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A temporary restraining order has been issued to block a state constitutional amendment that prohibits state courts from considering international or Islamic law when deciding cases. U.S. District Judge Vicki Miles-LaGrange handed down the ruling this morning in Oklahoma City following a brief hearing.

A court in the United Arab Emirates says a man is permitted under Islamic law to physically discipline his wife and children as long as he leaves no marks and has tried other methods of punishment, the country's top court ruled. The ruling came in the case of a man who slapped his wife and slapped and kicked his 23-year-old daughter, the document said. The daughter had bruises on her right hand and right knee and the wife had injuries to her lower lip and teeth, the ruling said. The court ruled that a man has the right to punish...

Sen. Jim DeMint (R- S.C.) said that if President Barack Obama gets his way and the Senate ratifies the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, the precedent would be set to place parental rights under the jurisdiction of the international community. “We believe we need to take clear action here in Congress to protect the rights of parents to raise their children," DeMint said at a Wednesday panel discussion. "This treaty would, in fact, establish a precedent that those rights have been given over to the international community." DeMint is lead sponsor of S. Res. 519, a...

Mexico City, Mexico, Aug 5, 2010 / 05:56 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Despite heavy opposition from various organizations defending traditional marriage, Mexico’s Supreme Court ruled Thursday that same-sex “marriage” in the country's capital city is constitutional. According to the Associated Press, the court's justices acknowledged that while the constitution protects the family, it does not define what a "family" is. The 8-2 vote went against an appeal by Mexico's attorney general challenging the constitutionality of the city's law allowing gay “marriage.” The law went into effect on March 4 of this year. Next Monday the court will debate whether the law...

What Would Elena Do? Emily Jaroma, July 15, 2010 The debate regarding whether international law should play a contributing role in deciding Supreme Court cases has sparked national interest and concern. This is due to the fact that there has been a recent tendency by Supreme Court Justices to refer to or cite international law when dealing with a domestic court case. This leads many to ask, What is Elena Kagan’s view on the role of international law in domestic cases? The very fact that President Obama appointed Kagan to serve on the Supreme Court does provide some information on...

The organizers of the Gaza-bound flotilla that Israel intercepted last Monday morning accused Israel of "war crimes," blaming it for the deaths that occurred aboard one of the six ships. Yet Israel acted within international law. It may enforce international sanctions when Hamas continues to import weapons for use against civilians. It may board ships in international waters if they refuse to stop. Its soldiers may fire if met with deadly force. There were war crimes committed last Monday, however: They were committed by those who organized and sponsored the flotilla itself. International law forbids using civilians to achieve a...

As most conservative writers have pointed out many times, the present Administration exhibits a shocking disregard and near-contempt for the U.S. Constitution. Obama's Supreme Court nominee, Elena Kagan, is a perfect case in point. (Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan walks towards the office of Sen. Blanche Lincoln, D-Ark., on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, May 20, 2010. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)). While Dean of the Harvard Law School Kagan did not require students to study the U.S. Constitution at all. Instead, she required that they study foreign and international law. The implications of such a mindset are enormous.

So exactly what is the law on crimes in the open ocean? What recourse do nations/individuals have against piracy, etc. on the oceans?

The principle of Universal Jurisdiction has been, and continues to be, an important tool in the legal practitioner’s tool box and an essential means of achieving justice for international crimes. Unfortunately, the principle has also become a political device employed for far more cynical means and far less noble purposes. In the early 1960’s, Israel was one of the first states to invoke the principle of universal jurisdiction in its groundbreaking trial against Adolf Eichmann, the “architect of the Holocaust”.

The United Nations and Interpol, the global police organization, are poised to become partners in fighting crime by jointly creating an international police force. Interpol, which is financed by 187 member nations, says the "global police doctrine" would allow the deployment of peacekeepers among rogue nations plagued by war and organized crime. "We have a visionary model," said Interpol Secretary General Ronald K. Noble, who described the joint partnership "an alliance of all nations." He suggested that by relying on Interpol's resources, the United Nations would be able to handle international conflicts and transnational crime far better.

*NEA conference call full audio and transcript here** Should the National Endowment for the Arts encourage artists to create art on issues being vehemently debated nationally? That is the question that I set out to discuss a little over three weeks ago when I wrote an article on Big Hollywood entitled The National Endowment for the Art of Persuasion?” The question still requires debate but the facts do not. The NEA and the White House did encourage a handpicked, pro-Obama arts group to address politically controversial issues under contentious national debate. That fact is irrefutable. But some have claimed that...

