Portal:Law

The International Criminal Court investigation in Kenya or the situation in the Republic of Kenya was an investigation by the International Criminal Court (ICC) into the responsibility for the 2007–2008 post-election violence in Kenya. The 2007–2008 crisis followed the presidential election that was held on 27 December 2007. The Electoral Commission of Kenya officially declared that the incumbent President Mwai Kibaki was re-elected however supporters of the opposition candidate Raila Odinga accused the government of electoral fraud and rejected the results. A series of protests and demonstrations followed, and fighting—mainly along tribal lines—led to an estimated 1,200 deaths and more than 500,000 people becoming internally displaced.

After failed attempts to conduct a criminal investigation of the key perpetrators in Kenya, the matter was referred to the International Criminal Court in The Hague. In 2010, the Prosecutor of the ICC Luis Moreno Ocampo announced that he was seeking summonses for six people: Deputy Prime Minister Uhuru Kenyatta, Industrialisation Minister Henry Kosgey, Education Minister William Ruto, Cabinet Secretary Francis Muthaura, radio executive Joshua Arap Sang and former police commissioner Mohammed Hussein Ali. The six suspects, known colloquially as the "Ocampo six" were indicted by the ICC's Pre-Trial Chamber II on 8 March 2011 on charges of crimes against humanity and summoned to appear before the Court.

On 23 January 2012 Pre-Trial Chamber II confirmed the charges against Kenyatta, Muthaura, Sang and Ruto and dismissed the charges against Kosgey and Ali. The charges against Francis Muthaura and Uhuru Kenyatta were subsequently withdrawn by the prosecution. The trial of William Ruto and Joshua Arap sang began on 10 September 2013, and ended on 5 April 2016 with the charges being dismissed. During the investigation the ICC prosecutor also charged Walter Barasa, Paul Gicheru and Philip Bett with crimes against the administration of justice. (Full article...)

Scipio Africanus Jones (August 3, 1863 – March 2, 1943) was an American educator, lawyer, judge, philanthropist, and Republican politician from the state of Arkansas. He was most known for having guided the appeals of the twelve African-American men condemned to death after the Elaine Massacre of October 1919. More than one hundred African Americans were indicted in the aftermath of the riot, although an estimated one hundred to two hundred Black Americans were killed in the county, along with five whites. No whites were prosecuted by the state. The case was appealed to the United States Supreme Court, which in Moore v. Dempsey (1923) set a precedent of reviewing the conduct of state criminal trials against the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

Born into slavery in Smith Township near Tulip in Dallas County in south Arkansas, Jones became a successful and powerful businessman. Jones was the first lawyer in Arkansas to raise the question that African Americans had not been permitted to serve on grand juries and petit juries. In 1915, Jones broke a color barrier when he was appointed to serve as acting judge of the Little Rock police court, presiding over a case in which all the parties were blacks, as were the witnesses and attorneys except the city attorney, who supported having a Negro judge preside at this particular trial. Jones also represented Negro Shriners as part of a successful defense against efforts to keep them from using the name and paraphernalia of the Shriners organization. (Full article...)

A statute is a formal written enactment of a legislative body, a stage in the process of legislation. Typically, statutes command or prohibit something, or declare policy. Statutes are laws made by legislative bodies; they are distinguished from case law or precedent, which is decided by courts, regulations issued by government agencies, and oral or customary law.^{[better source needed]} Statutes may originate with the legislative body of a country, state or province, county, or municipality. (Full article...)

The Alaska Mental Health Enabling Act of 1956 (Public Law 84-830) was an Act of Congress passed to improve mental health care in the United States territory of Alaska. It became the focus of a major political controversy after opponents nicknamed it the "Siberia Bill" and denounced it as being part of a communist plot to hospitalize and brainwash Americans. Campaigners asserted that it was part of an international Jewish, Roman Catholic or psychiatric conspiracy intended to establish United Nations-run concentration camps in the United States.

The legislation in its original form was sponsored by the Democratic Party, but after it ran into opposition, it was rescued by the conservative Republican Senator Barry Goldwater. Under Goldwater's sponsorship, a version of the legislation without the commitment provisions that were the target of intense opposition from a variety of far-right, anti-Communist and fringe religious groups was passed by the United States Senate. The controversy still plays a prominent role in the Church of Scientology's account of its campaign against psychiatry.

The Act succeeded in its initial aim of establishing a mental health care system for Alaska, funded by income from lands allocated to a mental health trust. However, during the 1970s and early 1980s, Alaskan politicians systematically stripped the trust of its lands, transferring the most valuable land to private individuals and state agencies. The asset stripping was eventually ruled to be illegal following several years of litigation, and a reconstituted mental health trust was established in the mid-1980s. (Full article...)

• ... that other than the Second World War, there has never been a declaration of war by Canada?

• ... that, in the cases of Klayman v. Obama and ACLU v. Clapper, US district courts issued conflicting rulings on the constitutionality of bulk data collection by the US government?

• ... that part of the Occupiers' Liability Act 1984, a piece of United Kingdom legislation on tort law, is intended to permit educational and recreational use of land?

• ... that banking regulations in Russia include significant specifics, such as mandatory deposits placed in special reserve accounts at the Russian Central Bank?

