Month: October 2020

Human Rights Watch (HRW) has called for the creation of a new international treaty that would ban autonomous weapons or any other form of so-called “killer robots.”  In a report issued Tuesday the international rights group advanced a detailed proposal outlining essential elements for a treaty seeking to prevent the use of “all weapons systems that…

The Supreme Council of Kyrgyzstan voted Thursday to postpone the date of new parliamentary elections until a constitutional reform supported by acting president Sadyr Japarov can be enacted. Japarov is actively promoting the suggested reforms as the nation’s constitution currently bars him from running in the election while he is acting president. The new law adopted by the…

The U.S. Supreme Court has emerged as a significant election issue for the first time in more than fifty years. The death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett has riveted the nation’s attention on the Court in a way that rarely if ever has occurred during a presidential campaign.…

In September 2020, the Spanish Government introduced the “Democratic Memory Law” through its Democratic Memory Act (“The Act”), which is an extension of the Historical Memory Act of 2007 to honor the victims of General Francisco Franco’s dictatorial rule. The Act, which will see the annulment of convictions for ideological reasons during the Franco regime,…

Louis René Beres, Professor Emeritus of International Law at Purdue, analyses the various facets of a miscalculated nuclear war breaking out between the US and North Korea if both leaders are not careful… “Hic Sunt Dracones” – the Hunt-Lenox Globe, 1504 “Friction is the difference between war on paper, and war as it actually is.”…

L. Ali Khan, founder of Legal Scholar Academy and emeritus professor of law at the Washburn University School of Law in Topeka, Kansas, writes on the recent Trump-Taliban peace talks, emphasizing the importance of narratives in framing policy… In October 2001, the U.S. invaded Afghanistan to avenge the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center…

In a unanimous ruling Friday the Pennsylvania State Supreme Court held that a voter’s absentee or mail-in ballot cannot be rejected based solely on a comparison of the signature on the ballot with the voter’s signature on their registration form. The ruling came as a result of a King’s Bench petition by Kathy Boockvar, Secretary of…

In a unanimous ruling on Friday, a three-judge panel of the Texas Third Court of Appeals ruled against Governor Greg Abbott’s order limiting the number of ballot drop boxes to one per county. On October 1, the governor, citing both ballot security and health concerns, issued an order restricting ballot drop boxes to one location…

The US District Court for the District of New Jersey Thursday dismissed the Trump campaign’s lawsuit challenging newly passed mail-in voting provisions from the New Jersey Legislature. As a response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the New Jersey Legislature enacted Assembly Bill No. 4475, which expanded the state’s mail-in voting initiatives. The Trump campaign challenged this legislation, stating…

The Constitutional Court of Poland barred abortion due to fetal defects in a controversial decision handed down Thursday. The court held that termination of pregnancy in that circumstance had no constitutional justification and it violated the constitutionally guaranteed right to life. The court stated in a pre-judgment press release that The unborn child, as a…