Kansas Supreme Court rules death penalty law unconstitutional
The Kansas Supreme Court ruled in a 4-3 vote Friday that the state's 1994 death penalty law is unconstitutional. The court's ruling focused on a provision stating that when juries weigh aggravating and mitigating factors in determining a sentence,...
Kansas v. Colorado, United States Supreme Court, December 7, 2004, majority opinion by Justice Breyer . Read the...
The US Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that Kansas is not entitled to seek further damages from Colorado for diverting water from the Arkansas River into Colorado farm lands. The Court had ruled in 2001 that Colorado was liable for...
Dirty Diversity: Bush Minority Appointees as Tools of Force, Power and Expediency
JURIST Contibuting Editor Ali Khan of Washburn University School of Law says that the Bush administration's appointment of minority candidates to high-profile positions has made them the complicit and even enthisiastic instruments of political and legal policies as harmful as...
Conservatives protest Specter's possible leadership of Senate Judiciary Committee
Conservative Republicans are calling for Republicans on the US Senate Judiciary Committee to block Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter's bid to become chairman of the committee. Specter sparked controversy last week by warning President Bush against appointing Supreme Court justices...
The Murder They Wrote: US Plots to Assassinate Pakistani Ambassador
JURIST Contibuting Editor Ali Khan of Washburn University School of Law says that a recent USDOJ plan to encourage two Muslims to provide funds to assassinate Pakistan's UN Ambassador shows disrespect for international law and may also violate laws against...
In past elections, so-called "faithless electors" cast innocuously eccentric votes that provided a quaint reminder of one of the archaic curiosities of the presidential selection process. After providing a rare element of surprise in the otherwise perfunctory Electoral College ritual,...
