Posts Tagged ‘law’

Judge strikes down law mandating sale of contraception (Reuters)

Sunday, March 4th, 2012

[unable to retrieve full-text content]Reuters – A federal judge declared on Wednesday that a Washington state rule requiring pharmacists to dispense emergency contraceptives against their religious beliefs is unconstitutional.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/crime/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20120223/ts_nm/us_usa_contraceptives_court

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Legal Theory Blog: Legal Theory Bookworm

Tuesday, January 10th, 2012

The Legal Theory Bookworm recommends Formalism and the Sources of International Law: A Theory of the Ascertainment of Legal Rules by Jean d’Aspremont. Here is a description:

    This book revisits the theory of the sources of international law from the perspective of formalism. It critically analyzes the virtues of formalism, construed as a theory of law ascertainment, as a means of distinguishing between law and non-law. The theory of formalism is re-evaluated against the backdrop of the growing acceptance by international legal theorists of the blurring of the lines between law and non-law. At the same time, the book acknowledges that much international normative activity nowadays takes place outside the ambit of traditional international law and that only a limited part of the exercise of public authority at the international level results in the creation of international legal rules.

    The theory of ascertainment that the book puts forward attempts to dispel some of the illusions of formalism that accompany the delimitation of customary international law. It also sheds light on the tendency of scholars, theorists, and advocates to deformalize the identification of international legal rules with a view to expanding international law. The book seeks to revitalize and refresh the formal identification of rules by engaging with some tenets of the postmodern critique of formalism. As a result, the book not only grapples with the practice of law-making at the international level, but it also offers broad theoretical insights on international law, dealing with the main schools of thought in legal theory (positivism, naturalism, legal realism, policy-oriented jurisprudence, and postmodernism). The main theory of law ascertainment presented in this work remains however principally informed by a rejuvenated version of Herbert Hart’s social thesis

Source: http://lsolum.typepad.com/legaltheory/2012/01/legal-theory-bookworm.html

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State attorney: Judges broke law in Berenson case (AP)

Tuesday, January 3rd, 2012

LIMA, Peru ? Peru’s anti-terrorism attorney said Sunday he will seek misconduct charges against the three judges who granted paroled U.S. activist Lori Berenson permission to leave the country for the first time since her 1995 arrest.

Julio Galindo said he would ask prosecutors on Monday to charge the judges with violating anti-terrorism laws by clearing Berenson to travel to New York City with her toddler son to spend the holidays with her family.

Despite the court’s approval, the 42-year-old Berenson was prevented from boarding a flight on Friday.

Her lawyer, Anibal Apari, told The Associated Press that Berenson presented the court’s authorization, which stipulates she must return by Jan. 11, to migration officials but they demanded an additional document that she didn’t have because it doesn’t exist.

Apari said he would try to resolve matters with Interior Ministry officials on Monday so Berenson and 31-month-old Salvador can travel. Apari is the child’s father; he and Berenson met in prison and are amicably separated.

Neither the Interior Ministry nor any senior government official gave an explanation for why Berenson was barred from leaving the country. Interior Ministry spokeswoman Zully Bismarck did not return repeated phone calls from the AP seeking clarification.

Galindo had fought to reimprison Berenson after her May 2010 parole, arguing that she did not qualify for early release from the 20-year sentence for aiding the leftist rebel Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement that ends in 2015.

While failing in that goal, he did succeed in getting Berenson and Salvador returned to prison on a technicality for 2 1/2 months before a court ordered her freed.

Galindo was asked Sunday if his superiors at the Interior Ministry approved of his efforts to prevent Berenson from leaving the country and to seek criminal charges against the judges that carry prison terms of up to five years in prison.

“I can’t speak for other officials,” he said. My job is the follow the law.”

“This is a technical and not a political matter,” he added.

On Friday, Galindo filed a motion seeking to nullify the previous day’s decision by the judges authorizing Berenson’s trip and declaring she did not represent a flight risk.

He said that Peruvian law bars parolees convicted of terrorism-related offenses from traveling abroad, though criminal law expert Luis Lamas said the judicial authorization that Berenson obtained granted her an exemption from that law.

A former Massachusetts Institute of Technology student who had previously worked with El Salvador’s leftist rebels, Berenson was arrested at age 25 and accused of helping the Tupac Amaru group plan an armed takeover of Congress, an attack that never happened.

