|
|
|
Court won't stop embryonic stem cell research
Headline News |
2013/01/08 21:44
|
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. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
High Court to decide how logging roads regulated
Headline News |
2012/12/10 23:02
|
The U.S. Supreme Court will decide whether to switch gears on more than 30 years of regulating the muddy water running off logging roads into rivers.
At issue: Should the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency keep considering it the same as water running off a farm field, or start looking at it like a pipe coming out of a factory?
The case being heard Monday in Washington, D.C., was originated by a small environmental group in Portland, the Northwest Environmental Defense Center.
It sued the Oregon Department of Forestry over roads on the Tillamook State Forest that drain into salmon streams. The lawsuit argued that the Clean Water Act specifically says water running through the kinds of ditches and culverts built to handle storm water runoff from logging roads is a point source of pollution when it flows directly into a river, and requires the same sort of permit that a factory needs.
"We brought this out of a perceived sense of unfairness," said Mark Riskedahl, director of the center. "Every other industrial sector across the country had to get this sort of permit for stormwater discharge," and the process has been very effective at reducing pollution.
The pollution running off logging roads, most of them gravel or dirt, is primarily muddy water stirred up by trucks. Experts have long identified sediment dumped in streams as harmful to salmon and other fish.
The center lost in U.S. District Court in Portland, but won in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco. The Oregon Department of Forestry and Georgia Pacific-West appealed to the Supreme Court, and 31 states threw in with them. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Court won't hear appeal in witness tampering case
Headline News |
2012/11/15 12:25
|
The Supreme Court won't review a decision to throw out sanctions and a $600,000 award against Miami prosecutors in a witness-tampering investigation where members of the defense team had allegedly been secretly recorded.
The high court on Tuesday refused to hear an appeal from Dr. Ali Shaygan, who has been acquitted of 141 counts of illegally prescribing painkillers. A federal judge said publicly that three prosecutors and a Drug Enforcement Administration agent acted "vexatiously and in bad faith" for failing to obtain permission before authorizing two witnesses to record conversations with Shaygan's attorney and his investigator.
But a federal appeals court threw out the sanction and award, saying the judge violated the prosecutors' due process rights in 2009 when he issued a public reprimand for their alleged misconduct.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Chevron sued in Argentina over Ecuadorean spills
Headline News |
2012/11/06 10:27
|
Lawyers for Amazonian Indians are seeking the seizure of $2 billion of Chevron Corp.'s assets in Argentina as they try to collect an $18.7 billion environmental judgment won in Ecuador last year.
Argentine lawyer Enrique Bruchou said Thursday that his seizure request should send a strong signal to foreign investors that they must apply the same environmental standards wherever they do business. Similar lawsuits were filed this year in Canada and Brazil.
"We will win this case. And it's going to set an example for the world that we in Latin America have grown up now and that we need to be treated as equals," Bruchou said.
Chevron is refusing to pay, saying fraud marked the trial and that the Texaco Petroleum Co. mitigated the environmental damage long before it became a Chevron subsidiary in 2001.
"The Ecuador judgment is a product of bribery, fraud, and it is illegitimate. The company does not believe that the Ecuador judgment is enforceable in any court that observes the rule of law," the San Ramon, Calif.-based oil giant said in a statement. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Supreme Court views not 'liberal or conservative'
Headline News |
2012/10/19 13:42
|
U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts said Wednesday that
people shouldn't think the high court's justices make decisions in
terms of a liberal or conservative agenda.
Roberts told a crowd of nearly 4,800 people at Rice University in
Houston that many of the court's close votes have had nothing to do
with politics.
"We look at these cases and resolve them ... not in terms of a
particular liberal or conservative agenda," he said. "It's just easier
for reporters to say that justice is liberal and that justice is
conservative."
From reading some of the court's opinions, Roberts added, people may
think that justices are "at each other's throats." But he said all the
justices are "extremely close."
Roberts, taking a break from the high court's current term in
Washington, talked in general about his work leading the nation's
highest court. But he didn't discuss some of the court's more recent
high-profile cases — including voting to uphold much of President
Barack Obama's health care overhaul.
Roberts, who was appointed by President George W. Bush, made headlines
when he voted with the liberal justices in that 5-4 landmark decision.
After that ruling, Roberts became the focus of criticism from some of
the nation's leading conservatives while liberals applauded his
statesmanship. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Illegal immigrant in Fla. fights for law license
Headline News |
2012/10/04 16:04
|
A Florida man's bid to become the first illegal immigrant to obtain a law license in the United States met skepticism Tuesday from most of the state's Supreme Court justices.
Jose Godinez-Samperio came to the U.S. with his parents on visitors' visas when he was 9 years old, but the family never returned to Mexico. He graduated from New College in Florida, earned a law degree from Florida State University and passed the state bar exam last year.
"He's somebody who has done everything he's supposed to do. He complied with every rule," Godinez-Samperio's attorney and former American Bar Association president Talbot "Sandy" D'Alemberte, said after the hearing.
Godinez-Samperio's case is one of a few across the country. Illegal immigrants in New York and California also want to practice law there.
The Board of Bar Examiners in Florida found no reason to deny the 25-year-old Godinez-Samperio a license but asked the state's high court for guidance, said the board's lawyer, Robert Blythe. |
|
|
|
|
|
Legal News RSS Feed
