India top court bans bull fighting at harvest festival News
India top court bans bull fighting at harvest festival

[JURIST] The Supreme Court of India [official website] on Tuesday banned a popular bull fighting event at this year’s harvest festival in the southern state of Tamil Nadu. The decision comes in response to protesters who claim that the sport of Jallikattu, in which men chase bulls to grab prizes off their horns, amounts to animal cruelty. The court had banned the sport [JURIST report] in 2014, but the Environment Ministry said the event could take place this year. The court ordered [AP report] the Environment Ministry to respond to protesters’ petition to ban the sport permanently [PETA report].

Animal rights remain a contentious issue around the world. Recently, a US court ruled that a monkey could not own [NPR report] the copyright to a “selfie.” In 2014 an Argentine court unanimously ruled that an orangutan is a “non-human person” [JURIST report] with a legal right to freedom. In 2013 the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) [official website] held that a ban on an advertisement by an animal rights group did not violate [JURIST report] freedom of expression under Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights. In 2012 the ECHR upheld [JURIST report] a German injunction preventing the activist group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) [advocacy website] from using Holocaust images in an animal rights poster campaign. In 2010 the US Supreme Court ruled [JURIST report] that a federal law banning depictions of animal cruelty violates the First Amendment [text] of the US Constitution.

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.