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Legal System

Court Rules Against Waratah Coal Mine In Landmark Ruling

November 25, 2022 Jade Toomey, ABC Australia. , , ,
The Queensland Land Court has ruled human rights would be unjustifiably limited by a proposal to dig the state's largest coal mine in the Galilee Basin in Central Queensland. First Nations-led activist group Youth Verdict challenged an application by mining company Waratah Coal, owned by billionaire Clive Palmer. The group of young Queensland activists challenged the mine on the basis it would impact the human rights of First Nations peoples by contributing to climate change. The coal mine would remove about 40 million tonnes of coal a year for export to South-East Asia, with a forecast life span of 30 years. It is the first time a group has successfully argued coal from a mine would impact human rights by contributing to climate change.

A Promising Challenge To The World’s Richest Man

November 23, 2022 Sam Pizzigati, Inequality.org. , , ,
A good day’s work for a good day’s pay. Should this age-old wisdom define how our workplaces here in the 21st century go about compensating work? More to the point: Should our corporations start applying this common-sense standard across the board, to both front-line workers and our most powerful corporate CEOs? Kathaleen McCormick will soon let us know, in a turn of events that must have the richest man in the known universe — Elon Musk — more than a little bit uneasy. McCormick currently serves as the chancellor — top judge — in what amounts to Corporate America’s top go-to judicial body, Delaware’s little-known Court of Chancery. Why does corporate law so often come down to what judges in Delaware say that law should be?

Repression In The Courts Is Failing To Silence Palestine Campaigners

November 23, 2022 Tom Anderson, The Canary. , , , ,
Palestine campaigners have been dragged through the UK courts over the last few months because of their intense direct action campaign against Israeli arms company Elbit Systems. Elbit is Israel’s largest private drone manufacturer, and manufactures the majority of the drones that the Israeli military uses to attack Gaza. It also manufactures small-caliber ammunition for the Israeli army. Campaigners have been have been taking action against Elbit for more than a decade. However, the direct action campaign gathered momentum after the formation of Palestine Action in 2020. Campaigners have vowed to push Elbit out of the UK. This week, three campaigners are standing trial in Southwark Crown Court, for an action in which they drenched the London HQ of Elbit Systems in red paint.

How Brazil’s Electoral Court Took Action Against Bolsonaro’s Fake News

November 17, 2022 Brian Mier, Multipolarista. , , ,
Brazil’s far-right President Jair Bolsonaro has often been described as the “Trump of the tropics,” in reference to the former leader of the United States. But this has led to superficial comparisons between the two countries. It is true that the Bolsonaro family and members of Steve Bannon’s ultra-conservative “Movement” have worked together closely, and social media disinformation tactics were imported from the US and became a key factor in Bolsonaro’s 2018 electoral victory. However, Brazil’s electoral system is completely different. Many things that are illegal in US elections – especially regarding campaign funding – are considered election fraud under Brazilian law.

Commission Hears Landmark Case Of Killing By US Border Patrol

November 16, 2022 Marjorie Cohn, Truthout. , , , ,
For the first time, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights has agreed to hear an extrajudicial killing case involving violence committed by U.S. law enforcement. The Commission is a body of the Organization of American States, which includes the United States. It considers cases involving torture, massacres, extrajudicial killings and disappearances in the Americas. On May 28, 2010, Anastasio Hernández Rojas, a 42-year-old long-time San Diego resident and father of five, was crossing the border from Mexico into the United States when he was apprehended and tortured by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents. He died in the hospital a few days later from his injuries. In order to cover up their crimes, the agents attempted to destroy evidence and create a false narrative that portrayed them as the victims and Hernández Rojas as the aggressor.

Fossil Fuel Industry Dupes Media

November 16, 2022 Michael Thomas, Popular Information. , , ,
Shortly after he took office, President Biden announced a goal of building 30 gigawatts (GW) of offshore wind by 2030, enough clean energy to power 10 million homes. For the administration, the offshore wind target was a part of a larger strategy of reducing carbon pollution and putting the country on track for net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. But, like many clean energy plans, this one was met with immediate resistance. In August 2021, CBS News reported that Nantucket Residents Against Turbines — or ACK Rats — launched a lawsuit against the administration's offshore wind plans. The Massachusetts-based resident group argued that offshore wind development “poses a threat to the critically endangered North Atlantic Right Whale.”

