UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay on Thursday condemned the executions of seven people in Saudi Arabia as a violation of international safeguards on the use of the death penalty. The men were executed by firing squad after convictions for theft, looting and armed robbery. The seven were arrested in 2006 and sentenced [...]
UN Special Rapporteur on counter-terrorism and human rights Ben Emmerson announced Thursday that the government of Pakistan considers US drone strikes to be “counter-productive, contrary to international law, and a violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.” The statement comes at the conclusion of Emmerson’s three-day visit to Pakistan in connection with his ongoing inquiry [...]
JURIST Guest Columnist Renè DuBois, New York Law School Class of 2013, analyzes the United States v. DiCristina opinion and points out its flaws and limitations… If anyone has ever watched the movie Rounders, they will vividly remember Matt Damon playing the Dean’s poker hand without once looking at his cards: You were lookin’ for [...]
JURIST Guest Columnist Perry A. Zirkel of Lehigh University says the US Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights’ latest “Dear Colleague” letter, like its predecessor concerning bullying, serves primarily as a public reminder and reinforcement of a current priority rather than an expansion of legal requirements….
The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) on Wednesday upheld The Pirate Bay (TPB) co-founders’ criminal conviction for aiding copyright infringement on the Internet, unanimously declaring their application inadmissible. Co-founders Peter Sunde and Fredrik Neij appealed a 2009 decision from a Stockholm District Court , convicting the two of complicity to commit crimes in violation [...]
JURIST Guest Columnist Michelle Madden Dempsey of Villanova University School of Law says the chronic failure of police to investigate and prosecute sexual offenses signals a massive failure of public safety, and the chronic failure of police to document and disclose information regarding sexual offense cases is a threat to the fundamental principles of the [...]
A Cambodian appeals court on Thursday reduced the jail term of Mam Sonando, a prominent radio host and government critic, who was convicted of inciting rebellion and sentenced to 20 years in prison last October. The Phnom Penh court reduced the sentence to a five-year term, only holding him accountable for a charge of instigating [...]
The European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruled Thursday that evictions carried out in Spain under harsh property repossession laws violate EU consumer protection laws. According to the ECJ, Spain’s laws contravene EU laws because they do not allow national courts to stop evictions taking place due to possible unfair terms in mortgage agreements. The ECJ’s [...]
A three-judge panel for the US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit overturned a Virginia anti-sodomy law on Tuesday, a decade after it was invalidated by a US Supreme Court decision in Lawrence v. Texas . The decision was the result of William MacDonald’s appeal of his 2005 criminal conviction for violating Virginia’s criminal [...]
Khmer Rouge Deputy Foreign Minister and co-founder Ieng Sary , who was on trial for war crimes in the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) for his involvement in the killing of 1.7 million people, died Thursday at the age of 87. Sary was originally detained in November 2007 and was facing charges [...]
