As previously mentioned, due to general economic circumstances completely outside of our control, we are anticipating a significant reduction in funding (meaning several tens of thousands of dollars) from our primary benefactors for our next fiscal year. If not offset, this reduction has the potential to directly affect JURIST's ability to maintain its current operations. This fund drive is one of the efforts that we've recently launched to try to make up the shortfall.

Please consider donating to JURIST. Even if you are not in a position to give much, please keep in mind that small donations - $25, or even $10 - can go a long way. One of JURIST's strengths is in the number of people it touches every day, from readers to staff to alumni. If everyone of those people could give just a small amount, JURIST would never have to worry about funding again. We know that not everyone is in a position to give, but if you can, even a small amount can make a big difference. For those of you that are able to give more, please know that JURIST will recognize all donors that give $100 or more on its website at jurist.org/supportjurist/honorroll.php.

Thank you - we greatly appreciate your support!

Mali has experienced military turmoil since Taureg rebels began attacking Malian soldiers [Al Jazeera report] in January. Early this month the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) [official website] said that more than 80,000 people had fled Mali [press release] to escape the fighting. In February, the UNHCR appealed for additional funds and resources [report, PDF] to deal with the crisis, after UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon [official profile] expressed concern [statement] about the growing number of refugees in the region.

The separation of church and state has been and remains a controversial issue [JURIST op-ed] in American courts. In January the US Supreme Court [official website] declined to review [JURIST report] a case concerning whether a North Carolina county board of commissioners violated the Establishment Clause by opening their public meetings with prayers. In July a federal judge ordered a Florida county courthouse to remove the Ten Commandments monument [JURIST report] displayed [JPG] on its front steps on grounds that the monument's "permanent" nature and religious message violated the Establishment Clause. In April 2010 a federal judge in Wisconsin famously ruled that Congressional legislation [text] from 1952 establishing a National Day of Prayer [advocacy website] was unconstitutional [JURIST report]. There, in receiving a grant of summary judgment, the FFRF successfully argued that, by passing the aforementioned statute, the government had improperly endorsed religion in violation of the Establishment Clause.

Many states have recently passed laws restricting abortion [JURIST news archive]. Last week, Utah passed a law [JURIST report] requiring a woman seeking an abortion to wait 72 hours prior to obtaining one. Earlier last week, the Idaho State Senate approved a bill [JURIST report] requiring a woman who is seeking an abortion to first receive an ultrasound. Earlier this month, Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell [official website] signed a similar ultrasound bill into law [JURIST report]. In February, the US District Court for the Western District of Texas [official website] ruled [JURIST report] that Texas can enforce a state law requiring women to receive a sonogram before obtaining an abortion. In July, the North Carolina state legislature overrode a governor's veto [JURIST report] to pass a law requiring a 24-hour waiting period for a woman seeking an abortion.

The case of Sikubwabo is the last of the three cases that were included in the November application and transferred to the Rwanda government. The first case ever transferred to Rwanda from the ICTR was that of Rwandan pastor Jean-Bosco Uwinkindi [Hague Justice profile; case materials] which was transferred [JURIST report] to the national court system in June. Uwinkindi was charged with genocide and crimes against humanity relating to the 1994 Rwandan genocide.[BBC backgrounder; JURIST news archive]. The decision came after the referral chamber found that Rwanda was capable of pursuing the case. In February, the referral chamber transferred [JURIST report] the second case of Fulgence Kayishema [Hague Justice profile; case material] who has been charged with genocide, complicity in genocide, conspiracy to commit genocide and crime against humanity.

How can the EU, which portrays itself as a human rights standard-bearer, presume to tell other governments, notably those involved in the Arab Spring, how important human rights are when it steadfastly refuses to investigate its own alleged complicity in torture and disappearance?

In December two international human rights organizations accused European countries of suppressing evidence of their roles [JURIST report] in the CIA rendition program. Legal action charity Reprieve, in cooperation with the human rights organization Access Info Europe [advocacy websites], released their interim findings [report] in a report documenting right of access requests made in 28 countries to investigate flights associated with extraordinary rendition—the covert transfer of prisoners by the US from locations in Europe, the Middle East and elsewhere in Asia. In 2010 an Italian appeals court upheld the convictions [JURIST report] of 23 former CIA agents convicted in the 2003 kidnapping and rendition [JURIST news archive] of terror suspect Nasr, increasing their sentences. Nasr, also known as Abu Omar, was seized on the streets of Milan in 2003 by CIA agents with the help of Italian operatives, then allegedly transferred to Egypt and tortured by Egypt's State Security Intelligence before being released [JURIST reports] in February 2007. In 2009 US President Barack Obama announced [JURIST report] the US would continue its practice of sending terror detainees to third countries for interrogation with increased oversight by the State Department to prevent torture.

This year's report marks a change from previous years, since the number of executions decreased in 2010 and 2009 [JURIST reports]. Last month, JURIST guest columnist Nadia Bernaz of Middlesex University Law Department said Iraq is not complying with its obligation to respect international law on the right to life, and the UN should, at a minimum, demand that Iraq limit its use of the death penalty [JURIST op-ed]. Last year, Illinois became the sixteenth US state to abolish the death penalty [JURIST report]. Also last year, China dropped the death penalty [JURIST report] for 13 non-violent crimes, including teaching crime-committing methods and robbing ancient cultural ruins.