Foluke Adebisi’s Book, ‘Decolonisation And Legal Knowledge’

November 6, 2022 Roberto Sirvent, Black Agenda Report. , , ,
Since 2015 and the Rhodes Must Fall movement in Cape Town, South Africa, as well as its counterpart student movement at Oxford, University in the UK, the question of the relevance of decolonisation to higher education has become quite prominent across Global North universities. Prior to this, my scholarship examined, inter alia, the effects of incomplete decolonization of African polities, for example, continued education dependency and humanitarian interventionism. However, with the increased focus on decolonisation in UK higher education, I became increasingly frustrated with what I saw as the inadequacy, misunderstandings, and misuses of decolonization as a practice and logic. In response, in Decolonisation and Legal Knowledge, I want to reposition the conversation, by taking a temporally and spatially wider look at the present state of law, its knowledge structure and its relation to colonisation-decolonisation.

This Is America; That’s The Kind Of Trial Mumia Abu-Jamal Had

November 6, 2022 Janine Jackson, Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting. , ,
Mumia Abu-Jamal’s conviction turned importantly on unreliable and conflicting testimony. It was significant that in taking up the case, elite news media went along for the ride, and sometimes drove the car—encouraging acceptance, for instance, of the fact that, though the guard assigned to Mumia immediately after his arrest reported “the negro male made no statements,” more to be believed was the other officer who subsequently came forward to say that, actually, from his hospital bed, Mumia had declared, “I shot the motherfucker  and I hope he dies.” Neither witness recantations or shifting accounts or evidence of jury-purging in Mumia’s case, nor the ever-expanding evidence of the terrible harms and injustices of the US prison system generally, seem to be enough to shake some media from their investment in the narrative of the “convicted cop killer,” and the need to keep him not just behind bars, but also to keep him and people “similar to” him quiet, to keep their voices and their lives out of public conversation and consideration.

Noelle Hanrahan On Mumia Abu-Jamal Update

October 29, 2022 Janine Jackson, Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting. , ,
This week on CounterSpin: A 1995 Washington Post story led with a macabre account from the widow of Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner, about how when her husband’s bloody shirt was held up in court, his accused killer Mumia Abu-Jamal turned in his chair and smiled at her. An evocatively sinister report, which the paper printed untroubled by the fact that the court record showed that Abu-Jamal wasn’t in court when the shirt was displayed. ABC‘s investigative news show 20/20 used all the techniques for their big 1998 piece on the conviction of Abu-Jamal for Faulkner’s killing—stating prosecution claims as fact, even when they were disputed by some of the prosecution’s own witnesses or the forensic record; stressing how a defense witness admitted being intoxicated, while omitting that prosecution witnesses said the same.

Death Row? Hell No!

October 29, 2022 Gloria Rubac, Workers World. , , ,
Austin, Texas - It was a perfect weather day at the Texas Capitol in Austin Oct. 22, for hundreds who participated in one march and two rallies against the racist anti-poor death penalty. In three emotional hours, love, solidarity, determination, anger, heartbreak and resilience filled the crisp autumn air as activists held the 23rd Annual Texas March and Rally to Abolish the Death Penalty. A carload of people came from the Rio Grande Valley near the Texas-Mexico border and others from nearby cities. The Kids Against the Death Penalty led a loud and militant march around the capitol to the governor’s mansion and through downtown, totally disturbing the peace. Austin’s progressive singer/songwriter Sara Hickman warmed up the crowd early on with her vocals.

