Legal Commentary

The recent decision by Italy’s Court of Cassation (Corte di Cassazione) in case number 27115/2024 has sparked numerous reactions due to its consideration of the COVID-19 pandemic as a potential extenuating circumstance in a femicide case. This crime, which garnered significant media attention in Italian society, involved a perpetrator who was initially sentenced to life [...]

When the COVID-19 pandemic began, post-secondary education institutions rapidly shifted to virtual learning environments: They quickly adopted virtual technology platforms and, as the pandemic oscillated in intensity, established functional, effective and integrated bimodal learning platforms (i.e., in-person lectures with an option to participate remotely). University faculties prided themselves on these rapid transitions, which allowed them [...]

The COVID-19 pandemic has wreaked havoc on many aspects of our modern lives. Mandatory face masks, local and national lockdowns, and compulsory social distancing in public places have become a part of everyday routines all around the world. The pandemic has also tested the regulatory and administrative capacity of both states and international organizations to [...]

The US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit on December 17 in a bipartisan, 2-1 decision upheld OSHA’s vaccine-or-test requirements for the American workplace and lifted a stay previously put in place by the Fifth Circuit. Judge Jane Stranch, an Obama appointee, joined by Judge Julia Gibbons, appointed by George W. Bush, wrote that [...]

On November 16 the US Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati  was randomly selected by the Multi-district Litigation Panel in Washington, DC to decide whether the Biden Administration’s vaccine mandate for American workers, promulgated by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), is legal. OSHA’s rules, which are planned to take full effect on [...]

As the novel coronavirus flew globally in 2020, triggering widespread infections of the disease labeled COVID-19, a fresh challenge arose concerning how governments and legal experts could face this plague, predominantly in terms of law and rights in the Middle East and the Muslim world. In Islamic law, the Qur’an and the Sunnah (Prophet Mohammad’s [...]

The arguments made by the autonomous vehicle (AV) industry for limited regulation and rapid deployment of self-driving car technology bear a striking resemblance to the discussion about the US regulatory response to Covid-19 vaccines. Both appeal to exigent circumstances as a reason for rapid action to save lives, even if that means throwing some precautions [...]

In India, with the daily Covid-19 cases plummeting about 90 percent from the peak of the first wave last year, the pandemic appeared to be under control by March 2021.  In April 2021, however, India saw the world’s worst second wave, with new cases exceeding 400,000 a day, breaking the world record for the most [...]

The recent return of the military to the national political scene happens in a moment in which the democratic regimes, in Brazil and in the world, suffer the decline of trust in liberal-democratic institutions. The current militarization has been associated by some authors with a current global, systemic and structural conjecture with variations, from a [...]

The government of the state of Meghalaya introduced a policy that made it compulsory for individuals to get vaccinated before they resume work. The policy was declared unconstitutional by the High Court of Meghalaya in June 2021 on the basis that it violated a myriad of fundamental rights including the right to privacy, right to [...]