Browsed by
Category: Law/Crime

Where is America’s ‘rules-based order’ now?

Where is America’s ‘rules-based order’ now?

Spencer Ackerman writes: No sooner had a nearly unanimous United Nations Security Council passed a resolution demanding an “immediate cease-fire” in Gaza last month than the United States and Israel acted as if it were a meaningless piece of paper. Israel, unwilling to accept a U.N. mandate, continued bombing the overcrowded southern city of Rafah and besieging Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. Shortly after the vote, Biden administration officials called the resolution, No. 2728, “nonbinding,” in what appeared to be…

Read More Read More

States warn Biden could miss ballot. Dems say exceptions have been made for GOP

States warn Biden could miss ballot. Dems say exceptions have been made for GOP

The Washington Post reports: Democratic officials are looking at their options after Republican secretaries of state in Ohio and Alabama warned them that President Biden might not appear on their ballots in November because of the timing of his expected nomination at the Democratic National Convention. Publicly, the Biden campaign is expressing confidence that he will appear on the ballot in both states. But the situation has created new headaches for Democrats and stoked distrust with election officials over what…

Read More Read More

Exxon declares war on its dissenting investors

Exxon declares war on its dissenting investors

The Lever reports: ExxonMobil has launched an extraordinary lawsuit against two investment firms for the alleged offense of filing climate-focused shareholder proposals. The fossil fuel giant’s underlying goal: killing a federal regulatory effort that would make it easier for all U.S. shareholders to voice environmental and social concerns about the companies they own. Critics say the company is also trying to intimidate shareholders from ever proposing such resolutions again in the future — under threat of being tied up in…

Read More Read More

Arizona’s zombie abortion ban is back. It’s every state’s future if Trump wins

Arizona’s zombie abortion ban is back. It’s every state’s future if Trump wins

Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern write: On Tuesday, the Arizona Supreme Court ruled that its total abortion ban, a seemingly dead law dating back to 1864, is once again enforceable, despite more recent legislation that seemed to supercede it. The zombie ban makes virtually all abortions a felony, imposing a prison sentence of two to five years for any provider. There is no exception for rape or incest. The law was enacted before women could vote, and was long…

Read More Read More

European court rules human rights violated by climate inaction

European court rules human rights violated by climate inaction

BBC News reports: A group of older Swiss women have won the first ever climate case victory in the European Court of Human Rights. The women, mostly in their 70s, said that their age and gender made them particularly vulnerable to the effects of heatwaves linked to climate change. The court said Switzerland’s efforts to meet its emission reduction targets had been woefully inadequate. It is the first time the powerful court has ruled on global warming. Swedish campaigner Greta…

Read More Read More

Germany is accused of complicity in Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza

Germany is accused of complicity in Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza

  Germany has been accused of aiding and abetting genocide in Gaza, in a case before the UN’s top court. It was brought by Nicaragua and calls for emergency measures to stop Germany from selling weapons to Israel. It also wants Berlin to restore funding to the UN’s agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA. Nicaragua’s lawyer had harsh words for the dual role Germany’s playing in what the ICJ’s already ruled to be a plausible case of genocide. Al Jazeera’s senior…

Read More Read More

Elizabeth Warren says she believes Israel’s war in Gaza will legally be considered a genocide

Elizabeth Warren says she believes Israel’s war in Gaza will legally be considered a genocide

Politico reports: Sen. Elizabeth Warren believes international officials could find that Israel’s assault on Gaza legally constitutes a genocide, she said during an event at a local mosque last week. “If you want to do it as an application of law, I believe that they’ll find that it is genocide, and they have ample evidence to do so,” Warren (D-Mass.) said Friday while taking audience questions during an event at the Islamic Center of Boston in Wayland, Massachusetts. A video…

Read More Read More

Trump is accidentally exposing Judge Cannon’s shady pro-MAGA game

Trump is accidentally exposing Judge Cannon’s shady pro-MAGA game

Greg Sargent writes: When Judge Aileen Cannon handed down her latest ruling in the prosecution of Donald Trump for stealing classified documents, many legal observers immediately understood the shady gamesmanship lurking behind it. She did, technically, rule against Trump by refusing to dismiss the case—but actually made it easier for herself to kill the case later, or to steer a jury toward an acquittal. Trump’s lawyers had argued that the Presidential Records Act, which was passed in the wake of…

