Autor: adriano

  The spread of Bitcoins is now prompting regulators in Scandinavia to draft new rules in an effort to prevent virtual money from slipping into a legal gray zone.   Denmark is the latest nation to prepare standards to protect its consumers from risks associated with virtual currencies after the regulator found it lacked authority to prevent a company creating an exchange for the software.   The most likely outcome would be an “amendment to existing financial legislation so that we have regulation covering it,” Michael Landberg, chief legal adviser at the Financial Supervisory Authority in Denmark, said yesterday in a phone interview. “It is also important to have this included in money laundering acts.”   More and more nations are taking an official stance on virtual currencies that aren’t controlled…

  A woman who wants to marry in a Church of Scientology chapel has won a battle in the UK's highest court.   Scientologist Louisa Hodkin took her fight to the supreme court after a high court judge ruled that services run by Scientologists were not "acts of worship".   Five supreme court justices analysed the case at a hearing in London in July and ruled in her favour on Wednesday, announcing that the Scientology church was a "place of meeting for religious worship".   Hodkin wants to marry Alessandro Calcioli in a Church of Scientology chapel in central London.   She took legal action after the registrar general of births, deaths and marriages refused to register the London Church Chapel for the solemnisation of marriages under the 1855 Places of Worship…

  A senior judge has argued that the European court in Strasbourg should not have the last word on interpreting the human rights convention. Delivering the third of his Hamlyn lectures in London on Wednesday evening, Sir John Laws said that national courts should follow their own interpretations of human rights issues.   Laws, the longest-serving lord justice of appeal, questioned an important principle laid down nearly 10 years ago by Lord Bingham, who was then senior law lord.   In a case called Ullah, Bingham had said that the correct interpretation of the convention could be authoritatively expounded only by the human rights court in Strasbourg. "The meaning of the convention should be uniform throughout the states [that are] party to it," Bingham added.   But Laws disagreed. "There may perfectly properly be different…

[JURIST] The US Supreme Court [official website] ruled [opinion, PDF] Tuesday in Sprint Communications, Inc. v. Jacobs [SCOTUSblog backgrounder; JURIST report] that the federal court did not have to delay proceedings while a similar state court proceeding was ongoing. The case dealt with the application of Younger v. Harris [opinion] where state regulations affect telephone-via-internet calls. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote for a unanimous court: Circumstances fitting within the Younger doctrine, we have stressed, are "exceptional"; they include ... "state criminal prosecutions," "civil enforcement proceedings," and "civil proceedings involving certain orders that are uniquely in furtherance of the state courts' ability to perform their judicial functions." ... Because this case presents none of the circumstances the Court has ranked as "exceptional," the general rule governs: "[T]he pendency of an action in [a] statecourt is no bar to proceedings concerning the same…

[JURIST] The US Supreme Court [official website] heard oral arguments [day call, PDF] Wednesday in two cases. In Lozano v. Montoya Alvarez [transcript, PDF; JURIST report] the court will determine whether a district court considering a petition under the Hague Convention [text; JURIST news archive] for the return of an abducted child may equitably toll the running of the one-year filing period when the abducting parent has concealed the whereabouts of the child from the left-behind parent. While the US Courts of Appeals for the Fifth, Ninth and Eleventh Circuits all hold the one-year period may be equitably tolled, the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit held [opinion] in this case that the one-year period is not subject to equitable tolling and the settled defense is still available even where, as here, the abducting parent conceals the location of the…

    Um dos mais graves problemas da política brasileira, a improbidade administrativa, tem sido motivo de atenção e estudo do jurista gaúcho e doutor em Direito Administrativo Fábio Medina Osório. Ele, que atuou por 14 anos como promotor do Ministério Público do Rio Grande do Sul, acredita que o Brasil peca por não possuir um setor de estatística que meça a eficiência das instituições, a qualidade das investigações e dos julgamentos.Segundo o jurista, tais medidas seriam preventivas à corrupção nas gestões públicas e privadas. O jurista alerta que a nova lei da probidade empresarial (12.846/2013), que entrará em vigor em fevereiro de 2014, ajudará a fechar o cerco contra a ilegalidade. Sobre processos jurídicos que envolvem políticos, Medina Osório acredita que a finalidade vai além da punição pelo ato…

[JURIST] A judge for the US District Court for the Southern District of Indiana [official website] issued a temporary injunction [ACLU press release] on Tuesday against an Indiana law [text] regulating abortion facilities. Under the law, facilities prescribing Mifepristone, the so-called "abortion pill," must meet the same regulatory requirements as clinics that perform surgical abortions. Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Kentucky (PPINK) and American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana [advocacy websites] challenged [JURIST report] the law in August. In the preliminary injunction, district court Judge Jane Magnus-Stinson found a reasonable likelihood of success in PPINK's claim that the law violates its right to equal protection under the Fourteenth Amendment [text] because the law treats abortion clinics providing Mifepristone differently than physicians' offices which prescribe the same medication. This is the latest development in the ongoing reproductive rights controversy [JURIST backgrounder] in the US. Earlier this month,…

  Proceedings began Tuesday in Beijing for the the first Internet antitrust case to head to the Supreme Court since China enacted its Anti-Monopoly Law in 2008.   The case argues Internet conglomerate Tencent Inc abused its dominant position; the lawsuit was filed by top antivirus software company, Qihoo 360 Technology Co.   The case began proceedings on Tuesday in China’s Supreme People’s Court following an earlier ruling by the Guangdong High people’s Court that found Tenecnet did not violate antimonopoly law. On appeal, Qihoo argued that the first trial was unfair and that the Supreme People’s Court must reject the earlier ruling, made last March.   Qihoo claims that Tencent owned nearly 90 percent of the domestic instant messing service sector and argues it has lost $135 million because…

A Lei nº 12.529/11, que reformulou o Sistema Brasileiro de Defesa da Concorrência (SBDC), e entrou em vigor no dia 29.05,2012, tornou mais eficaz a atuação do Conselho Administrativo de Defesa da Concorrência – CADE. Estas mudanças na legislação foram o tema do seminário "Devido Processo Regulatório no CADE - A Nova Lei de Defesa da Concorrência em Debate", realizado em 2 de agosto, no auditório da Federação do Comércio, no Rio de Janeiro, em comemoração aos 10 anos do Instituto Internacional de Estudos de Direito do Estado – IIEDE. O evento, apoiado por órgãos como o próprio CADE e a Comissão de Valores Mobiliários, entre outros, expressou a preocupação da sociedade civil em debater a defesa da livre concorrência no Brasil. A coordenação acadêmica do Seminário foi do professor…