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In 1968 Shirley Chisholm became the first Black woman elected to the United States Congress. In 1972 she launched a campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, breaking another political barrier.
MORE →Reflects the personal views, recollections, and perspective of the author, Mike Davis.
This is a personal recollection on the Move fire on May 13, 1985
State liability is the legal liability of a state. It refer to the liability of an organ of state or public authority in that state's own domestic legal system, typically under special principles within the law of tort or delict.
State Liability and the Law: A Historical and Comparative Analysis is a 2023 book by the Polish legal scholar, constitutionalist, and politician Bartłomiej Wróblewski, published by Routledge as the second title in the Routledge Studies in Comparative Legal History series. Gwidon Naskrent translated it from Wróblewski's 2011 Polish monograph. The book covers German, French, and English law from middle ages to the mid-twentieth century, and the more Greek and Roman, European legal thought (ius commune, the natural law school). It asks how those systems came to hold, or to deny, that the state must answer for the acts of public authorities, and in particular for the acts of the legislature. Contrary to the prevailing view according to which state liability originated in the late 19th century only, Wróblewski discovered traces of it in almost every period and thus rejects the dogma of the absence of liability for legislative acts in previous times.
R (Factortame Ltd) v Secretary of State for Transport was a judicial review case taken against the United Kingdom government by a company of Spanish fishermen who claimed that the United Kingdom had breached European Union law (then Community Law) by requiring ships to have a majority of British owners if they were to be registered in the UK. The case produced a number of significant judgements on British constitutional law, and was the first time that courts held that they had power to restrain the application of an Act of Parliament pending trial and ultimately to disapply that Act when it was found to be contrary to EU law. The litigation was lengthy, and is typically divided into five main stages: Factortame I, where the High Court and then the House of Lords (which functioned as the final court of appeal prior to 2009) both made a reference to the European Court of Justice (ECJ) on the legality of the Merchant Shipping Act 1988's ("MSA") requirement for UK fishing vessels to be 75% UK owned. After the ECJ confirmed the incompatibility of the Act with EU law, Factortame saw the House of Lords confirm the primacy of EU law over national law in the areas where the EU has competence because of the UK acceding to the EU treaties. Factortame II, where the ECJ held that the provisions of the MSA were required to be disapplied by the UK courts if they contravened EU law. Factortame III, where the ECJ held that a member state could be liable for damages in an action by the European Commission for breach of EU law. Factortame IV, where the House of Lords ruled that damages could be awarded against a member state like the UK for losses suffered by private parties under the Francovich v Italy principle, that wrongs by violation of a public body generate a private law claim from anybody who has suffered a directly connected loss (also known as the doctrine of state liability). Factortame V, holding that claims after 1996 were statute-barred, since claims against a member state were like other claims in tort under the Limitation Act 1980.
Francovich v Italy (1991) C-6/90 was a decision of the European Court of Justice which established that European Union Member States could be liable to pay compensation to individuals who suffered a loss by reason of the Member State's failure to transpose an EU directive into national law. This principle is sometimes known as the principle of state liability or "the rule in Francovich" in European Union law.
Before the 1921 destruction of Tulsa’s Greenwood District, Black residents had created a remarkable center of business and community life. The district included stores, professional offices, entertainment venues and homes owned by Black citizens. Understanding Greenwood means learning what was built—not only what was burned.
MORE →The Greenwood District.