Marissa Zupancic is JURIST’s Washington DC Correspondent, a JURIST Senior Editor and a 3L at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law. She’s stationed in Washington during her Semester in DC. Today I attended oral arguments at the US Supreme Court for Trump v. US, a case concerning whether a president has absolute immunity after they [...]
Search Results for: 2017-04-18
Under President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s leadership, the Sri Lankan civil war reached a brutal conclusion on May 18, 2009, ending a 25-year-long conflict between the Sri Lankan government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), a separatist rebel group. Rooted in longstanding grievances, including discriminatory policies against Sri Lanka’s Tamil minority, the conflict saw the [...]
Explainer: The Israel-Hamas War and the International Criminal Court
The current conflict engulfing Israel and Palestine raises significant issues of international law and policy. This is part one in an anticipated two-part series that will discuss some of the relevant legal questions before the International Criminal Court (ICC; Part I) and the International Court of Justice (ICJ; Part II). With both courts located in [...]
On October 2, 2023, Ukraine’s High Anti-Corruption Court granted a $360,000 reward to a whistleblower in a corruption case involving an attempted $6 million bribe—the biggest reported bribe attempt in Ukraine’s history. This reward marks the first payment to a whistleblower under the Law of Ukraine on the Prevention of Corruption, a major piece of [...]
Panama Supreme Court rules 20-year concession for Canada copper mine unconstitutional
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 [...]
Facing Trump II: America's Urgent Obligation to Rethink Nuclear Command Authority
“The man who laughs has simply not yet heard the horrible news.” Berthold Brecht An Existential Task Until the end of his presidency – and even after his open complicity in subverting the United States Constitution on January 6, 2021 – Donald J. Trump held effectively unchecked nuclear command authority. Now, after multiple criminal [...]
Canada Must Take a Stand Against Lobbying Efforts for Sudan's RSF Militia
The war in Sudan that broke out in April between the country’s armed forces and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) militia has already had a devastating impact. Thousands have been killed. Millions have been displaced. And that’s to say nothing of the massive destruction of buildings and infrastructure. In parallel with the battles on the [...]
New Jersey governor used public expense account to spend $12,000 at stadium events
New Jersey governor Phil Murphy used his public, taxpayer-funded expense account to spend almost $12,000 at events at MetLife Stadium in northern New Jersey, including a Taylor Swift concert, according to records reviewed by POLITICO this week. The expenses started accumulating when Murphy took office in 2018, but have not grown since 2019. POLITICO obtained [...]
Explainer: A Closer Look at the Multiple Indictments Facing Former US President Donald Trump
Prior to Donald Trump, no US president — current or former — had ever been indicted. That all changed on April 4 when Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg announced that a New York grand jury had indicted Trump on 34 criminal counts. Since then, he has been the subject of three additional criminal indictments. He [...]
Interview: Columbia's Jeffrey Sachs on Russia, Ukraine, and International Justice
Economist and foreign policy expert Jeffrey Sachs, a best selling author and director of Columbia University’s Center for Sustainable Development, has long argued that Russia’s hostility toward Ukraine was provoked by the U.S. vis-à-vis pushes for NATO expansion, military interventions, and other forms of meddling. In an interview with JURIST Assistant Editor Pitasanna Shanmugathas, Sachs [...]