In a historic decision on May 26, 2021, the Hague District Court ordered Royal Dutch Shell to cut its carbon emissions by 45 percent by 2030, compared to 2019 levels. The ruling came in a petition filed by seven Dutch environmental organizations, of which Milieudefensie represented 17,379 individual claimants. The applicants argued that Shell should [...]
The US Department of Treasury’s Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC) imposed a series of sanctions on three Bulgarian individuals and sixty-four companies for their extensive role in endemic grand corruption in Bulgaria on 2 June 2021. This is the largest corruption-related targeting to date under the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act. The sanctions [...]
Professor Homer D. Pithawalla is a practising advocate of the Supreme Court of India and Bombay High Court as well as a solicitor of Bombay High Court, Supreme Court of England and Wales and Supreme Court of Hong Kong. He is the senior-most Professor of Law at the Government Law College, Mumbai, where he has [...]
1. Beneficiaries of Gender Discrimination I am a beneficiary of gender discrimination. I know this because in 1986 when I started working as Legal Counsel at the ICC International Court of Arbitration in Paris, France, I was doing a job at which several of my colleagues wondered whether women should be Legal Counsel. All of [...]
It is well known that the United States Navy Sea, Air, and Land (US SEALs) have serious problems. The SEAL community has been plagued by extreme drug use and sexual assaults and has been found to engage in the murder of one of their own Special Operations Forces (SOF) personnel. All of these incidences have [...]
What a black Secretary of Defense has to put up with. Appalling. Also appalling. I think of all the black soldiers lynched in their uniforms when they came home in our history by those who could not handle a black man in uniform. I think of all the black soldiers who in overseas theaters had [...]
On 15 May 2021, SpaceX launched 52 satellites as part of its Starlink mega-constellation, less than a week after it had launched the previous batch with 60 satellites. When fully deployed in the Low Earth Orbit (“LEO”), this constellation would form a network of thousands of satellites providing affordable access to high-speed internet. Starlink faces [...]
The media, which is regarded as the fourth pillar of democracy, has been in the spotlight ever since the pandemic started. However, there have been several allegations against the media for spreading fake news and inflammatory coverage, conducting media trials, and violating the right to privacy, honor, and reputation of individuals. This causes an infringement [...]
On 22nd April 2022, Earth Day, the Escazu Agreement enters into operation, marking a significant moment for transparent and participatory decision-making in environmental governance. The Regional Agreement on Access to Information, Public Participation and Justice in Environmental Matters in Latin America and the Caribbean 2018 (Escazu Agreement) was adopted in 2018 to “promote environmental democracy, [...]
In April 2020, Amazon released a comedy series called “Upload.” The show extrapolates a future in which technological advances have led to the successful simulation of human consciousness in silico. This technology is used by companies to “upload” dying individuals into digital worlds where they can “live” in perpetuity. When uploaded, human consciousness is converted [...]
