US President Joe Biden Thursday pardoned “all prior Federal offenses of simple possession of marijuana.” Biden explained that criminal records for marijuana possession have negatively impacted “too many lives,” particularly those of black and brown people through disproportionate conviction rates. Biden urged state governors to pardon marijuana possession offenses at their respective state levels. He [...]
The US Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit Wednesday issued an order to expedite the ongoing appeal of a third-party review of documents seized by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) from former-President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home in August. Wednesday’s order expedites hearings on the issue; Trump’s brief in the case is now due [...]
The US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit Wednesday ruled that the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program was properly deemed illegal in a lower court decision last year. The lower court decision ruled that DACA was illegally created and prevented any further applicants but allowed nearly 600,000 young immigrants to renew their [...]
The FBI Wednesday released its 2021 annual crime report, estimating that murders reported in the US increased from 22,000 in 2020 to 22,900 in 2021, constituting a 4.3 percent increase. The overall violent crime volume decreased by 1 percent across the US from 1,326,600 incidents in 2020 to 1,313,200 incidents in 2021. The amount of [...]
Law students from the European Union are reporting for JURIST on law-related events in and affecting the EU and its member states. Here Luisa Gambs, a German law student at the University of Augsburg, reports on the implications of a rightward shift in recent national elections in Italy and several other countries for the policies [...]
The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled Wednesday that due process requires the US government to provide timely notice when it denies visa applications that implicate the constitutional rights of a US citizen. Circuit Judge Kermit Lipez wrote the opinion of the three-judge panel, and Circuit Judge Kenneth Lee dissented. The case [...]
The Kremlin Wednesday announced that Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed legislation ratifying the accession of the Kherson region, the Zaporozhye region, the Donetsk People’s Republic and the Luhansk People’s Republic to the Russian Federation. Under the laws, each region is a “New Constituent Entity of the Russian Federation” based on the “free and voluntary [...]
Former US president Donald Trump petitioned the Supreme Court Tuesday as part of his ongoing dispute with the Department of Justice (DOJ) over documents seized at Mar-a-Lago. The DOJ executed a search warrant at Mar-a-Lago in August, seizing roughly 11,000 documents. This dispute involves 103 of those documents bearing classification markings. On August 22, Trump’s [...]
Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt Tuesday signed SB3XX into law, which will withhold funds from healthcare facilities owned by the University Hospitals Authority (UHA) or University Hospitals Trust performing “gender reassignment medical treatment.” The law also appropriates funds provided to the state through the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) to the UHA. The law threatens to [...]
The US Supreme Court Tuesday heard oral arguments in Merrill v. Milligan to determine whether Alabama’s 2021 redistricting plan for the US House of Representatives violates Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA). The lawsuit first arose back in November 2021 when Alabama Governor Kay Ivey signed the congressional plan allowing one majority Black [...]
