The 2019 UN climate change conference began Monday in Madrid, with leaders looking for solutions to reduce global carbon levels. Leaders originally planned for the conference to be held in Chile, but due to political instability, the conference was moved to Madrid, where it will take place over the next two weeks. The conference started [...]
For those inclined to question whether Donald Trump would actually be so brazen as to straight up take over the apparatus of U.S. foreign policy purely to boost his own reelection prospects, bear this in mind. We already know that Donald Trump is willing to hijack an entity organized to serve the public interest and [...]
Nine years ago, President Obama signed into law a bill proscribing the distribution of so-called “animal crush” videos, which are depictions of a practice that is as disturbing as it sounds: the killing of animals (puppies, kittens, mice, bunnies, goats, and others) slowly and excruciatingly, often by provocatively-dressed women who stand on the animals while [...]
As we await the Supreme Court’s decision on whether under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act “because of . . . sex” encompasses discrimination based on an individual’s sexual orientation, I suggest that the Justices listen to both the Missouri Supreme Court and the jury in the “heartland” state of Missouri. The jury [...]
What does it mean to discriminate because of sex? The answer to that question has become increasingly important to gay and lesbian employees challenging employment discrimination under federal and state laws. Take the case of Keith Wildhaber, a St. Louis County, Missouri police officer, who, in October 2019, won a lawsuit he filed against his [...]
The First Appellate District Court of Appeals of California on Monday affirmed a lower court’s ruling that the public’s use of Martin’s Beach is a permissive right. The battle for public access at Martin’s Beach began in 2012 when Vinod Khosla initially purchased the land. Khosla closed the only public access road to the beach [...]
Groups including Brazil’s Human Rights Advocacy Collective and the Dom Paulo Evaristo Arns Commission for Human Rights on Wednesday submitted a written recommendation to Fatou Bensouda, chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (“ICC”), reporting the need for a preliminary examination into genocide and systematic attacks against indigenous people by President Jair Messias Bolsonaro in [...]
The Prime Minister of Iraq, Adil Abdul-Mahdi, on Friday announced his resignation after nearly two months of increasingly violent protests. Earlier on Friday, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, a key religious figure in Iraq and one of the nation’s most respected Shiite clerics, condemned the violence against protestors and called for a shift in government. Abdul-Mahdi’s [...]
The Supreme Court of the State of Oregon on Wednesday confirmed an appellate court’s decision, finding that the sale of a parcel of the Elliott State Forest was illegal. This case arose when the State Land Board voted to sell a parcel of the Elliott State Forest, which is part of the common school lands [...]
The Sixth District Court of Appeals ruled on Tuesday that charter cities such as San Jose must use surplus public land for the purposes of public housing. This requirement was created by the Surplus Land Act, which states that California municipalities must offer disposable land to low income residents before giving it away to companies [...]
