By Markus Richard.
Protests persisted even after Lula’s inauguration, culminating in an assault on government buildings that host Brazil’s executive, legislative, and judicial branches of government. The protestors heeded calls across pro-Bolsonaro social media channels to head to the capital and “surround Brasilia,” presumably in an attempt to overwhelm the government and overthrow it.
Read MoreBy Ashton Holland.
Officials in the United Kingdom have introduced legislation to maintain minimum service levels for health, education, fire and rescue, transportation, border security, and decommissioning of nuclear installations. This legislation forces employers to maintain a certain level of working employees during strikes to prevent severe disruption to the general public.
Read MoreBy Michael Reingold.
South Korea has yet to legalize same-sex marriage, and the future of same-sex marriage for LGBTQ South Koreans is bleak. Many articles of the South Korean Constitution, however, pave a way for reform and enable South Korea to legalize same-sex marriage in the future — even as South Korean courts continually and arbitrarily refuse to uphold and legalize same-sex marriages.
Read MoreBy Markus Richard.
In Poland, the Constitutional Court ruled in October 2020 that abortions for egregious cases of fetal abnormalities were unconstitutional. In a deeply Catholic and conservative country where all but twenty-six out of 1,100 abortions in 2020 were in cases of abnormalities, this amounted to a complete ban.
Read MoreBy Dylan Vogel.
The Irish government broadened the pathways available to whistleblowers reporting wrongdoing in both private and public institutions. This legislation will cause actual reform across hundreds of Irish companies. This represents an important step for strengthening institutional trust and improvement.
Read MoreBy Noah Thelen.
Despite Portugal having a remarkably low prison population — currently 118 per 100,000 individuals — the country is still plagued with police misconduct and issues over the treatment of prisoners. All of Europe is under strict review of policies from the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhumane or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (“CPT”).
Read MoreBy Frankie Salamida.
Belgium legalized voluntary euthanasia in 2002 and currently has the most liberal euthanasia laws compared to any other country in the world. Some have wondered if these laws have gone too far, but physicians in Belgium believe they have not. With the number of safeguards in place and conditions that must be met, physicians assure that people who die via euthanasia are making an informed choice themselves. Thus, Belgium’s legalization gives these patients a right to die.
Read MoreBy Brittany Macaddino.
Hungary is one of the only countries who the EU is withholding pandemic relief funds from, citing concerns over rule of law issues within Hungary’s government. Now, Prime Minister Orban is being forced to strike a deal with the EU commission in order to secure these funds to prevent a recession.
Read MoreBy Kaitlin Lapka.
The Netherlands is on track to becoming the first country in the world to make remote work, a legal right. Other countries interested in the future of employment law may want to follow suit. This past July, the lower house of the Dutch’s bicameral parliament, Tweede Kamer, passed an amendment to the nation’s Flexible Working Act 2015 that is now awaiting final approval from the upper house, Eerste Kamer.
Read MoreBy Madeline Jones.
The right to reproductive choice has been formally recognized in international human rights treaties and jurisprudence since 1968. Honduras has prohibited emergency contraception and abortion in all instances since 1982 and recently ratified the Honduran Constitution in January 2022 to explicitly ban abortion within the text of the Constitution. Honduras’s ban on abortion and emergency contraception goes against the principles of international human rights law and furthers discrimination against women.
Read MoreBy Aaron Hoover.
Since forced assimilation by the Imperial Japanese government, Ainu people have struggled to be recognized by the state as an indigenous people. Especially in the last twenty years, legal measures have slowly attempted to remedy this. How might the 2019 Act continue to influence this change?
Read MoreBy Ashton Holland.
Cultural appropriation is defined as “the lifting of aspects of one culture or society for use by another culture.” To minimize this, Mexico has limited exploitation of their resident’s culture through the Federal Law for the Protection of the Cultural Heritage of Indigenous and Afro-Mexican People and Communities.
Read MoreBy Anna Henson.
DRC is one of the most resource-rich countries in the world. Today, DRC tries to untangle the web weaved by centuries of colonialism and improve the lives of its citizens by stabilizing the economy. However, in order to do this, it has been selling mineral rights to one of today’s most valuable resources, cobalt, which is a critical component in lithium batteries (used in phones and electric cars). The result? Human rights questions and resurfacing colonialistic tendencies by its main investor: China.
Read MoreBy Albert Chang.
Australia enacted the New Media Bargaining Code to support public interest journalism against digital conglomerates like Google and Facebook. The NMBC governs commercial relationship between Australia news businesses and designated digital platforms who benefit from a significant bargaining power imbalance.
Read MoreBy Caleb Carter.
The Kingdom of Denmark has a unique history regarding its international security agreements. In fact, until recently, Denmark’s position was the opposite of a couple of its Scandinavian neighbors, Sweden and Finland. While all three of these nations are members of the European Union (“EU”), until June 1, 2022, Denmark was the only EU member state to opt-out of the EU’s Common Security and Defense Policy (“CSDP”).
Read MoreBy Natalie Glitz Grumhaus.
The Taliban are ideologically opposed to any form of art other than those traditionally allowed in their fundamentalist form of Islam. Unfortunately, this traditional prohibition does not apply only to their own creations, but also compels the group to obliterate any historically and culturally important works across Afghanistan that conflict with their ideology, like the Bamiyan Buddhas in 2001. This article considers the history of international intervention in cultural heritage preservation, and several ways that Afghanistan’s cultural heritage could be protected in the future.
Read MoreBy Taylor Schanz.
The sentencing of WNBA star Brittney Griner by a Russian Court made international headlines and provided a glimpse of Russia’s austere drug laws. For the past three decades, Russia has enforced a strict abstinence and social intolerance approach to its war on drugs, implementing severe punitive measures to deter drug use. However, this tactic has been largely ineffective and has led to increased incarnation and health-related issues.
Read MoreBy Luke Barbrick.
The inability of Chinese lawyers and judges to protect the rights of the country’s persecuted Uyghur Muslims is due to the corrupted nature of China’s weak judiciary. Despite recent government efforts to prove otherwise, the courts of the People’s Republic of China remain little more than rubber stamps for the reigning Communist Party.
Read MoreBy Jennifer Churay.
In November 2015, a series of terrorist attacks in Paris, France left hundreds of people dead or injured. After the attacks, France declared a state of emergency, implemented new laws, and prepared for a historic criminal trial. Unfortunately, the world is all too familiar with terrorist attacks. However, the trial for the accused defendants of the 2015 attacks is unique in several ways.
Read MoreBy Haley Wehner.
In the last few years, Spanish media has been filled with various stories of horrific sexual assault cases. The Spanish people have rejected various media and defendants attempts to blame victims of alleged assault. As a result, in 2022, the Spanish legislature passed a new law stating that any sex that takes place without clear consent from the accuser can now be prosecuted as rape.
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