Brazil Supreme Court suspends impeachment proceedings News
Brazil Supreme Court suspends impeachment proceedings

[JURIST] The Federal Supreme Court of Brazil [official website] on Wednesday suspended impeachment proceedings against President Dilma Rousseff [BBC profile] until the court can determine the constitutional validity of a secret ballot. The vote is to determine whether the congressional committee appointed to carry out the impeachment is stacked with members seeking to oust Rousseff. A decision is expected by December 16. Impeachment proceedings were opened against [JURIST report] Rousseff last Wednesday on allegations of violating fiscal laws and manipulating finances.

Brazil has been the subject of several corruption scandals in both politics and business in recent years. In October Brazil’s Federal Accounts Court [official website, in Portuguese] determined [JURIST report] that Rousseff’s government accounting practices were illegal. In September a Brazilian court sentenced [JURIST report] former treasurer of the country’s governing Worker’s Party Joao Vaccari Neto to 15 years and four months in jail for charges stemming from his connection to the Petrobras corruption scandal. Vaccari was found guilty of corruption, money laundering and conspiracy, having accepted at least USD $1 million in bribes from the oil company. Earlier in September the Federal Supreme Court of Brazil banned [JURIST report] corporate entities from providing funding to political candidates in the future in an attempt to prevent further corruption, calling the practice unconstitutional.

THIS DAY @ LAW

President Johnson signed law against burning draft cards

On August 31, 1965, President Johnson signed a law making the burning of draft cards a federal offense subject to a five-year prison sentence and $1000 fine. In response to the law and in protest of the war in Vietnam, the student-run National Coordinating Committee to End the War in Vietnam staged the first public burning of a draft card in the United States on October 15, 1965. The constitutionality of the federal law was upheld in 1968 by the US Supreme Court in US v. O'Brien.

Gdansk Agreement reached

On August 31, 1980, the communist government of Poland and labor leaders settled the Gdansk Agreement. The accord settled a summer of labor strikes at the Lenin Shipyard in Gdansk, Poland. With the Agreement, Poland became the first communist country to allow the creation of an independent labor union, which was called Solidarity. Solidarity then became the driving force that ended communism in Poland. Learn more about the history of Solidarity.