• ... that the 501(h) election allows many U.S. non-profit organizations to engage in unlimited lobbying as long as they do it cheaply?

• ... that the Autism Act 2009 is the first ever disability-specific legislation to be passed in the United Kingdom?

• ... that in 2011, Nitehawk Cinema successfully lobbied to overturn a Prohibition-era liquor law that prevented movie theaters in New York from serving alcohol?

Case law, also used interchangeably with common law, is a law that is based on precedents, that is the judicial decisions from previous cases, rather than law based on constitutions, statutes, or regulations. Case law uses the detailed facts of a legal case that have been resolved by courts or similar tribunals. These past decisions are called "case law", or precedent. Stare decisis—a Latin phrase meaning "let the decision stand"—is the principle by which judges are bound to such past decisions, drawing on established judicial authority to formulate their positions. (Full article...)

Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973), was a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in which the Court ruled that the Constitution of the United States generally protected a right to have an abortion. The decision struck down many abortion laws, and caused an ongoing abortion debate in the United States about whether, or to what extent, abortion should be legal, who should decide the legality of abortion, and what the role of moral and religious views in the political sphere should be. The decision also shaped debate concerning which methods the Supreme Court should use in constitutional adjudication.

The case was brought by Norma McCorvey—under the legal pseudonym "Jane Roe"—who, in 1969, became pregnant with her third child. McCorvey wanted an abortion but lived in Texas, where abortion was illegal except when necessary to save the mother's life. Her lawyers, Sarah Weddington and Linda Coffee, filed a lawsuit on her behalf in U.S. federal court against her local district attorney, Henry Wade, alleging that Texas's abortion laws were unconstitutional. A special three-judge court of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas heard the case and ruled in her favor. The parties appealed this ruling to the Supreme Court. In January 1973, the Supreme Court issued a 7–2 decision in McCorvey's favor holding that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution provides a fundamental "right to privacy", which protects a pregnant woman's right to an abortion. It also held that the right to abortion is not absolute and must be balanced against the government's interests in protecting women's health and prenatal life. It resolved these competing interests by announcing a pregnancy trimester timetable to govern all abortion regulations in the United States. The Court also classified the right to abortion as "fundamental", which required courts to evaluate challenged abortion laws under the "strict scrutiny" standard, the most stringent level of judicial review in the United States.

The Supreme Court's decision in Roe was among the most controversial in U.S. history. In addition to the dissent, Roe was criticized by some in the legal community, including some who thought that Roe reached the correct result but went about it the wrong way, and some called the decision a form of judicial activism. Others argued that Roe did not go far enough, as it was placed within the framework of civil rights rather than the broader human rights. The decision also radically reconfigured the voting coalitions of the Republican and Democratic parties in the following decades. Anti-abortion politicians and activists sought for decades to restrict abortion or overrule the decision; polls into the 21st century showed that a plurality and a majority, especially into the late 2010s to early 2020s, opposed overruling Roe. Despite criticism of the decision, the Supreme Court reaffirmed Roe's central holding in its 1992 decision, Planned Parenthood v. Casey. Casey overruled Roe's trimester framework and abandoned its "strict scrutiny" standard in favor of an "undue burden" test. (Full article...)

• ... that British outrage at the sentencing of a white Kenyan settler to just two years' imprisonment for the 1923 killing of a black employee eventually led to the replacement of the colony's legal code?
• ... that many of the traditional Lakota ceremonies performed at the Sitting Bull Crystal Cavern Dance Pavilion were still illegal under federal law during the show's first years?
• ... that after Joseph S. Bartley was sentenced to twenty years in prison for embezzlement, he tried to have himself declared legally dead?
• ... that Brazilian computer science researcher and internet pioneer Tadao Takahashi negotiated with drug lords to install internet equipment in his country?
• ... that Singaporean broadcaster Lee Fook Hong legally changed his name to Lee Dai Sor (literally 'Lee Big Fool' in Cantonese) after being accused of tax evasion?
• ... that under early English common law a person became legally dead when they entered a religious order?

• April 28: Reports: US judge Matthew Kacsmaryk redacted name of corporation he owned stock in on disclosure forms
• April 22: Russia sentences opposition activist Vladimir Kara-Murza to 25 years in penal colony
• April 21: Paris judge acquits Airbus, Air France of involuntary manslaughter in 2009 crash that killed 228
• April 12: Russian authorities charge US reporter Evan Gershkovich with espionage
• April 11: Maryland, US attorney general's office alleges historic child sexual abuse by Catholic Church officials
• April 10: Former US President Donald Trump pleads not guilty to 34 felony charges in Manhattan
• April 5: Russia charges peace activist in assassination of pro-war blogger in Saint Petersburg
• April 2: 'Unfounded and unsubstantiated': London policemen cleared of beating Muslim
• March 29: 'Carlos the Jackal' on trial in France for third life sentence
• March 13: Sydney, Australia woman who "spontaneously" murdered boyfriend in "fatal explosion of emotion" sentenced
• March 9: Islamabad High Court temporarily suspends arrest warrant against former Pakistani PM Imran Khan
• February 26: Canadian soldier who filmed himself sexually abusing colleague has appeal dismissed