On Tuesday, the Supreme Court held that a child’s habitual residence depends on a totality of circumstances specific to the case, not on categorical requirements such as an actual agreement between parents. This decision follows the International Child Abduction Remedies Act implemented by The Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction (Hague [...]
Lee Boyd Malvo, who was sentenced to multiple life-without-parole sentences for his involvement in the 2003 DC Sniper murders, asked the US Supreme Court to dismiss his appeal Monday following a newly-passed Virginia law allows parole boards to consider Malvo for early release. Virginia Governor Ralph Northam signed the bill into law Monday. The bill [...]
Former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, whose 30-year rule ended when he was ousted from office during the conflict that came to be known as the Arab Spring in 2011, died Tuesday in Cairo at the age of 91. Mubarak served as the fourth president of Egypt from 1981 following the assassination of Anwar Sadat, to [...]
The US Supreme Court heard two oral arguments on Monday: US Forest Service v. Cowpasture River Preservation Association, in which the court will consider a case concerning a pipeline on federal forest land; and Opati v. Sudan, which asks whether the current version of the terrorism exception to the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act allows punitive [...]
In a document released by the UN Human Rights Council on Monday, a Special Rapporteur analyzed the concept of “psychological torture” under human rights law. Ever since the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, the report says, the international community has done impressive work addressing its prohibition on torture. But “at the same time,” [...]
The Supreme Court held Tuesday that state appellate courts may conduct a Clemons reweighing of aggravating and mitigating circumstances, and may do so in collateral proceedings as appropriate and provided under state law. James McKinney received two death sentences in 1992 following his conviction of two counts of first-degree murder for the murders of Christine [...]
The US Supreme Court on Tuesday unanimously ruled that, even in cases concerning federal bankruptcy and tax law, state tax law is to be applied concerning corporate property. The ruling vacates the decision of the lower court that applied a federal common-law rule known as the Bob Richards rule on how to allocate a tax [...]
A county judge in San Diego ruled on Tuesday last week that the grocery delivery service Instacart has unlawfully misclassified its employees as independent contractors since 2012. This classification has given Instacart an unfair competitive advantage by permitting the company to avoid paying its employees a lawful wage and defer their job-related expenses. By avoiding [...]
The US Supreme Court issued a 5-4 decision in Hernandez v. Mesa on Tuesday, holding that the parents of a Mexican child who was shot and killed by a border official have no right to seek a remedy in American civil court. The child, Jesus Hernandez, had been playing with friends in a dry culvert [...]
The extradition hearings for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange began in a UK court on Monday. The hearing marked the beginning of a week of arguments, which will be followed by three weeks of hearings in May. District Judge Vanessa Baraister agreed to the additional time in January, which both sides accepted as necessary due to [...]
