The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit blocked on Thursday prison inmates’ lawsuit against Oregon Governor Kate Brown and others for putting the inmates on the lowest tier of priority for access to the COVID-19 vaccine. The court found that the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness (PREP) Act immunized state officials and the vaccine [...]
Elizabeth Haigh is JURIST’s Chief of Staff for the US and a 2L at the University of Nevada, William S. Boyd School of Law. She files this dispatch from Las Vegas, Nevada. This dispatch was initially filed at 4:40 PM EST/1:40 PM PST. Updates to the initial dispatch are included below. On Wednesday, December 6, [...]
The Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC) released their annual report on Friday, reporting that for the first time more Americans believe the death penalty is administered unfairly than those who believe otherwise. The report also revealed that there were more death penalty sentences imposed than executions carried out during 2023. A majority of US state [...]
An Oregon county judge blocked Oregon Ballot Measure 114 (BM 114), Oregon’s gun control law, from taking effect on Tuesday. The court found that the ballot measure violated the state constitution, despite a previous federal court ruling finding that the measure complied with the US Constitution’s Second Amendment. The court found that two provisions of [...]
Palestinian human rights organizations and others sued US President Joe Biden, Secretary of Defense Lloyd James Austin and Secretary of State Anthony Blinken for allegedly violating the duty to prevent genocide and complicity in genocide in relation to the ongoing Israel-Hamas war. The Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) filed the case on Monday on behalf [...]
The US Department of Justice (DOJ) announced Wednesday that they have opened a civil pattern or practice investigation into the City of Lexington’s police department (LPD) that will focus on the LPD’s “use of force and its stops, searches and arrests” to see if there are systemic violations of the Constitution and federal law. The [...]
Several US Democratic and Republican Senators introduced the Government Surveillance Reform Act of 2023 on Tuesday in an effort to protect Americans’ privacy from government surveillance. The bill aims to establish better national security protections for people who may have had their information unknowingly collected by government agencies such as the FBI and National Security [...]
The Georgia Supreme Court upheld the state’s six-week abortion ban on Tuesday, voiding certain provisions of the Living Infants Fairness and Equality (LIFE) Act. The LIFE Act established certain limitations and provisions surrounding access to abortion within the state of Georgia. The Supreme Court found that the trial court erred in overturning the LIFE Act [...]
The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) stated on Tuesday that Israel’s siege of Gaza, combined with a recently-issued evacuation order, could potentially amount to the international crime of the forcible transfer of civilians. This comes as the death toll from the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas reaches 4,200 people. [...]
A UN independent commission stated on Tuesday that there is “already clear evidence that war crimes may have been committed” by “all sides” in the recent outbreak of war between Israel and Hamas. The UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory said that anyone who has broken international law “must be [...]
