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Human rights court rules against Greece in Sharia law case
Blog Updates |
2018/12/14 10:51
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Greece violated a prohibition on discrimination by applying Islamic religious law to an inheritance dispute among members of the country's Muslim minority, the European Court of Human Rights ruled Wednesday.
The court, based in the eastern French city of Strasbourg, ruled Greece violated the European Convention on Human Rights by applying Sharia law in the case, under which a Muslim Greek man's will bequeathing all he owned to his wife was deemed invalid after it was challenged by his sisters.
The man's widow, Chatitze Molla Sali, appealed to the European court in 2014, having lost three quarters of her inheritance. She argued she had been discriminated against on religious grounds as, had her husband not been Muslim, she would have inherited his entire estate under Greek law.
The European court agreed. It has not yet issued a decision on what, if any, penalty it will apply to Greece.
"Greece was the only country in Europe which, up until the material time, had applied Sharia law to a section of its citizens against their wishes," the court said in its ruling.
"That was particularly problematic in the present case because the application of Sharia law had led to a situation that was detrimental to the individual rights of a widow who had inherited her husband's estate in accordance with the rules of civil law but who had then found herself in a legal situation which neither she nor her husband had intended."
Molla Sali's husband had drawn up his will according to Greek law, and both a first instance and an appeals court initially ruled in her favor in the dispute with her sisters-in-law. But further court decisions ruled that inheritance issues within the Muslim minority had to be dealt with under Islamic religious law, and the will was deemed invalid.
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Defamation lawsuit against activist continues in state court
Blog Updates |
2018/12/10 11:07
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A Maine activist who accused an orphanage founder in Haiti of being a serial pedophile asked the state supreme court on Tuesday to dismiss a defamation lawsuit that was moved from federal court.
An attorney for Paul Kendrick told justices that the assertions were protected by a Maine law that protects people from meritless suits aimed at chilling First Amendment rights.
The argument that invoked Maine's Anti-SLAPP statute was met with skepticism from justices who questioned whether the law was intended to apply to harassment and cyberbullying.
But Supreme Court Chief Justice Leigh Saufley suggested there's a balancing act when between free speech and defamation.
"Are we not sliding into an areas where we have to be very careful not to chill the voices of people who say we must speak up in support of children who have been abused?" she asked an attorney at one point. "We know that if people are afraid to speak up that abuse can go on for decades."
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Lump of coal? Taxes more likely for online gifts this season
Blog Updates |
2018/11/27 09:37
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Shoppers heading online to purchase holiday gifts will find they're being charged sales tax at some websites where they weren't before. The reason: the Supreme Court.
A June ruling gave states the go-ahead to require more companies to collect sales tax on online purchases. Now, more than two dozen have moved to take advantage of the ruling, many ahead of the busy holiday shopping season.
"Will your shopping bill look any different? ... The answer right now is it depends," said Jason Brewer, a spokesman for the Retail Industry Leaders Association, which represents more than 70 major retailers.
Whether shoppers get charged sales tax on their online purchases comes down to where they live and where they're shopping.
Before the Supreme Court's recent decision , the rule was that businesses selling online had to collect sales tax only in states where they had stores, warehouses or another physical presence. That meant that major retailers such as Apple, Best Buy, Macy's and Target, which have brick-and-mortar stores nationwide, were generally collecting sales tax from online customers. But that wasn't the case for businesses with a big online presence but few physical locations.
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Poland moves to reinstate retired judges to Supreme Court
Blog Updates |
2018/11/21 11:03
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Poland's ruling party has submitted a draft law to parliament that would reinstate Supreme Court judges who were recently forced into early retirement.
The development comes a month after the European Union's top court ordered Poland to immediately stop applying a law that lowered the retirement age for Supreme Court judges, forcing about two dozen of them off the bench.
Poland has been in a standoff with the European Union for three years over attempts by the ruling populist Law and Justice party to impose control over the court system. The efforts have raised serious concerns over rule of law in the young democracy.
Wednesday's legislative initiative marks one of the first significant steps by Poland to comply with EU demands.
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