A military court convicted her the following year and sentenced her to life in prison for sedition. After the U.S. government pressured Peruvian officials, she was retried in civil courts in 2001 and sentenced to 20 years for terrorist collaboration.

Berenson’s parents, often outspoken on her behalf, have not commented on their daughter’s situation in the wake of Friday night’s disappointment.

Her father Mark, a college statistics professor who turns 70 on Dec. 29, said Friday that his daughter intended to respect the law and return to Peru.

Many Peruvians see her as a symbol of Peru’s 1980-2000 conflict, which claimed some 70,000 lives and in which the fanatical Maoist Shining Path movement did most of the killing.

Berenson’s journey from prison inmate to parolee has been anguished, and Peruvian news media have repeatedly hounded and mobbed her and frightened Salvador.

Lori “just wants to be a low-profile person and get on with her life and be a good citizen,” her father told the AP. He said he planned to ask President Ollanta Humala to law commute his daughter’s sentence.

Humala, a former army lieutenant colonel, has not indicated whether he might do so.

Unrepentant when arrested, Berenson softened during years of sometimes harsh prison conditions, and was eventually praised as a model prisoner. Since her parole, she has repeatedly expressed regret for aiding the rebel group.

Berenson has acknowledged helping the rebels rent a safe house, where authorities seized a cache of weapons. But she insists she didn’t know guns were being stored there. She denies ever engaging in violence.

___

Associated Press writer Frank Bajak contributed to this report.

(This version CORRECTS Mark Berenson’s birthday to Dec. 29)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/latam/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111218/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/lt_peru_lori_berenson

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Health care law: Ruling gives Obama another important win

Saturday, November 12th, 2011

Affordable Care Act lives to fight another day. Now President Obama urges the Supreme Court to rule on the Affordable Care Act so that the law can move forward.

President Barack Obama’s signature healthcare law got a boost Tuesday when a U.S. appeals court agreed with a lower court that dismissed a challenge and found the law’s minimum coverage requirement was constitutional.

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The U.S. Appeals Court for the District of Columbia Circuit upheld a lower court ruling that had found it constitutional to require Americans to buy healthcare insurance coverage by early 2014 or face a penalty and had dismissed a lawsuit challenging it.

“It certainly is an encroachment on individual liberty, but it is no more so than a command that restaurants or hotels are obliged to serve all customers regardless of race … or that a farmer cannot grow enough wheat to support his own family,” wrote Judge Laurence Silberman in the majority opinion, citing past federal mandates that inspired legal fights.

“The right to be free from federal regulation is not absolute, and yields to the imperative that Congress be free to forge national solutions to national problems, no matter how local — or seemingly passive — their individual origins.”

It was the latest victory for the Obama administration, which sought the new law to try to stem the soaring costs of healthcare and to increase coverage for the more than 35 million Americans without healthcare insurance.

COURTS DIFFER

Two federal courts have thrown out the so-called individual mandate but others have upheld it. The Supreme Court is expected to take up the matter this term.
In the latest case, Judge Brett Kavanaugh broke with the other two justices on the panel and said the court did not have jurisdiction to decide the case.

In his 65-page dissent he wrote that the Anti-Injunction Act, “limits the jurisdiction of federal courts over tax-related matters” and said the penalty charged for not having insurance is a tax.

Kavanaugh also cautioned the courts against rushing to decide the constitutionality of the law, known as the Affordable Care Act, and urged waiting until 2015 when tax refund or enforcement suits would be filed over the mandate.

“We should hesitate to unnecessarily decide a case that could usher in a significant expansion of congressional authority with no obvious principled limit,” Kavanaugh wrote.

Last month the Obama administration asked the Supreme Court for a quick ruling on the requirement. The high court could resolve uncertainty over the law that is affecting the federal government, states and companies. The court’s current term runs through June 2012.

More than half the states have sued to challenge the law, saying Congress overstepped its constitutional authority.

A three-judge panel of the 11th Circuit Court agreed, saying in August that the law is not protected by the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution, which allows Congress to regulate commerce among states.

It too said the penalty for not having insurance was akin to a tax, which the U.S. government was not entitled to levy.

But a U.S. Appeals Court in Cincinnati said the individual mandate was constitutional.

