Thoroughgood "Thurgood" Marshall was an American civil rights lawyer and jurist who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1967 until 1991. He was the Supreme Court's first African-American justice. Prior to his judicial service, he was an attorney who fought for civil rights, leading the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. Marshall was a prominent figure in the movement to end racial segregation in American public schools. He won 29 of the 32 civil rights cases he argued before the Supreme Court, culminating in the Court's landmark 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education, which rejected the separate but equal doctrine and held segregation in public education to be unconstitutional. President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed Marshall to the Supreme Court in 1967. A staunch liberal, he frequently dissented as the Court became increasingly conservative.
Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973), was a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in which the Court ruled that the Constitution of the United States generally protected a right to have an abortion. The decision struck down many abortion laws, and caused an ongoing abortion debate in the United States about whether, or to what extent, abortion should be legal, who should decide the legality of abortion, and what the role of moral and religious views in the political sphere should be. The decision also shaped debate concerning which methods the Supreme Court should use in constitutional adjudication. The Supreme Court overruled Roe in 2022, ending the constitutional right to abortion.
Freedom of association encompasses both an individual's right to join or leave groups voluntarily, the right of the group to take collective action to pursue the interests of its members, and the right of an association to accept or decline membership based on certain criteria. It can be described as the right of a person coming together with other individuals to collectively express, promote, pursue and/or defend common interests. Freedom of association is both an individual right and a collective right, guaranteed by all modern and democratic legal systems, including the United States Bill of Rights, article 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights, section 2 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and international law, including articles 20 and 23 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and article 22 of International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. The Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work by the International Labour Organization also ensures these rights.
Arthur Chaskalson SCOB, was President of the Constitutional Court of South Africa from 1994 to 2001 and Chief Justice of South Africa from 2001 to 2005. Chaskalson was a member of the defence team in the Rivonia Trial of 1963.
Abortion laws vary widely among countries and territories, and have changed over time. Such laws range from abortion being freely available on request, to regulation or restrictions of various kinds, to outright prohibition in all circumstances. Many countries and territories that allow abortion have gestational limits for the procedure depending on the reason; with the majority being up to 12 weeks for abortion on request, up to 24 weeks for rape, incest, or socioeconomic reasons, and more for fetal impairment or risk to the woman's health or life. As of 2022, countries that legally allow abortion on request or for socioeconomic reasons comprise about 60% of the world's population. In 2024, France became the first country to explicitly protect abortion rights in its constitution.
The American Center for Law & Justice (ACLJ) is a politically conservative, Christian-based legal organization in the United States. It is headquartered in Washington, D.C., and associated with Regent University School of Law in Virginia Beach, Virginia.
The Thomas More Law Center is a Christian, conservative, nonprofit, public interest law firm based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and active throughout the United States. According to the Thomas More Law Center website, its goals are to "preserve America's Judeo-Christian heritage, defend the religious freedom of Christians, restore time-honored moral and family values, protect the sanctity of human life, and promote a strong national defense and a free and sovereign United States of America."
Albert "Albie" Louis Sachs is a South African lawyer, activist, writer, and former judge appointed to the first Constitutional Court of South Africa by Nelson Mandela.
Many jurisdictions have laws applying to minors and abortion. These parental involvement laws require that one or more parents consent or be informed before their minor daughter may legally have an abortion.
The Center for Constitutional Rights is a progressive non-profit legal advocacy organization based in New York City, New York, in the United States. It was founded in 1966 by lawyers William Kunstler, Arthur Kinoy, Morty Stavis and Ben Smith, particularly to support activists in the implementation of civil rights legislation and to achieve social justice.
Chapter Two of the Constitution of South Africa contains the Bill of Rights, a human rights charter that protects the civil, political and socio-economic rights of all people in South Africa. The rights in the Bill apply to all law, including the common law, and bind all branches of the government, including the national executive, Parliament, the judiciary, provincial governments, and municipal councils. Some provisions, such as those prohibiting unfair discrimination, also apply to the actions of private persons.
Abortion in South Africa is legal by request when the pregnancy is under 13 weeks. It is also legal to terminate a pregnancy between weeks 13 and 20 if the continued pregnancy would significantly affect the pregnant person's social or economic circumstances, poses a risk of injury to the pregnant person's physical or mental health, there is a substantial risk that the foetus would suffer from a severe physical or mental abnormality, or the pregnancy resulted from rape or incest. If the pregnancy is more than 20 weeks, a termination is legal if the foetus' life is in danger, or there is a likelihood of serious birth defects.
Johann Christiaan Kriegler is a retired South African judge who served in the Constitutional Court of South Africa from February 1995 to November 2002. Formerly a practising silk in Johannesburg, he joined the bench as a judge of the Transvaal Provincial Division in 1984. He was also the first chairperson of the post-apartheid Independent Electoral Commission and Electoral Commission of South Africa.
The Legal Resources Centre (LRC) is a human rights organisation based in South Africa with offices in Johannesburg (including a Constitutional Litigation Unit), Cape Town, Durban and Grahamstown. It was founded in 1979 by a group of prominent South African lawyers, including Arthur Chaskalson, Felicia Kentridge, and Geoff Budlender, under the guidance of American civil rights lawyers Jack Greenberg and Michael Meltsner, then Director-Counsel and former First Assistant Counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund respectively.
The law of persons in South Africa regulates the birth, private-law status and the death of a natural person. It determines the requirements and qualifications for legal subjectivity in South Africa, and the rights and responsibilities that attach to it.
The Choice on Termination of Pregnancy Act, 1996 is the law governing abortion in South Africa. It allows abortion on demand up to the twelfth week of pregnancy, under broadly specified circumstances from the thirteenth to the twentieth week, and only for serious medical reasons after the twentieth week. The Act has been described by the Guttmacher Institute as "one of the most liberal abortion laws in the world".
Public interest law refers to legal practices undertaken to help poor, marginalized, or under-represented people, or to effect change in social policies in the public interest, on 'not for profit' terms, often in the fields of civil rights, civil liberties, religious liberty, human rights, women's rights, consumer rights, environmental protection, and so on.
Section Eleven of the Constitution of South Africa, part of the Bill of Rights, guarantees the right to life. This section has been interpreted to prohibit the death penalty, but not to prohibit abortion. It also has important implications for euthanasia, self-defence, the use of force by law enforcement, and the provision of life-saving healthcare.
South Africa is a secular state, with freedom of religion enshrined in the Constitution.
Abortion in South Korea was decriminalized, effective 1 January 2021, by a 2019 order of the Constitutional Court of Korea. It is currently legal throughout pregnancy, as no new law has been enacted. Thus there are no gestational limits or other restrictions.
