Marissa Zupancic is JURIST’s Washington DC Correspondent, a JURIST Senior Editor and a 3L at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law. She’s stationed in Washington during her Semester in DC. Today I attended oral arguments at the US Supreme Court for Trump v. US, a case concerning whether a president has absolute immunity after they [...]
Search Results for: presidential pardon
Explainer: Supreme Court Set to Hear Oral Arguments on Presidential Immunity
The US Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in Trump v. US on Thursday in a case entailing alleged federal election interference in 2020. Trump is enmeshed in multiple criminal and civil cases as he prepares to run for reelection in November. This will be the second time this term a case concerning former President [...]
US appeals court rules against former Republican consultant in foreign election contribution case
The US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit ruled against former Republican campaign consultant Jesse R. Benton on Friday, upholding Benton’s conviction for allegedly funneling $100,000 in campaign donations from a Russian businessman to his consulting firm. Of the $100,000, Benton was convicted of keeping $75,000 of the donation for himself and giving the [...]
Explainer: US Mass Incarceration and Its Disparate Racial Impacts
The US prides itself on being a nation built on freedom, justice, and individual rights. And yet the evolution of its system of mass incarceration — a system that cannot be defined without reference to shocking racial disparities — seems to directly contradict these founding principles. The US prison population dwarfs those of nearly every other [...]
Donald Trump's Immunity Argument From the Standpoint of International Law
The fact that a person who committed an act which constitutes a crime under international law acted as Head of State or responsible Government official does not relieve him from responsibility under international law Principles of International Law Recognized in the Charter of the Nuremberg Tribunal and in the Judgment of the Tribunal (1950) (Principle [...]
Democratic Nullification of Criminal Cases: A Case for Imran Khan — and Possibly Donald Trump
Can a country’s citizens nullify the criminal cases that a popular leader faces by handing them an electoral victory in the general elections? This question raises issues that could prove pivotal to the political processes in Pakistan and the US, pertaining respectively to their former prime minister Imran Khan and former President Donald Trump. Its [...]
South Korea court acquits Samsung chairman of stock manipulation and fraud charges
The Seoul Central District Court on Monday acquitted Samsung Executive Chairman Jay Y. Lee of stock manipulation and accounting fraud charges, according to local media outlet The Korea Herald. This eliminated the possibility of him being imprisoned. The decision focused on Lee’s involvement in a controversial merger of Samsung affiliates C&T and Cheil Industries in [...]
Sri Lanka Supreme Court invalidates presidential pardon to former MP
Sri Lanka’s Supreme Court invalidated on Wednesday, for the first time ever, a presidential pardon to former member of Parliament Duminda Silva. In a unanimous ruling, the court found that there was “no legal basis or even a factual basis to uphold the decision made by” former President Gotabaya Rajapaksa to pardon Silva. Silva and [...]
Trump's Wrongful Pardons for Crimes Against International Law
“So far from it being unjust to punish him, it would be unjust if his wrongs were allowed to go unpunished.” Nuremberg Tribunal (1946) At the beginning of 2024, former President Donald J. Trump’s most conspicuously unsupportable legal claim has been his personal immunity from criminal prosecution. With this claim, Mr. Trump and his lead [...]
US appeals court hears Trump immunity claim in federal election interference case
The US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit heard oral arguments from federal prosecutors and former President Donald Trump’s legal team on the issue of presidential immunity earlier this week. Trump argued that he is shielded from criminal liability in Special Counsel Jack Smith’s case against him, which alleges that Trump interfered in the [...]