In June the US Supreme Court [official website] struck down [JURIST report] Montana's century-old campaign finance law known as the 1912 Corrupt Practices Act [PPL backgrounder] as invalid under the Supreme Court's 2010 ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission [JURIST report]. The Supreme Court's decision overturned a ruling [JURIST report] by the Montana Supreme Court [official website] that upheld the Corrupt Practices Act.

Because the voters who currently lack qualifying photo ID are disproportionately African-American, proper and smooth functioning of the reasonable impediment provision would be vital to avoid unlawful racially discriminatory effects on African-American voters in South Carolina in the 2012 elections. Even assuming the best of intentions and extraordinary efforts by all involved, achieving that goal is too much to reasonably demand or expect in a four-week period—and there is too much of a risk to African American voters for us to roll the dice in such a fashion.

South Carolina sued the DOJ in February in an attempt to revive the law after it was blocked [JURIST reports] from taking effect. Six advocacy groups originally called on the DOJ to stop the law [JURIST report]. The coalition argued in a letter to the DOJ that the new law would suppress the minority vote. According to the groups, there are more than 178,000 registered voters in South Carolina who lack a valid photo ID, and African-Americans are disproportionately affected. The groups also argued that African Americans face social and economic barriers to obtaining valid photo ID and that the law is in violation of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Al-Masri's extradition was approved by the High Court of England and Wales last week after being temporarily delayed [JURIST reports] by the same court late last month. The court's decision came a week after the ECHR gave its final approval of the extradition, which it had initially approved [JURIST reports] in April. The ECHR's decision in April marked a change in position for the court from its position two years ago, when it stayed the extradition [JURIST report] of four terrorism suspects to the US, holding that potential punishment could violate European Convention on Human Rights [text] provisions on the prohibition of torture and inhumane or degrading treatment. The UK High Court approved the extradition [JURIST report] of Aswat and Ahmad to the US in 2006.

[The Supreme] Court has unequivocally held that there is no constitutional right to absentee voting and that laws offering absentee ballots to some voters but not others are subject to rational-basis review unless the law "absolutely prohibited" voters "from exercising the franchise" ... It cannot seriously be argued that any voter—let alone an entire class of voters—has been disenfranchised when Ohio still offers [non-overseas] voters 230 hours of in-person absentee voting, more than 750 hours of absentee voting by mail, and 13 hours of voting on Election Day. The Sixth Circuit's ruling that lower income and lesser educated voters would not be able to vote at all other than through in-person absentee voting on these three particular days finds no support in fact or law.

The Sixth Circuit's ruling was handed down last week following an appeal [JURIST report] filed in September. Earlier that month the US District Court for the Southern District of Ohio [official website] issued a preliminary [JURIST report] injunction preventing Ohio from enforcing the early voting limitation. Voting rights [JURIST backgrounder] have become especially contentious in the run up to the November presidential election. Also last month a judge for the US District Court for the Middle District of Florida [official website] ruled [JURIST report] that Florida does not have to provide 96 hours of early voting for the November elections.

The lese majeste came under additional scrutiny recently following the arrest of an American man for violation of the law. Last December Joe Gordon was sentenced to two-and-a-half years in prison after he translated part of a banned biography and put the translation on the Internet, though he was pardoned in July [JURIST reports]. UN Special Rapporteur on freedom of expression Frank La Rue [official website] recently condemned the lese majeste law [JURIST report] shortly after the guilty plea was submitted: "The threat of a long prison sentence and vagueness of what kinds of expression constitute defamation, insult, or threat to the monarchy, encourage self-censorship and stifle important debates on matters of public interest, thus putting in jeopardy the right to freedom of opinion and expression. ... This is exacerbated by the fact that the charges can be brought by private individuals and trials are often closed to the public." In 2009 Amnesty International (AI) [advocacy website] called for a public trial [JURIST report] for a Thai political activist accused of lese majeste. In 2009 a Thai court sentenced an anti-coup protestor to 18 years in prison. Shortly afterward Awzar Thi, a member of the Asian Human Rights Commission in Hong Kong, wrote that in enforcing the law the Thailand judiciary was discrediting itself [JURIST comment] "in its hurry to defend increasingly outdated social arrangements."

