India introducing tougher penalties to stop widow immolation News
India introducing tougher penalties to stop widow immolation

[JURIST] India's Ministry of Women and Child Development [official website] announced plans Tuesday to toughen existing laws prohibiting the archaic Hindu funeral custom of sati [Wikipedia backgrounder], in which widows are expected to self-immolate on their deceased husbands' funeral pyre, by holding entire communities criminally responsible and increasing the maximum punishment from the current seven years imprisonment to life. The ministry's proposals, which will be submitted to the cabinet Council of Ministers [official website] for approval, are intended to strengthen the Commission of Sati (Prevention) Act of 1987 [text]. If approved by the cabinet, the proposals will be referred to the Parliament of India [official website] when it reconvenes in August.

The proposals, which will hold village councils responsible for its implementation, are intended to counter the pressures that annually contribute to a few highly-publicized deaths. Reuters has more.

THIS DAY @ LAW

White supremacists overthrow government in Wilmington, North Carolina

A group of white supremacists overthrew the government of Wilmington, North Carolina on November 10, 1898, killing at least dozens of Black people in the process. The city's Republican government resigned after the 500-2,000 strong white mob burned the offices of a Black-owned newspaper and terrorized black neighborhoods. The new state Democratic government passed laws in 1899 disenfranchising Black voters across North Carolina. Learn more about the 1898 Wilmington Coup.

Supreme Court limited free speech in wartime

On November 10, 1919, the US Supreme Court ruled in Abrams v. United States that the federal government could criminalize speech if it was of a type tending to bring about harmful results, in this case, resistance to the United States war effort. In a powerful dissenting opinion, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes countered that even during wartime, free speech could only be curtailed when there was clear and "present danger of immediate evil or an intent to bring it about."

Leonid Brezhnev dies

On November 10, 1982, Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev died of a heart attack. He had served as leader of the USSR from October 1964 until his death. Following his death, the Soviet Union cycled through three more leaders during the 1980s until Mikhail Gorbachev allowed the country to dissolve in 1991. Read an obituary of Leonid Brezhnev from the New York Times.