Court Upholds Two Pro-Life Oklahoma Laws.
Separate panels of the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals have ruled against an abortion clinic's challenges to two Oklahoma laws: one requiring parents to be notified of their minor daughter's abortion, and another requiring abortionists to pay for medical costs if an abortion is performed without parents' knowledge. The...

Supreme Court upholds Megan's Law statutes. (Identifying Convicted Sex Offenders).
WASHINGTON -- The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled to uphold Megan's Law statutes in two key decisions. Those rulings, made last month, mark the first by the high court on Megan's Laws, which are designed to ensure that the public can obtain information about the backgrounds of...

U.S. Supreme Court upholds two megan's law statutes. (Connecticut and Alaska Cases).
WASHINGTON -- The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled to uphold Megan's Law statutes in two key decisions. Those rulings, made last month, mark the first by the high court on Megan's Laws, which are designed to ensure that the public can obtain information about the backgrounds of...

Top criminal cases (post-charter).
In my last column, I outlined some of the most important court decisions in the area of criminal law prior to the enactment of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms in 1982. When the Charter came into force in 1982 it changed a number of aspects...

'Death Game' reveals truth about the death penalty. (Book Review).
The Death Game: Capital Punishment and the Luck of the Draw By Mike Gray Common Courage Press; $19.95/232 pages The book jacket for Mike Gray's The Death Game: Capital Punishment and the Luck of the Draw eases from a deep red to a...

Government aid and religious schools: 70 years of controversy.
The U.S. Supreme Court has been grappling with the issue of government aid to religious schools since 1930. The court's jurisprudence in this area has spawned a long line of decisions, but the rulings have not always been consistent. In some cases, aid was upheld, in others it was...

Supreme Court roundup.
Reactions to the retirement of Justice Sandra Day O'Connor and debate over the president's replacement nomination, Judge John Roberts, Jr., of the D.C. Circuit, dominated this summer's Supreme Court recess. Subsequently, after Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist's death on September 3, 2005, President Bush nominated Roberts for the chief...

COMMUNIST CUSTODIAL CONTESTS: ADOPTION RULINGS IN THE USSR AFTER THE SECOND WORLD WAR.
The Bolshevik regime outlawed adoption in 1918, but adoption re-entered the legal code in 1926. [1] The basic adoption laws of the Soviet Union remained unchanged until 1968--and even then kept much of their original essence--but the nature of adoption shifted profoundly from a stopgap policy in the struggle...

Political cycles of life and death: capital punishment as public policy in California.
I. INTRODUCTION Capital punishment has been an important issue in contemporary American politics since the mid-1960s. But, because there have been only three executions for federal crimes in almost forty years, (1) it has been left to the states to debate the issues and efficacy of capital...

Jurisdiction stripping, constitutional supremacy, and the implications of Ex parte Young.
On July 22, 2004, (1) the House of Representatives passed the Marriage Protection Act of 2004, a bill that would strip the federal courts of jurisdiction over cases challenging the constitutionality of the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act. (2) Two months later, the House passed a similar bill that...