Read More Read More

Former supreme court judges say UK arming Israel breaches international law

Former supreme court judges say UK arming Israel breaches international law

The Guardian reports: A fourth former supreme court justice has put his name to a letter warning Rishi Sunak that the UK is breaching international law by continuing to arm Israel, as the number of legal experts signing the letter rose to more than 750. Lord Carnwath joins Lady Hale, who was president of the UK’s highest court, and lords Sumption and Wilson, in urging ministers to act to prevent the “plausible risk” of genocide in Gaza. Another new signatory…

Read More Read More

Biden moves to defang political assaults on federal workforce

Biden moves to defang political assaults on federal workforce

Politico reports: The Biden administration put the finishing touches Thursday on a plan to restrict presidents from unilaterally nixing civil service protections from large swaths of the federal workforce, as former President Donald Trump renews his vow to uproot a perceived “deep state” if he is returned to the White House. While a future president could take steps to squelch the new directive, it reflects a larger effort by the Biden administration to put a protective wall around its policies….

Read More Read More

Why Judge Aileen Cannon is on thin ice in Trump’s Mar-a-Lago case

Why Judge Aileen Cannon is on thin ice in Trump’s Mar-a-Lago case

Norman Eisen, E. Danya Perry and Joshua Kolb write: On Tuesday, special counsel Jack Smith threw down the gauntlet in an extraordinary filing in the Mar-a-Lago prosecution, the case that centers around former President Donald Trump’s retention of classified documents and his resistance to government attempts to recover them from his Mar-a-Lago estate. Smith warned Judge Aileen Cannon that her approach to the law governing the handling of presidential records — and so Donald Trump’s culpability in the case —…

Read More Read More

In Gaza, Israel unleashed a rogue army in which ‘every commander makes his own rules’

In Gaza, Israel unleashed a rogue army in which ‘every commander makes his own rules’

The Times of Israel reports: [O]n Tuesday evening, the Haaretz daily spoke to unnamed military sources who revealed that the cause of the strike [killing seven World Central Kitchen staffers] was undisciplined, rogue commanders, not a lack of coordination between the IDF and the WCK. A source in the intelligence branch told Haaretz that the IDF’s Southern Command “knows exactly what the cause of the attack was: in Gaza, everyone does as they please.” Army regulations require final approvals from…

Read More Read More

Trump Media saved in 2022 by Russian-American under criminal investigation

Trump Media saved in 2022 by Russian-American under criminal investigation

The Guardian reports: Donald Trump’s social media company Trump Media managed to go public last week only after it had been kept afloat in 2022 by emergency loans provided in part by a Russian-American businessman under scrutiny in a federal insider-trading and money-laundering investigation. The former US president stands to gain billions of dollars – his stake is currently valued at about $4bn – from the merger between Trump Media and Technology Group and the blank-check company Digital World Acquisition…

Read More Read More

First Muslim appellate nominee smeared by Islamophobic senators

First Muslim appellate nominee smeared by Islamophobic senators

Judd Legum writes: Republicans first attempted to sink the nomination of Adeel Mangi, who would be the first Muslim American to serve on a federal appellate court, on allegations that he was an anti-semitic terrorist sympathizer. During Mangi’s December 13, 2023 confirmation hearing, Republican Senators asked Mangi if he “celebrated 9/11” or “condemned the atrocities of Hamas terrorists.” The pretext for these attacks was Mangi’s role as an advisory board member for the Rutgers Center for Security, Race and Rights,…

Read More Read More

UK government lawyers say Israel is breaking international law, claims top Tory in leaked recording

UK government lawyers say Israel is breaking international law, claims top Tory in leaked recording

The Observer reports: The British government has received advice from its own lawyers stating that Israel has breached international humanitarian law in Gaza but has failed to make it public, according to a leaked recording obtained by the Observer. The comments, made by the Conservative chair of the House of Commons select committee on foreign affairs, Alicia Kearns, at a Tory fundraising event on 13 March are at odds with repeated ministerial denials and evasion on the issue. On Saturday…

Read More Read More

Supporting genocide: U.S. signs off on more bombs, warplanes for Israel

Supporting genocide: U.S. signs off on more bombs, warplanes for Israel

The Washington Post reports: The Biden administration in recent days quietly authorized the transfer of billions of dollars in bombs and fighter jets to Israel despite Washington’s concerns about an anticipated military offensive in southern Gaza that could threaten the lives of hundreds of thousands of Palestinian civilians. The new arms packages include more than 1,800 MK84 2,000-pound bombs and 500 MK82 500-pound bombs, according to Pentagon and State Department officials familiar with the matter. The 2,000-pound bombs have been…

Read More Read More