Meanwhile, Virginia is asking the Supreme Court to overturn a decision throwing out its challenge that contends federal law cannot trump a state one allowing residents to forgo health insurance.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/v5jKCXNFiv8/Health-care-law-Ruling-gives-Obama-another-important-win

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Senate comes closer to overhauling education law (Reuters)

Wednesday, October 19th, 2011

WASHINGTON (Reuters) ? Legislation that would overhaul the controversial U.S. education law known as No Child Left Behind cleared a major hurdle on Monday when Senate leaders announced a bipartisan agreement on the bill.

The law, which went into effect in 2002, has been criticized as forcing teachers to adhere to a narrow curriculum to ensure students pass tests and imposing too harsh penalties on schools deemed “failing.”

President Barack Obama recently began allowing states to opt out of some of the requirements in the law passed nearly a decade ago, saying Congress had been too slow to reform it.

Democrat Tom Harkin and Republican Mike Enzi, the two most powerful members of the Senate’s Education Committee, forged an agreement on a bill that would give states more freedom to set the courses for their school programs.

“It will support teaching and learning rather than labeling and sanctioning, focus federal attention on turning around low-performing schools and closing achievement gaps, improve resource equity, and give states and schools the flexibility to innovate,” said Harkin, who chairs the committee, in a statement.

The committee will take up the bill on Wednesday.

Education Secretary Arne Duncan gave the compromise a lukewarm reception, praising it for providing flexibility “while maintaining accountability at every level.”

“I believe, however, that a comprehensive evaluation system based on multiple measures, including student achievement, is essential for education reform to move forward,” Duncan said in a statement. “This view is shared by both national teacher unions and state leaders all across the country who are committed to doing a better job of preparing our young people for the global economy. We cannot retreat from reform.”

No Child Left Behind was passed in Congress by both parties — in the Senate its chief champion was Democrat Edward Kennedy. When it was signed by President George W. Bush in 2002, it ushered in an era of setting learning standards and testing students.

In September, Obama said states could apply for waivers from having to meet some of the standards set by the law, which expired four years ago and has been temporarily extended.

The U.S. government provides only about 8 percent of schools’ funding but federal support has become more precious to school districts since the housing bust ravaged their primary source of revenue — property taxes.

The Senate agreement would authorize grants to help local districts, improve school buildings, prepare students for college and support teacher development.

Obama has recently suggested repairing school buildings to provide jobs for unemployed construction workers.

The biggest educators’ union, the National Education Association, said it was pleased with the agreement, noting it “recognizes the federal government’s role is limited” in teacher evaluations.

(Reporting by Lisa Lambert; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/uscongress/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111017/pl_nm/us_usa_education_senate

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Criminal Defense Lawyers ? Beat Legal Charges ? Scholars Lab

Wednesday, September 14th, 2011

Most people aren’t acquainted with the law. The average person?s knowledge of the law is quite likely limited to what they see on TV or read in newspapers and books. When they do get entangled with the criminal law system they don’t know what to do, or how to handle the situation. Due to this, the requirement for info and assistance from criminal lawyers is vital for those wh are about to get concerned with the criminal law system.

The criminal law system can become a really menacing and confusing process for everyone. Being prepared for the circumstances that may arise is a necessity for everybody.

There are barristers for any sort of conceivable legal problem. In most cases, a lawyer will represent you or try and find you guilty of charges. If you lose, you stand to face time in prison as well as a substantial sum of money. If you’re facing criminal charges, or if you’re inquiry by law enforcement your legal situation is different.

In a criminal trial, you can lose your freedom for a particularly long time. Criminal defense lawyers (although paid a fee) do not deal in money, but in your personal future, whether it involves loss of your liberty or loss of a pro license.

If you need the services of a criminal lawyer, you have to make sure you find the right one for you. There are lots of advantages to this. First off , a seasoned counsel will very likely command more respect from the prosecutor?s office and judge. A lawyer who has had an association with many trials may also be best at giving you information on whether to go to trial or take a plea bargain. He or she will be better at investigating your case, pre-trial motion work and obtaining an overall positive result for you. Make sure you find somebody that may fight forcefully for you. You cannot afford to lose your freedom simply because you employed the wrong counsel.

If you’re facing legal charges then it is best you get expert recommendation. A seasoned criminal defence counsel Toronto can give you data which will help you to understand the problems that are ahead. Start the search now and find the best criminal barrister Toronto.

Source: http://scholarslab.com.sg/education/criminal-defense-lawyers-beat-legal-charges/

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