The Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled on Friday that three of Governor Tony Evers’ vetoes to the state’s biennial budget violated the state constitution. The Wisconsin Constitution provides that the governor may approve appropriation bills “in whole or in part.” The justices were asked to determine whether four vetoes were valid. The vetoes pertained to the [...]
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan issued a decree Friday ordering Hagia Sophia to be used as a Mosque again. The Association for the Service of the Historical Foundations and the Environment filed a lawsuit with the Council of State in 2005 calling for Hagia Sophia to be converted back to a mosque from a museum, [...]
On July 28 and July 29, 2020, 770 Juris Doctors will travel to Raleigh, North Carolina, to take a two-day bar examination during the COVID-19 pandemic. A group of Juris Doctors registered for the North Carolina Bar in July have come together to push for alternatives to an in-person exam to no avail. As the [...]
On Wednesday, July 9, 2020, the Pennsylvania Board of Law Examiners (PABOLE) notified me and the other 1,200 applicants preparing for the Pennsylvania Bar Exam that for the second time in just seventy days, they would be altering the test that will dictate whether we are allowed to practice law. These changes are novel and [...]
The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) has announced that it will release 8,000 inmates from prisons to prevent further COVID-19 spread in prison populations. The CDCR and Governor Gavin Newsom have agreed to release the prisoners despite earlier court rulings that held that California was under no legal obligation to do so. The [...]
The US Supreme Court has granted certiorari in six new cases, consolidating four of them into two cases for a total of four hours of oral argument. The court on Thursday consolidated Collins v. Mnuchin and Mnuchin v. Collins for a total of one hour of oral argument. These cases challenge the structure of the Federal [...]
A federal judge in Indiana Friday temporarily stayed the execution of Daniel Lewis Lee due to COVID-19 concerns expressed by members of the victims’ families who planned to attend the execution. Lee was scheduled to be the first of five federal prisoners set to be executed after US Attorney General Bill Barr ordered a return [...]
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled in favor of the US government allowing oil drilling to proceed in the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska. The Reserve was first designated a source of oil in 1923, and in 1976 management of the land was turned over to the US Department of the Interior, which [...]
The Netherlands filed an inter-state complaint against Russia in the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) Friday over its role in the downing of a Malaysian Airlines flight six years ago. Flight MH17 was en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur in July 2014 when it crashed in Eastern Ukraine; all 298 passengers and crew [...]
Several health care providers and LGBTQ advocacy organizations have filed a lawsuit against the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), challenging the new HHS rule eliminating protections for the LGBTQ community in health care. The suit was filed on Thursday in the US District Court for the District of Massachusetts and is seeking [...]