Google has faced both international and national criticism over its privacy policy. Last week, the Commission Nationales de l'Informatque (CNIL) [official website], France's data protection regulator, gave Google three weeks to answer questions [JURIST report] about its new privacy policy [text] as part of a Europe-wide investigation on behalf of all European data protection regulators. The new policy, which took effect earlier this month, may violate European law [JURIST report] according to the EU's Justice Commissioner Vice-President Viviane Reding [official website]. Last month, a judge for the US District Court for the District of Columbia dismissed [JURIST report] a suit from the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) [advocacy website], a consumer privacy group, asking the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) [official website] to block Google's proposed privacy policy changes. The new policy allows a user's information to be shared among different Google products, including YouTube, Gmail, and Google Maps.

There are particular moments in the movement for transgender equality when we consider it a great victory when a court refuses to hear a case—and today is one of those moments. ... Although the Fields v. Smith case does not mean that all transgender people in prison now have full access to transition-related care, it does send a clear message that medical care should be left in the hand of doctors, not legislators who may be operating on bias and misinformation about the medical needs of a marginalized population. Access to discrimination-free health care is a constant challenge for transgender people and people in prison are particularly vulnerable to limited care. Legislators, politicians and policy makers should not be in the business of making medical decisions. We all lose when politicians get to decide what course of treatment our doctors prescribe for us.

Last week, the Supreme Court also declined to rule [order list, PDF] in two high profile cases. In Alpha Delta Chi-Delta Chapter v. Reed [cert. petition, PDF], the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled [opinion; JURIST report] that a narrow nondiscrimination policy was constitutional and within the holding of Christian Legal Society v. Martinez [Cornell LII backgrounder; JURIST report]. San Diego State University's nondiscrimination policy required student groups to allow membership despite a list of factors, including religion and sexual orientation. A number of Christian organization brought suit against the school for these prohibitions, suggesting that they would be forced to accept members contrary to their religious beliefs, thus impinging on their right to religion, right to free assembly and right to equal protection. In John Doe AP v. Roman Catholic Archdiocese of St. Louis [cert. petition, PDF], the Missouri Court of Appeals for the Eastern District barred a lawsuit [opinion] from proceeding against the Catholic Archdiocese of St. Louis. The suit contended that the Catholic Archdiocese of St. Louis should be found negligent for allegedly allowing pedophiles to remain in the priesthood and work closely with children. The Missouri Court of Appeals stated: "The Supreme Court has held questions of hiring, ordaining, and retaining clergy, necessarily involve interpretation of religious doctrine, policy, and administration, and such excessive entanglement between church and state has the effect of inhibiting religion, in violation of the First Amendment. Further, adjudicating the reasonableness of a church's supervision of a cleric—what the church 'should know'—requires inquiry into religious doctrine. Thus, Missouri courts have declined to recognize a cause of action for negligent failure to supervise clergy."

The existence of a statutory right, however, is certainly relevant to the Judiciary's power to decide Zivotofsky's claim. The federal courts are not being asked to supplant a foreign policy decision of the political branches with the courts' own unmoored determination of what United States policy toward Jerusalem should be. Instead, Zivotofsky requests that the courts enforce a specific statutory right. To resolve his claim, the Judiciary must decide if Zivotofsky's interpretation of the statute is correct, and whether the statute is constitutional. This is a familiar judicial exercise.

US citizen Menachem Zivotofsky was born in Jerusalem in 2002. His parents asked the State Department to record his place of birth as Jerusalem, Israel, but were told it could only be listed as Jerusalem because the US does not recognize any country as having sovereignty over Jerusalem. His parents filed suit in 2003 based on the Foreign Relations Authorization Act, Fiscal Year 2003 [text], which allowed listing of Israel. The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit dismissed the suit as a political question.

The inequity of the Whittaker rule is especially apparent in a case such as this, where the theory of §16(b) liability of underwriters is so novel that petitioners can plausibly claim that they were not aware they were required to file a §16(a) statement. And where they disclaim the necessity of filing, the Whittaker rule compels them either to file or to face the prospect of §16(b) litigation in perpetuity. Simmonds has acknowledged that "under her theory she could buy stocks in companies who had IPOs 20 years ago and bring claims for short-swing transactions if the underwriters had undervalued a stock." The potential for such endless tolling in cases in which a reasonably diligent plaintiff would know of the facts underlying the action is out of step with the purpose of limitations periods in general. And it is especially at odds with a provision that imposes strict liability on putative insiders. Had Congress intended this result, it most certainly would have said so.

Vanessa Simmonds filed 54 complaints against Credit Suisse, which were rejected on varying grounds including statute of limitations. She argued that the statute of limitations can be tolled to include the discovery of the trading or even the filing of a report about the illegal action. This view was endorsed by the Ninth Circuit's ruling [text] that led to the Supreme Court.

Regardless, the PPACA penalty must be considered a tax for the AIA to apply at all, a point argued by Solicitor General Donald Verrilli. Because the government has an "exceedingly strong interest" in generally preventing challenges to other tax provisions, as a function of "history and context," Verrilli conceded Long's claim that the AIA is jurisdictional. Instead Verrilli argued that the PPACA individual mandate penalty is not a tax, evidenced by the decision by Congress to specifically term the measure a "penalty" instead of a tax. The court noted that Verrilli walked a fine line in his categorization of the penalty, since he later plans to present the individual mandate as authorized by the legislature's Article I taxing power, under which he claims the "penalty" label is irrelevant. The challengers of the individual mandate agreed with Verrilli that the AIA does not block the case from being heard, mostly because the case to be decided is whether the individual mandate requirement itself is constitutional, and since the requirement is certainly not a tax, the AIA does not apply. The attempt to separate the mandate from the penalty was not well received by the justices, who stressed that there can be no requirement without a penalty, regardless of whether the two provisions constitute separate legal actions and apply to differently sized classes of people. While the court's final decision on the application of AIA will not be published until June, this week's arguments on the merits of the challenge to the PPACA will proceed as scheduled.