Recent Updates
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Blind justice: No visual cues in high court phone cases
Legal Events 04/25/2020On the evening before he was to argue a case before the Supreme Court years ago, Jeffrey Fisher broke his glasses. That left the very nearsighted lawyer with an unappealing choice. He could wear contacts and clearly see the justices but not his notes...
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Court denies Seattle’s bid for wealthy household income tax
Legal Events 04/04/2020Washington’s Supreme Court has denied Seattle’s bid to reinstate an income tax on wealthy households.In a majority decision, the Supreme Court on Thursday declined to review the city’s request to overturn rulings against the tax by ...
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High Court declines case of 60s black militant H. Rap Brown
Legal Events 03/26/2020The Supreme Court is declining to take the case of a 1960s black militant formerly known as H. Rap Brown who is in prison for killing a Georgia sheriff’s deputy in 2000.As is usual, the justices didn’t comment Monday in turning away Brown...
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Missouri county sued over jail time for unpaid court costs
Legal Events 02/03/2020A Missouri man at the heart of a state Supreme Court case that overturned what critics called modern-day debtors’ prisons is back in jail and suing the local officials who put him there. Warrensburg resident George Richey, 65, is one of two Mis...
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Supreme Court won’t take case prompted by Flint water crisis
Legal Events 01/13/2020The Supreme Court has declined to take a case stemming from the 2014 water crisis in Flint, Michigan.Approximately 25,000 people have sued over the crisis, in which a change in the source of the city’s water resulted in lead contamination.The c...
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Saudis sentence 5 people to death for Khashoggi’s killing
Legal Events 12/21/2019A court in Saudi Arabia sentenced five people to death Monday for the killing of Washington Post columnist and royal family critic Jamal Khashoggi, whose grisly slaying in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul drew international condemnation and cast a clo...
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Protests of Indian law grow despite efforts to contain them
Legal Events 12/17/2019From campuses along India’s Himalayan northern border to its southern Malabar Coast, a student-led protest movement against a new law that grants citizenship on the basis of religion spread nationwide on Wednesday despite efforts by the governm...
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Trump Has Successfully Gamed the Courts
Legal Events 12/11/2019At its simplest level, the impeachment of President Donald Trump looks like a collision between the legislative and executive branches of government. In that fight, each side is trying to defend its prerogatives as it sees them: For Congress (or at l...
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World trade without rules? US shuts down WTO appeals court
Legal Events 11/29/2019Global commerce will lose its ultimate umpire Tuesday, leaving countries unable to reach a final resolution of disputes at the World Trade Organization and instead facing what critics call “the law of the jungle.’’The United States,...
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Fallen rights icon at UN court for Rohingya genocide case
Legal Events 11/28/2019Twenty-eight years to the day after Aung San Suu Kyi’s husband and sons accepted her Nobel Peace Prize while she remained under house arrest in Myanmar, the former pro-democracy icon appeared in a United Nations court ready to defend her countr...
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EU court refers doubts on Polish judiciary to national court
Legal Events 11/14/2019The European Union's top court ruled Tuesday that there are reasons to question the independence of a new judicial chamber in Poland that monitors and potentially punishes judges.However, the European Court of Justice left it to Poland's highest cour...
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Split Supreme Court appears ready to allow Trump to end DACA
Legal Events 11/09/2019Sharply at odds with liberal justices, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority seemed ready Tuesday to allow the Trump administration to abolish protections that permit 660,000 immigrants to work in the U.S., free from the threat of deportati...