Search Results for: 1997-03-03

Panama’s Supreme Court unanimously held Tuesday that the 20-year concession for the Canadian Cobre Panamá copper mine was unconstitutional. In its judgement, the courts found that Law 406 of October 20, 2023, which granted the mining concession to Minera Panama, the Panamanian subsidiary of Canadian First Quantum Minerals, was unconstitutional and struck down the entire law. The [...]

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Three years have passed since Beijing enacted the National Security Law of Hong Kong (NSL). And throughout this period, the city’s authorities have been using the law in parallel with established laws, such as one prohibiting “seditious intent,” to target dissidents. As of July 2023, 71 arrests had been made based on the sedition law, [...]

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Access to justice is a foundational principle of the rule of law and is often phrased as requiring “the right of equal access to justice for all” through governments providing “fair, transparent, effective, non-discriminatory and accountable services.” In Australia, this principle was described in Dietrich v. The Queen as “the equal justice for all principle.” [...]

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Within the past 12 months, Jacinda Ardern has resigned as New Zealand’s prime minister, former Australian PM Julia Gillard’s famous “misogyny speech” celebrated its tenth anniversary, and the high-profile retrial against Australian Liberal Party staffer Bruce Lehrmann for the alleged rape of colleague Brittany Higgins was dropped for posing a “significant and unacceptable risk” to [...]

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The dissolution of Nepal’s House of Representatives (‘HoR’) last December and a subsequent constitutional crisis sparked great legal debate in the mountain kingdom that came to a head last month with an historic Supreme Court judgment holding the dissolution unconstitutional. Nepalese law students Smriti Phuyal and Smriti Pantha from NLU Delhi and Kathmandu University School [...]

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The US Senate voted 70-30 on Wednesday to confirm Merrick Garland to be attorney general. Twenty Republicans joined all 50 Democrats in confirming the nomination. Garland was a federal prosecutor involved in the Oklahoma City Bombing investigation before being appointed to the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit where he has [...]

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Chinese parliamentarians in Beijing proposed an overhaul of Hong Kong’s electoral system on Friday. The proposed structural changes would involve re-drafting Hong-Kong’s mini-constitution, the Basic Law, consolidating China’s “overall jurisdiction” over Hong Kong. China’s legislature is debating draft guidelines, and it is expected that it will pass the guidelines by March 11. Once the guidelines [...]

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France refused Monday to ratify a 2017 extradition treaty with Hong Kong following China’s enactment of a controversial new national security law in the region, which French officials claim “calls into question the ‘one country, two systems’ principle.” French officials announced that “in light of the most recent developments, as things stand, France will not [...]

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