The Supreme Court of Pakistan formed a judicial committee Friday to investigate a secret memo sent from an unknown Pakistani source to US Admiral Mike Mullen in May asking for help in preventing a suspected army coup. Former Pakistan ambassador to the US Husain Haqqani and Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari have been accused of [...]
The Indian upper house of parliament, the Rajya Sabha , on Thursday failed to pass an anti-corruption bill that proposed the creation of an official anti-corruption agency known as Lokpal. The upper house met in an extended session of parliament intended to allow for passage of the Lokpal bill, but adjourned at midnight after 14 [...]
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Court on Wednesday sentenced opposition figure and former Iranian foreign minister Ebrahim Yazdi to eight years in prison for attempting to act against national security. Yazdi was also banned from civic activities for five years in the closed-door trial reportedly held in early November. Yazdi, now 80 and suffering from cancer and [...]
Chinese housing activist and lawyer, Ni Yulan, and her husband, Dong Jiqin, went on trial Thursday on charges of fraud and “inciting a disturbance” in Beijing. Lying on a stretcher and relying on an oxygen machine , Ni pleaded not guilty to charges of fraud for falsifying facts to steal property and inciting a disturbance [...]
Puerto Rican Governor Luis Fortuno (R) , a supporter of statehood, signed legislation establishing a two-part referendum on Wednesday that would allow Puerto Ricans to voice their opinions regarding Puerto Rico’s political status and connection to the US. The referendum would be held on November 6, 2012. The first part of the referendum asks whether [...]
The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) issued a report on Wednesday strongly criticizing the human rights record of a number of countries including the United States. Twenty pages of the 90-page report focus on the United States , and list a number of practices and conditions that the MFA views as violations of basic [...]
JURIST Guest Columnist Nathan Crombie, Columbia Law School Class of 2012, is currently researching the influence of international human rights law on same-sex marriage. Here he argues that international law should influence the Ninth Circuit’s ruling on same-sex marriage… The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit is currently considering the constitutionality of Proposition [...]
Philippine authorities filed a second criminal complaint against Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo , the former Philippine president who has been under hospital arrest for previous charges of corruption and electoral fraud. The second complaint alleges that Arroyo approved a $329-million national broadband network deal with the Chinese company ZTE Corporation in return for millions of dollars in [...]
The Obama administration, arguing as amicus curiae in Perry, et al. v. Perez, et al., pressed the US Supreme Court on Wednesday to reject a redistricting map drawn by the Texas legislature which was not cleared pursuant to Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) . In its stead, the administration argued, the interim [...]
Navy rear Adm. David Woods , commander of the Guantanamo Bay prison facility, has proposed a new rule that would require military officials to review all legal correspondence between lawyers and the detainees accused of involvement in the September 11, 2001 terror attacks , the AP reported Tuesday. The new rules would require all correspondence [...]
