Human Rights Watch (HRW) on Sunday called on the government of Sri Lanka to halt plans to resume executions and restore its 43-year moratorium on the use of the death penalty. “Sri Lanka’s plan to resume use of the death penalty is a major setback for human rights. Sri Lanka has been a bulwark against [...]
A coalition comprised of organizations including SisterSong Women of Color, Feminist Women’s Health Center, and Planned Parenthood Southeast filed a lawsuit on Friday against Georgia’s government officials. The complaint explains that House Bill 481 “bans practically all abortions,” and “criminalize abortion from the earliest stages of pregnancy.” This is in conflict with Roe v. Wade, [...]
In a country visit report published Friday, Dunja Mijatović, the Council of Europe’s Commissioner for Human Rights, said the Polish government needs to do more to preserve judicial independence, citing “wide-ranging judicial reforms have met with serious concern” from stakeholders. The Commissioner’s report is the culmination of a five day visit in which “the Commissioner [...]
Ontario’s top court ruled Friday that Canada’s Greenhouse Gas Pollution Pricing Act is constitutional and has the critical purpose of fighting climate change. The Act，passed by Parliament in 2018，puts a price on carbon pollution in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to encourage innovation and the use of clean technologies. It places a fuel [...]
Nearly 120 years after Hong Kong made sodomy punishable by a possible life sentence, a recent court ruling marks a further step toward completely decriminalizing same-sex relations. In 2007, Hong Kong scrapped its British-era sodomy law. But, for over a decade, several remaining provisions in its Crime Ordinance continued to single out male same-sex relations, [...]
The US Supreme Court added 13 cases to its docket for the October 2019 term Friday, including three cases challenging the Trump administration’s decision to terminate the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program that protected undocumented immigrants who arrived in the US as children from deportation. The court also denied review of an Alabama [...]
Judge D Brock Hornby of the US District Court for the District of Maine ruled Wednesday that public funds cannot be used for tuition payments to sectarian schools in regions where public schools are not provided by the local government. Communities that do not have a local public or private secondary school to offer students [...]
The European Commission’s High-Level Expert Group on AI (AI HLEG) on Wednesday released a second report about artificial intelligence (AI) development and deployment, specifically aimed at “maximising [] benefits whilst minimising and preventing [] risks.” The report includes 33 recommendations for the EU, focusing on four domains: AI helping in general society, in the private [...]
The Moldovan Constitutional Court announced on Wednesday that all six of its judges were stepping down, ending a deadlock around the legitimacy of a new government made up both of a pro-EU and pro-Russian representatives. The resignations were due to trouble caused be the court’s recent rulings. The court was found to have effectively reduced [...]
The US Supreme Court ruled Thursday in Mitchell v. Wisconsin, a case surrounding the administration of a warrantless blood alcohol concentration (BAC) test to Mitchell who was unconscious at the time of the test. Justice Samuel Alito wrote that in such circumstances where the driver is unconscious, the court holds that the “exigent circumstances rule [...]
