Word: cases
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...decision in the Lawrence v. Texas case overturned convictions against two Houston men, whom police had arrested after busting into their home and finding them engaged in sex. And for the first time in their lives, thousands of gay men and women who lived in states where sodomy had been illegal were free to be gay without being criminals. Gay rights groups held spontaneous celebrations in dozens of U.S. cities...
...legal changes wrought by Lawrence have been considerable. Both the Massachusetts and California marriage cases, for instance, cite Lawrence. So have cases in Alabama involving sex toys and in Florida involving gay adoptions, and just last month, a Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals decision cited Lawrence in holding for the first time that the military's exclusion of openly gay members must be based on more than simple moral disapproval of homosexuals. That case has been sent back to lower courts for further proceedings, but is already seen as a major challenge to the "don't ask, don't tell...
Just one day after Lawrence, and in light of the ruling, the Kansas Supreme Court ordered reconsideration of a case involving an 18-year-old who had been sentenced to prison for 17 years for initiating oral sex on a 14-year-old boy. If the younger boy had been a girl, state law would have capped the 17-year-old's sentence to 15 months under the so-called "Romeo and Juliet" provision like the ones found in many states. In 2005, the case reached the Kansas high court, which ruled that the sentence was unconstitutional, and, citing Lawrence...
Still, in the ideologically charged cases that ended the term, Justice Kennedy's influence seemed to persist. Says Lee Epstein, constitutional law professor at Northwestern School of Law: "If you look at the cases he was always there." First, Kennedy penned the opinion in Boumediene v. Bush, which many believe was the most significant decision legally this term because the court declared the unconstitutionality of President Bush and Congress' scheme for handling Guantanamo Bay prisoners during a time of heightened national security concerns. ("It was a reasonably big slam," says Epstein.) Kennedy also authored the child rape case banning...
...coincidence that one of the first constitutional amendments the P.M. pushed for is a reversal of the party-dissolution rule. Speaking to TIME, Samak scoffed at the possibility of a court case derailing his leadership and vowed to serve out his four-year term. But Thaksin is the only elected Prime Minister in modern Thai history to complete a full term. Unless Samak can channel Thaksin's once-mighty political skills, the occasional TV chef may be returning to stirring the wok full-time...