The US Supreme Court held Monday that individuals whose convictions became final before Ramos v. Louisiana, holding that jury verdicts in criminal trials must be unanimous under the Sixth Amendment to the US Constitution, do not receive the advantages of jury unanimity on federal collateral review. In April 2020, the Supreme Court ruled in Ramos that [...]

The Asian Network for Free Elections (ANFREL) found Monday that Myanmar’s general election held in 2020 represented the will of the citizenry and that the military coup lacked justifiable grounds. The NGO’s 176-page report, entitled “The 2020 Myanmar General Elections: Democracy Under Attack,” noted ANFREL’s satisfaction with Myanmar’s 2020 general election, which attracted 27.5 million [...]

The Chilean citizenry voted over the weekend in favor of independent candidates to rewrite the constitution. For the first time, voters were invited to have their say on who rewrites their country’s constitution. There will be 155 delegates working on the rewrite in a group called the Constitutional Convention. Most delegates voted in are independent. [...]

The US Supreme Court ruled on Monday that there is no standalone “community caretaking” exception to the Fourth Amendment that would allow police to conduct a warrantless search and seizure of a person’s home as part of a welfare check. This case, Caniglia v. Strom, involved a welfare check, which led to police searching and [...]

The US Supreme Court agreed Monday to hear Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Association, a case that presents the issue of “hether all pre-viability prohibitions on elective abortions are unconstitutional.” The case, which concerns Mississippi’s ban on non-emergency abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy, will allow the Supreme Court to reconsider its rulings in Roe [...]

Former Greek Golden Dawn party and European Parliament member, Ioannis Lagos, was extradited Saturday from Brussels to Athens to serve a 13-year prison sentence. Lagos was accused of committing several hate crimes during his time as a Golden Dawn member, a Greek party known for its neo-Nazi political views. In October, a Greek court convicted [...]

Taiwan’s Central Election Commission (CEC) on Friday approved proposals to hold three referendums on August 28, in addition to the nuclear power plant referendum already planned. In a statement, the CEC said that it had “deliberated on, and approved, three referendums,” meaning each had passed the hurdle of 289,667 signatures needed before a referendum will [...]

Hong Kong’s Security Bureau announced Friday that it had frozen assets belonging to pro-democracy media tycoon Jimmy Lai Chee-ying. This was the first time that authorities used the seizure powers granted to them under the new national security law. Lai was arrested under national security law in August when authorities raided his newspaper’s headquarters. In April, he and [...]

The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit upheld a $25 million judgment and jury verdict Friday finding that a California man, Edwin Hardeman, developed cancer from exposure to agribusiness Monsanto’s weed-killer, Bayer’s Roundup. Hardeman alleged that he developed non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma as a result of the use of Roundup over decades. In 2019, the [...]

A Venezuelan court seized the headquarters of El Nacional newspaper on Friday after the newspaper failed to pay a USD $13.3 million fine in a defamation lawsuit. The case was brought by Diosdado Cabello, the Vice President of the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela, after the newspaper reprinted an article linking Cabello to drug [...]