Col. Richard Kemp Formerly commander of British forces in Afghanistan Col. Richard Kemp told a conference in Jerusalem on June 18, 2009: "Hamas' military capability was deliberately positioned behind the human shield of the civilian population. They also ordered, forced when necessary, men, women and children from their own population to stay put in places they knew were about to be attacked by the IDF. Israel was fighting an enemy that is deliberately trying to sacrifice their own people, deliberately trying to lure you into killing their own innocent civilians." Click here to read the full presentation. Click here to...

US President Barack Obama consistently couches his demand that Israel prohibit Jewish people from constructing or expanding our homes and communities in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria in legal-sounding language. Obama has called settlements "illegitimate." And he has said that Israel "has obligations under the road map," while referring disparagingly to "settlements that, in past agreements, have been categorized as illegal." Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Obama's Middle East envoy George Mitchell have repeatedly uttered similar statements. By characterizing its demand that Israel prohibit Jews from building homes in Israel's capital city and its heartland as a legal requirement, the...

While our media sleep, the United Nations is proceeding, with President Obama's acquiescence, to implement a global plan to create a new international socialist order financed by global taxes on the American people.The Conference on the World Financial and Economic Crisis and its Impact on Development that begins on Wednesday will consider adoption of a document calling for "new voluntary and innovative sources of financing initiatives to provide additional stable sources of development finance..." This is U.N.-speak for global taxes. They are anything but "voluntary" for the people forced to pay them.The most "popular" proposals, which could generate tens of...

State Department legal adviser nominee Harold Koh believes that notwithstanding congressional authorization, the Iraq war “violate[s] international law” because the United States did not receive “explicit United Nations authorization” for the war. I’d be interested to learn how (apart from crass political considerations) Koh reconciles his position on the Iraq war with his support for President Clinton’s war in Kosovo.  The Kosovo war had a much weaker basis in international law than the war in Iraq (which, among other things, had at the very least a strong claim of having implicit United Nations authorization).  And, as a matter of domestic law,...

Under Sharia law men can divorce their wives (as Islam allows up to four of them) by just writing or saying that they want a divorce three times. This is known as talaq. A Sharia Court in Saudi Arabia has now allowed a Muslim man to divorce his wife via text message.

Law: President Obama's nominee for State Department legal adviser could be a future Supreme Court pick. He believes U.S. law should be based on foreign precedent, and even Shariah law could find a home here.We have commented many times on the opinion of a number of U.S. Supreme Court justices that American jurists should include foreign law and precedent in their decisions. In several prominent cases, this has already happened. In a speech in South Africa, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg called the March 2005 Roper v. Simmons decision, in which a 5-4 majority ruled against executing murderers who were 17...

The conviction Tuesday of former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori on human rights charges – including authorizing murder and kidnapping – has been hailed by some as a milestone for justice in Latin America. Mr. Fujimori, who ruled Peru throughout the 1990s, is the first democratically elected leader in the region found guilty, in his own country, of human rights abuses. But the conviction is also an important moment for national healing in Peru, says Efrain Gonzales, the vice rector of the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru in Lima. While about one third of the country still supports the former leader,...

As the U.S. government’s myriad intrusions radically transform our economy, few seem to notice the dangerous progress of the international Left’s assault on American sovereignty. Without firing a shot, transnational progressives are further along than the Soviet Union could ever have reasonably hoped to be, notwithstanding Lenin’s prescient understanding that we would willingly participate in our own demise. In the Left’s sights is the very concept of the American people’s right of self-defense. The New York Times reports that a Spanish court is considering filing human-rights charges, and issuing arrest warrants, against former attorney general Alberto Gonzales and five other...

JUDGES should interpret the Constitution according to other nations' legal "norms." Sharia law could apply to disputes in US courts. The United States constitutes an "axis of disobedience" along with North Korea and Saddam-era Iraq. Those are the views of the man on track to become one of the US government's top lawyers: Harold Koh. President Obama has nominated Koh -- until last week the dean of Yale Law School -- to be the State Department's legal adviser. In that job, Koh would forge a wide range of international agreements on issues from trade to arms control, and help represent...