The Turkish parliament approved a controversial new law Saturday that would affect the structure of bar associations. However, the new law is already facing criticism by lawyers, and thousands have protested in Istanbul, Ankara and other cities. The bar associations are a necessary system in the Turkish legal profession. All lawyers in Turkey are obligated [...]
The names Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd have been spoken in virtually every American household during 2020. As the Black Lives Matter movement gains unprecedented growth and media attention, many White sympathizers are asking themselves (some for the first time): “how can I help effectuate real change?” That answer, in part, begins with [...]
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 [...]
