A judge for the US District Court for the Northern District of California on Wednesday temporarily blocked several provisions of a human trafficking law approved by voters Tuesday. The American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California (ACLU-NC) joined with the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) to challenge portions of the Californians Against Sexual Exploitation (CASE) Act [...]

The Supreme Court of Canada ruled Thursday that the Viagra patent held by pharmaceutical giant Pfizer Inc. is no longer valid, opening the door for generic competition. The court ruled 7-0 against Pfizer on an appeal from Israeli-based Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. , the world’s largest generic pharmaceutical company. The appeal was brought against Pfizer [...]

Libya should not grant amnesty for war crimes committed on either side of the country’s uprising against former leader Muammar Gaddafi , International Criminal Court (ICC) Chief Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda said Wednesday. In her statement to the UN Security Council , Bensouda acknowledged the possibility that key Libyan war crimes suspects Saif al-Islam Gaddafi and [...]

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) on Thursday upheld a German injunction preventing the activist group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) from using Holocaust images in an animal rights poster campaign. The campaign featured pictures of Holocaust victims alongside images of animals kept in mass stocks. PETA argued that the use [...]

Army Pfc. Bradley Manning , who is accused of leaking confidential documents to WikiLeaks , offered a guilty plea on Wednesday to several of the charges that the government has leveled against him. Manning was charged for allegedly leaking more than 700,000 classified government documents to WikiLeaks, which purports to be a whistleblower website. Manning [...]

The US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit , sitting en banc Wednesday, ruled that two American citizens cannot sue former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld for alleged torture by US soldiers in Iraq. The plaintiffs, who worked for a private security firm in Iraq, were arrested in 2006 by military personnel after being suspected [...]

The US Supreme Court heard oral arguments Wednesday in two cases. The issue in the first case, Already, LLC v. Nike, Inc. , was whether a federal court has Article III jurisdiction over a party’s challenge to the validity of a trademark if the owner of the trademark has agreed not to sue the party [...]

Voters passed ballot measures on Tuesday seeking to limit the amount of money that can be directed to political campaigns in Colorado and Montana . The measure in Colorado will amend that state’s constitution to declare that the people of the state find that “large campaign contributions to political candidates create the potential for corruption,” [...]

Montana voters on Tuesday approved a referendum that would require parental notification prior to an abortion for a minor. The measure, which was passed by 66 percent of Montana voters, would require abortion facilities and doctors to inform parents and legal guardians of minors under 16 48 hours before a planned abortion procedure. This requirement [...]

Voters in Montana and Maryland went to the polls to decide upon two state immigration initiatives on Tuesday. In Maryland, Question 4 , often called “Maryland’s Dream Act,” passed with approximately 59 percent of the votes affirming the law’s passage. The measure allows for most undocumented immigrants who went to Maryland high schools for at [...]