomb. The details of the attack are a matter of doubt, with Iran claiming that Israel was the [...]
Trump campaign sues to halt mail-in ballot counting in Nevada
The Trump campaign has sued the state of Nevada in an effort to temporarily halt the counting of mail-in ballots in the closely contested state. According to the Trump campaign, “There has been great concern whether the rolls are clean and properly registered voters are the ones receiving ballots, signing them and mailing them back.” [...]
Voter suppression, which represents the dark underbelly of the American experiment, has reared its head throughout our history, particularly beginning at the cession of the Civil War. After the passage of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, former slaves got an all-too-fleeting taste of emancipation when they not only came out to vote in droves, but [...]
Chief Justice John Roberts held in his recent majority opinion in Dep’t of Homeland Security v. Regents of the Univ. of California that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) under President Trump did not employ “reasoned decisionmaking” when it rescinded the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which had accorded a hold on [...]
Why Canada Believes Trump's America is No Longer Safe for Refugees
Recently a Canadian court threw out the Safe Third Country Agreement (STCA) with the USA because the detention centers in the USA violate the human rights of refugees. This pact compels the refugees seeking asylum in Canada through the US-Canadian border to first seek asylum in the USA. This pact was challenged last year by [...]
In Irvine, nestled in the heart of wealthy Orange County, California, hidden within a technology business park replete with vibrant, meticulously manicured landscaping, sits an empty jail. The unnecessary James A. Musick Facility, operated by the Orange County Sheriff’s Department, a department known for scandal, violence, and negligence, is slated for expansion. Rather than putting [...]
Since murder is a horrible wrong, preventing a murder must be a good thing, right? Truth be told, it can get complicated. Among the many questions raised by the killing of George Floyd, we should pause to consider what would have happened if a bystander had actually been successful in rescuing Floyd from the knee [...]
