The Respondent, the Attorney General of the United States, appealed a district court order quashing a subpoena that commanded Northwestern Memorial Hospital (NMH) to produce the medical records of certain patients. The records were to be used in an upcoming suit challenging the constitutionality of the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003. The records contained …Read more

Mrs. Thi-Nho Vo attended Lyons General Hospital for a medical examination during her pregnancy. On the same day, another woman, Mrs. Thi Thanh Van Vo, was at the hospital to have a contraceptive coil removed. When Dr. G, the doctor who was to remove the coil from Mrs. Thi Thanh Van Vo, asked for ‘Mrs. …Read more

Police officers entered a private residence in response to a report of a disturbance and came upon two men engaged in a sexual act. The men were arrested for and charged with violating a Texas state criminal law that prohibited “deviate sexual intercourse [defined as oral or anal sex] with another individual of the same sex.” …Read more

Applicants, family members of an individual addicted to heroin who died in prison, alleged that the State violated Articles 3 (freedom from torture or to inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment) and 13 (right to effective remedy) of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (“the Convention”) because the prisoner, Ms. …Read more

SL, an Austrian national, was born in 1981. SL is a homosexual and submits that he lives in a rural area of Austria where homosexuality is still taboo and suffered from the fact that he could not live his homosexuality openly and – until he reached the age of 18 – could not enter into …Read more

On 20 August 1996 a police officer entered a brothel owned by the first appellant in Pretoria, paid R250 to the second appellant and a salaried employee, and received a pelvic massage by the third appellant, a prostitute. All three were charged with contravening s20(1)(aA) of the Sexual Offences Act 1957 (‘the Act’) which criminalised …Read more

Before the promulgation of the Voluntary Interruption of Pregnancy Act, 78 senators made a referral to the French constitutional court challenging the constitutionality of the new bill according to article 61 of the French Constitution. The Act had three components. It extended to 12 weeks the period of time a woman could have an abortion …Read more

Applicant Joseph Eryau made a motion to be heard in opposition to Application No. 39/2001. Of the five declarations proposed in the motion of Application No. 39/2001, all but two were struck down (including those orders which criminalized smoking in public places). The remaining two proposed that “smoking in a public place constitutes a violation …Read more

M was convicted of rape. Under s 142(2) of the Penal Code (as amended by the Penal Code (Amendment) Act 1998 (No 5 of 1998)) he was required to undergo an HIV test before being sentenced. M tested positive. Under s 142(4)(a) a person convicted of rape who proves to have HIV is subject to …Read more

Terrance Parker suffered from severe epilepsy since he was a young child. He could substantially reduce the incidence of seizures by smoking marihuana, but he had no legal source of marihuana. Parker was charged with cultivating marihuana under the Narcotic Control Act and with possession of marihuana under the new Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. …Read more