Recent Updates
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A 1946 mob lynching puts court focus on grand jury secrecy
Legal Issues 10/20/2019A historian’s quest for the truth about a gruesome mob lynching of two black couples is prompting a U.S. appeals court to consider whether federal judges can order grand jury records unsealed in decades-old cases with historical significance.Th...
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Wikileaks founder Julian Assange loses bid to delay hearing
Legal Issues 10/18/2019WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange appeared in a U.K. court Monday to fight extradition to the United States on espionage charges, and he lost a bid to delay proceedings so that his legal team would have more time to prepare his case.Assange defiantly ...
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Activist loses UK court case on police facial recognition
Legal Issues 08/30/2019A British court ruled Wednesday that a police force's use of automated facial recognition technology is lawful, dealing a blow to an activist concerned about its implications for privacy.Existing laws adequately cover the South Wales police force's d...
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Court to Trump: Blocking Twitter critics is unconstitutional
Legal Issues 07/08/2019President Donald Trump lost a major Twitter fight Tuesday when a federal appeals court said that his daily musings and pronouncements were overwhelmingly official in nature and that he violated the First Amendment whenever he blocked a critic to sile...
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NC redistricting fight turns to state courts after ruling
Legal Issues 06/28/2019Now that the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled federal courts aren’t the place to settle partisan gerrymandering disputes, opponents of North Carolina’s district maps are putting their hopes in state courts.An election reform group, the state ...
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Justices won’t revive Alabama ban on abortion procedure
Legal Issues 06/25/2019The Supreme Court won’t revive Alabama’s attempt to ban the most commonly used procedure in second-trimester abortions after the measure was blocked by lower courts.The justices on Friday rejected the state’s appeal and declined to ...
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Hong Kong court: Denying same-sex spousal benefits unlawful
Legal Issues 06/03/2019Hong Kong’s Court of Final Appeal said Thursday the government cannot deny spousal employment benefits to same-sex couples, in a ruling hailed as a major step forward for same-sex equality in the semi-autonomous Chinese territory.The court over...
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High court halts electoral map redrawing in Michigan, Ohio
Legal Issues 05/23/2019The Supreme Court on Friday put on hold court orders in Michigan and Ohio to redraw electoral maps that federal judges found were too partisan.The high court action comes as it is weighing cases from Maryland and North Carolina that raise similar iss...
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Feds: US Supreme Court should turn down 'Bridgegate' appeal
Legal Issues 05/10/2019The U.S. solicitor general's office has recommended that the U.S. Supreme Court not hear the appeal of two convicted defendants in the "Bridgegate" case, nudging the four-year legal saga of New Jersey's most famous traffic jam toward a conclusion."Fu...
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News attorneys: Opioid distribution data should be public
Legal Issues 05/01/2019Attorneys for news organizations argued Thursday that the U.S. public should be allowed to see federal data about how prescription opioids were distributed as the nation’s overdose crisis was worsening.They urged a three-judge panel of the 6th ...
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Arkansas faces new court fight over sedative for executions
Legal Issues 04/17/2019A federal lawsuit filed by death row inmates has renewed a court fight over whether the sedative Arkansas uses for lethal injections causes torturous executions, two years after the state raced to put eight convicted killers to death in 11 days befor...
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Supreme Court set for case on racial bias in jury selection
Legal Issues 03/16/2019Curtis Flowers has been jailed in Mississippi for 22 years, even as prosecutors couldn't get a murder conviction against him to stick through five trials.Three convictions were tossed out, and two other juries couldn't reach unanimous verdicts.This w...