The ECHR has issued a number of rulings on various issues related to gay rights. In June the ECHR ruled that Moldova violated [JURIST report] the rights to peaceful assembly and to be free from discrimination by banning gay groups from protesting in front of the country's parliament. In March the ECHR found that the right of a person in a same-sex partnership to adopt his or her partner's child is not protected [JURIST report] by the European Convention on Human Rights. In 2010 the ECHR ruled that the European Convention on Human Rights does not mandate that member states recognize [JURIST report] same-sex marriages [JURIST backgrounder].

Late last month the German Federal Ministry of Justice (BMJ) [official website, in German] drafted [JURIST report] a similar law to allow circumcisions. Earlier that month a German state official clarified that circumcision for religious reasons is legal [JURIST report] in Berlin. This clarification was made necessary by the Cologne court's ruling in July that prompted a Jewish hospital in Berlin to ask the justice minister to clarify the legality surrounding the circumcision procedure. Shortly after the controversial Cologne ruling, the German government announced [JURIST report] that it would act swiftly to lift criminal sanctions imposed on circumcision. Spokesperson for Chancellor Angela Merkel [official website, in German], Steffen Seibert, said that without adequate protections for the practice of circumcision, Jewish and Muslim communities would not be able to live in Germany because the practice is so fundamental to the groups.

Claiming her situation within the appeal was unique because she did not perform, Samutsevich had previously asked for a delay in the proceedings after firing the lawyer [JURIST report] that had been representing the band as a whole. Samutsevich, Tolokonnikova and Alyokhina were given two-year prison sentences after they were convicted [JURIST report] in August of hooliganism in connection with "guerrilla performance" of a protest song in February at the altar of downtown Moscow's Christ the Savior Cathedral. Several days prior to the trial Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev [official website, in Russian] called for the release of the band members, saying that time served has been severe enough and that any more time in prison would be counterproductive. The Russian Presidential Council on Human Rights [official website, in Russian] has questioned the legitimacy [JURIST report] of the court's verdict and sentence. Pussy Riot's defense lawyers moved [JURIST report] earlier in August to have one of the judges recuse herself from the case, saying her decisions were politically motivated. Since the beginning of the trial [JURIST report], the group's lawyers and human rights groups have said the charges were politically motivated by President Vladimir Putin [official website; JURIST news archive] to discredit his opposition.

Many states have grappled with laws regarding parental notification for abortion procedures. In June 2011 the Illinois Appellate Court [official website] ordered a circuit court [JURIST report] to determine whether a law requiring a girl's guardians to be notified before she has an abortion should be enforced. The Parental Notice of Abortion Act of 1995 [text], which has never been enforced, mandates that doctors notify the guardians of girls younger than 18 years old 48 hours before the girl gets an abortion. One day earlier Florida Governor Rick Scott [official website] signed into law [JURIST report] a bill revising the definition of constructive notice required if actual notice of a parent is not possible, and affecting the ability of a minor to obtain a court waiver from the parental notification law.

In Ryan v. Gonzales [transcript, PDF] the court considered whether habeas proceedings should be stayed pending a death row inmate's competence. The court focused more on if an inmate's incompetence and inability to assist his lawyer nullifies that he was provided counsel. The oral arguments for Ryan began largely as a continuation of the previous argument, with petitioner's attorney immediately focusing on Rees and its application to the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA) [text]. He argued that allowing these stays violates the AEDPA, which clearly intended to "speed up" the death penalty process. The respondent's attorney explained that there are too many ancillary claims in a habeas proceeding to decide without a competent client: "Well, in our particular case, we—we raise several claims in habeas—in habeas proceedings. We raise guilt claims, and we also raise sentencing claims. And it is often the case with our clients that, at their direction, they choose not to—not to pursue or do not want to pursue sentencing claims and want to only pursue guilt claims. So those are claims that are strictly on the record, and under the ABA guidelines the client is the ultimate decisionmaker as to where the particular representation is going. So that is a huge, all-encompassing decision that a client needs to make as to the ultimate outcome of his or her case."