The US District Court of the Southern District of New York on Wednesday began hearings on the restructuring of Puerto Rico’s debt. The hearing stems from Puerto Rico filing for bankruptcy protection under Article 3 of PROMESA for its $70 billion debt earlier this month. Chief Justice Roberts appointed Judge Laura Taylor Swain two weeks [...]

The European Commission on Wednesday sent a letter asking for Italy’s response to allegations that Fiat Chrysler Automobiles Group used illegal emissions control devices. The letter is the first step in infringement proceedings against Italy. The European Commission has requested that Italy provide justification for its legal treatment of Fiat’s emission control strategies. Italy has [...]

Chelsea Manning was released from US Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth, a military prison, on Wednesday. In 2013 Manning was convicted of stealing 700,000 documents and releasing them to WikiLeaks while she was an intelligence analyst in Iraq. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange , who is under criminal investigation in the US and Sweden, has agreed [...]

The European Court of Justice (ECJ) on Tuesday ruled member states must sign off on trade deals before they become law. The ruling found that the member states and the European Union (EU) share competence in many areas involving trade and if the EU does not hold exclusive competence the member states must ratify the [...]

The Turkish Parliament elected seven new members to the country’s 13-member Council of Judges and Prosecutors (HSK) in an overnight vote Wednesday under changes made to the constitution in a referendum last month. The HSK has broad judicial power in Turkey, overseeing “the appointment, promotion, transfer, disciplining and dismissal of judges and prosecutors.” The new [...]

Germany’s Federal Court of Justice ruled Tuesday that government websites can store personal data as long as they provide adequate justification. Patrick Beyer sued the German government over the storing of IP addresses, which he believed to be in violation of data protection laws. The Federal Court of Justice presented the case to the European [...]

Representative Jason Chaffetz , chairman of the House Oversight Committee , sent a letter to the Acting Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigations on Tuesday requesting “all memoranda, notes, summaries, and recordings referring or relating to communications between Comey and Trump.” The request came hours after the New York Times reported the existence of [...]

JURIST Guest Columnist Oday T. Mahmood, an S.J.D. candidate for 2019 at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law discusses needed legal and constitutional reforms in Iraq post Islamic State… In 2014, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) seized three large cities in Iraq which were Anbar, Salah al-Din and Mosul. In fact, [...]

A Mississippi man was sentenced to 49 years in prison and a fine of $20,000 on Monday in the first-ever conviction under the Matthew Shepard, James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act , a federal hate crime statute. Joshua Vallum murdered Mercedes Williamson in May 2015. Vallum initially claimed that he killed Williamson in a [...]

The US Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit on Monday denied Georgia death row inmate J.W. Ledford’s request that his execution be carried out by firing squad rather than lethal injection. Ledford’s counsel argued that lethal injection would violate constitutional protections against cruel and unusual punishment because Ledford has been taking a prescribed drug [...]