A bipartisan group of Tennessee state legislators unveiled a proposed state constitutional amendment on Friday to grant judges more discretion to detain individuals without bail before trial for specific violent criminal charges. Tennessee House Speaker Cameron Sexton (R-District 25) made the announcement at Memphis City Hall, flanked by Memphis’ Mayor Paul Young (D), Senate Majority [...]

Alabama inmate Kenneth Eugene Smith was executed Thursday night by nitrogen hypoxia after the US Supreme Court, in a 6-3 decision, declined to intervene in the state’s second attempt to execute an inmate who had previously survived a botched lethal injection. The court’s three liberal justices expressed their willingness to hear Smith’s claims of cruel [...]

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced on Thursday that the U.S. State Department has imposed sanctions on one individual and three Russian entities engaged in transferring and testing North Korea’s ballistic missiles, intended for use by Russia against Ukraine. The entities and individual subject to US-imposed sanctions include the 224th Flight Unit State Airlines, [...]

Massachusetts voters filed an objection on Thursday to the state official responsible for overseeing elections seeking to remove former US President Donald Trump from the state’s 2024 Republican primary ballot. Their efforts join with several others after Maine and Colorado already agreed to remove Trump from their respective ballots. In Thursday’s filing to the Massachusetts [...]

The US Department of Justice (DOJ) arrested and charged Karrem Nasr, an American citizen residing in Egypt since July 2023, for attempting to provide support to al-Shabaab. Nasr, a resident of New Jersey, traveled to Kenya with the intent to join al-Shabaab, al-Qaeda’s branch in East Africa, following Hamas’ attack in southern Israel on October [...]

A federal judge in Georgia approved on Thursday the state’s recently revised political maps for both the US Congress and the state’s legislature. A group of plaintiffs challenged the maps, arguing that they diminish the influence of Black voters in Georgia in violation of the Voting Rights Act. But US District Judge Steve Jones disagreed, [...]

US District Judge Irene Berger dismissed a lawsuit on Thursday aimed at preventing former President Donald Trump from appearing on West Virginia’s primary ballot next year. Berger found that the plaintiff, John Anthony Castro, who identifies as a presidential candidate, did not have standing to bring the lawsuit. Castro argued that including Trump on the [...]

The US on Thursday added to its list of individuals barred from obtaining US visas three Guatemalan prosecutors and a judge who had been actively pursuing Guatemalan President-elect Bernardo Arevalo on corruption charges. Arevalo’s rise to the presidency and campaign on anti-corruption have faced numerous challenges, including attempts to obstruct his upcoming inauguration on January [...]

China’s government announced that it has mediated a short-term ceasefire to the conflict between the Myanmar junta and armed groups from ethnic minorities in the northern regions near the Chinese border. The conflict has been ongoing since the Arakan Army (AA), the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA) and the Ta’ang National Liberation Army (TNLA) [...]

Joshua Villanueva is a JURIST Assistant Editor and a 2L at UC Law San Francisco (formerly UC Hastings), He files this dispatch from San Francisco.  The recently-concluded Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) leaders’ summit, originally designed to address economic challenges in the Asia-Pacific region, found itself overshadowed by the unfolding drama of the US-China relationship. As [...]