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Court won't stop embryonic stem cell research
Legal Spotlight |
2013/01/08 16:24
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The Supreme Court won't stop the government's funding of embryonic stem cell research, despite some researchers' complaints that the work relies on destroyed human embryos.
The high court on Monday refused to hear an appeal from two scientists who have been challenging the funding for the work.
The U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia earlier this year threw out their lawsuit challenging federal funding for the research, which is used in pursuit of cures to deadly diseases. Opponents claimed the National Institutes of Health was violating the 1996 Dickey-Wicker law that prohibits taxpayer financing for work that harms an embryo.
Researchers hope one day to use stem cells in ways that cure spinal cord injuries, Parkinson's disease and other ailments. |
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Venezuela court could decide on Chavez swearing-in
Legal Business |
2012/12/25 23:07
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The president of Venezuela's Supreme Court said Thursday that it could decide whether it's constitutional to postpone the date of ailing President Hugo Chavez's swearing-in as he recovers from cancer surgery in Cuba.
Supreme Court President Luisa Estella Morales also said the matter has not yet been brought before the court. Chavez is due to be sworn in for another six-year term on Jan. 10, but complications after his Dec. 11 surgery and his silence after the procedure have thrown into doubt whether he will be capable of taking the oath of office.
"At this time, there is no constitutional question to resolve," Morales said at a news conference. "When the matter is brought up, if it's brought up, then it will be the Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice that will decide."
The justice's remarks came after National Assembly President Diosdado Cabello suggested on Tuesday that Chavez's inauguration could be postponed — a statement that has fed uncertainty about the his prospects of recovery.
Cabello defended the idea in a message Thursday on his Twitter account, saying: "I only expressed my opinion, of which I'm absolutely convinced since it's in line with our constitution." |
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Convicted financier says he can't afford a lawyer
Attorneys in the News |
2012/12/20 15:23
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An Indiana financier and former chief executive of National Lampoon who was convicted of swindling investors out of about $200 million says he can't afford to hire an attorney to handle his appeal.
In federal court documents filed Monday, Timothy Durham said his multimillion-dollar Indianapolis home is in foreclosure and all of his financial assets are tied up bankruptcy proceedings of the companies he used to control.
Durham's home in Fortville, Ind., about 20 miles northeast of Indianapolis, has a $5 million mortgage but a free-market value of only $3 million, according to the documents.
Durham says his only income this year was $6,000 he received as a director of Dallas-based insurer CLST Holdings Inc. He also has stock in CLST and National Lampoon, the documents say.
Durham was sentenced to 50 years in prison last month on securities fraud and other convictions in the collapse of Akron, Ohio-based Fair Finance. He also was ordered to pay $202.8 million in restitution. Durham received credit for $6 million that already has been recovered.
Durham and two business partners were charged with stripping Fair Finance of its assets and using the money to buy mansions, classic cars and other luxury items and to keep another Durham company afloat. The men were convicted of operating an elaborate Ponzi scheme to hide the company's depleted condition from regulators and investors, many of whom were elderly.
Defense lawyers argued that Durham and the others were caught off-guard by the economic crisis of 2008, and bewildered when regulators placed them under more strict scrutiny and investors made a run on the company. |
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High court fight looms over right to carry a gun
Law Firm News |
2012/12/18 23:58
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The next big issue in the national debate over guns — whether people have a right to be armed in public — is moving closer to Supreme Court review.
A provocative ruling by a panel of federal appeals court judges in Chicago struck down the only statewide ban on carrying concealed weapons, in Illinois. The ruling is somewhat at odds with those of other federal courts that have largely upheld state and local gun laws, including restrictions on concealed weapons, since the Supreme Court's landmark ruling declaring that people have a right to have a gun for self-defense.
In, 2008, the court voted 5-4 in District of Columbia v. Heller to strike down Washington's ban on handgun ownership and focused mainly on the right to defend one's own home. The court left for another day how broadly the Second Amendment may protect gun rights in other settings.
Legal scholars say the competing appellate rulings mean that day is drawing near for a new high court case on gun rights.
The appeals court ruling in Chicago came early in a week that ended with the mass shooting in Connecticut that left 28 people dead, including 20 children at an elementary school and the presumed gunman. |
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Minn. gay couple in '71 marriage case still united
Current Cases |
2012/12/10 12:17
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When Jack Baker proposed to Michael McConnell that they join their lives together as a couple, in March 1967, McConnell accepted with a condition that was utterly radical for its time: that someday they would legally marry.
Just a few years later, the U.S. Supreme Court slammed the door on the men's Minnesota lawsuit to be the first same-sex couple to legally marry in the U.S. It took another 40 years for the nation's highest court to revisit gay marriage rights, and Baker and McConnell — still together, still living in Minneapolis — are alive to see it.
On Friday, the justices decided to take a potentially historic look at gay marriage by agreeing to hear two cases that challenge official discrimination against gay Americans either by forbidding them from marrying or denying those who can marry legally the right to obtain federal benefits that are available to heterosexual married couples.
"The outcome was never in doubt because the conclusion was intuitively obvious to a first-year law student," Baker wrote in an email to The Associated Press. The couple, who have kept a low profile in the years since they made national headlines with their marriage pursuit, declined an interview request but responded to a few questions via email.
While Baker saw the court's action as an obvious step, marriage between two men was nearly unthinkable to most Americans decades earlier when the couple walked into the Hennepin County courthouse in Minneapolis on May 18, 1970, and tried to get a license. |
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Court upholds sentence of ex-CIA station chief
Current Cases |
2012/12/03 15:45
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An appeals court has unanimously upheld the nearly 5 ½-year sentence of a former CIA station chief for sexually abusing an unconscious woman at the mansion the U.S. government provided for him in Algeria.
The three-judge panel ruled Friday that U.S. District Judge Ellen Huvelle had adequately explained why she sentenced Andrew Warren to roughly double what was called for in sentencing guidelines.
Warren argued that his Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, depression and substance abuse made it unreasonable to give him more than a brief sentence, followed by treatment at a private facility. The appeals court disagreed.
After Warren was fired, federal agents found him high on crack in a Virginia motel room with a semi-automatic pistol in his shorts. He pleaded guilty to abusive sexual contact and a gun charge. |
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Brazil's first black Supreme Court president
Politics |
2012/11/26 18:57
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Brazil's Supreme Court is now headed by a black justice for the first time.
Joaquim Barbosa was sworn in on Thursday. He became the only black ever to serve on the court when he joined it in 2003, even though more than half of the country's 192 million people identify themselves as having African descent.
Barbosa, 58, was elected in October to a two-year tenure as Supreme Court president. His election was a foregone conclusion since the court's presidency always goes to the justice who has served on the bench the longest.
Over the past several weeks he gained national and international renown presiding over a high-profile corruption trial involving a congressional cash-for-votes scheme. The court has convicted 25 people including the former chief of staff of ex-President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.
President Dilma Rousseff, members of her Cabinet, state governors, congressional leaders and several sports and entertainment personalities were present at Barbosa's swearing in.
"The multiculturalism that characterizes the Brazilian people is evident here today with Joaquim Barbosa heading the highest court of the land," said Ophir Cavalcante, president of the Brazilian Bar Association in a speech during the swearing in ceremony. |
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