Mumia Abu-Jamal Denied A New Trial

October 27, 2022 Noelle Hanrahan, Prison Radio. , , ,
Yesterday, at 12:45pm October 26, 2022, a proposed order denying Mumia Abu-Jamal’s constitutional claims of jury bias and suppressed evidence was issued by Common Pleas court Judge Lucretia Clemons.   Abu-Jamal’s defense petition included newly discovered evidence that had been buried in the prosecutor’s own files.  This evidence documented key witnesses receiving promises of money for their testimony and evidence of favorable treatment in pending criminal cases. The petition also documented the abhorrent and unconstitutional practice of striking Black jurors during Mumia’s original trial. Philadelphia ADA Jack McMahon made the policy clear in a 1986 training tape stating that getting “a competent, fair and impartial jury. Well, that's ridiculous,'…“You don't want smart people. But if you're sitting down and you're going to take Blacks, you want older Blacks."

Court Finds Extinction Rebellion Scientists Not Guilty For Action At BEIS

October 22, 2022 Extinction Rebellion UK. , , ,
Five Scientists for Extinction Rebellion on trial for criminal damage have been acquitted by a magistrates’ court in London. Dr Stuart Capstick, an environmental social scientist, Dr Abi Perrin, a biologist, Emma Smart, an ecologist, Dr Aaron Thierry, an earth-system scientist and Dr Caroline Vincent, a retired scientist and consultant, were facing a charge of criminal damage to the value of £2,000. They were part of a group of nine scientists who pasted scientific papers, used chalk spray and glued themselves to the windows of the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) in an act of nonviolent civil disobedience to highlight the danger posed by new oil and gas exploration. [1] [2] They were joined by a dozen other scientists and assisted in their actions by doctors and health professionals.

New Jersey Sues Oil Companies For Decades Of ‘Public Deception’ On Climate Change

October 20, 2022 Nick Cunningham, DeSmog. , , , ,
The state of New Jersey filed a lawsuit on Tuesday against five oil companies and the oil industry’s most powerful lobbying group for covering up and misleading the public about climate change, the latest round of state and municipal-led climate litigation seeking accountability from the oil industry. The lawsuit, filed in the New Jersey Superior Court, states that the companies knew about climate change for decades and actively sought to conceal that information from the public. Instead, they funded PR campaigns aimed at confusing and misleading the public. The oil companies “concealed and misrepresented the dangers of fossil fuels; disseminated false and misleading information about the existence, causes, and effects of climate change; and aggressively promoted the ever-increasing use of their products at ever-greater volumes,” the complaint states.

Victory In Detroit Will Breathe Lawsuit Against The City Of Detroit

October 17, 2022 Detroit Will Breathe, Left Voice. , , ,
Detroit, Michigan - Today, Detroit Will Breathe and individual plaintiffs have accepted a historic offer of judgment extended by the City of Detroit that includes over 1 million dollars — $5,000 awarded directly to the organization, with the remainder divided amongst the plaintiffs. This offer of judgment resolves the case in our favor and means that the federal court will rule that the City of Detroit and the Detroit Police Department violated the constitutional rights of protestors during the George Floyd uprising of 2020. Regardless of what the City might say, this judgment is a victory for the movement. At the start of our lawsuit, we obtained an unprecedented temporary restraining order against DPD. The restraining order prohibited DPD from beating, choking, pepper-spraying, and tear-gassing protestors and was converted into an injunction that lasted over two years.

Acquittal For Saved Dying Piglets Sets ‘Right to Rescue’ Precedent

October 10, 2022 Kenny Stancil, Common Dreams. , , ,
The not-guilty verdict—a landmark decision establishing the legal "right to rescue" distressed animals in need of care—is "the culmination of a more than five-year pursuit that multiple agencies, including the FBI and the Utah attorney general's office," The Intercept's Marina Bolotnikova reported. As Bolotnikova noted, the case "began after the activists published undercover footage revealing gruesome conditions at Smithfield, the nation's largest pork producer," in violation of Utah's 2012 ag-gag law criminalizing the collection of evidence of animal abuse and other illegal activities on factory farms. Wayne Hsiung and Paul Picklesimer, members of the animal rights group Direct Action Everywhere (DxE), rescued two dangerously underweight piglets, whom they named Lily and Lizzie, from Circle Four Farms in Beaver County in March 2017.
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