A Ukrainian court on Wednesday refused to release former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko from custody. Tymoshenko was absent from the hearing due to continuing health issues, although there have been reports that the court may eventually order her to attend. During the hearing, her defense lawyer read a letter , in which Tymoshenko described the [...]
JURIST Guest Columnist Steve Simpson, a senior attorney at the Institute for Justice, says that recent decisions releasing the names of those who signed a petition to place domestic partnership laws on the ballot in Washington state lack a proper examination of the facts of the case and fail protect petitioners’ right to privacy…
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the ACLU of Wisconsin and the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty filed a lawsuit Tuesday challenging Wisconsin’s new voter identification law . The controversial law states that any qualified voter must present photo identification at the polls in order to vote in Wisconsin elections for local, state, [...]
Leaders in the US House and Senate on Monday evening announced that they had reached an agreement on the National Defense Authorization Act for 2012 after making some modifications and adding text. The bill, which was passed by the Senate in its original form earlier this month, included a controversial provision authorizing the president to [...]
The Myanmar government announced Tuesday that the political party of opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi will be allowed to register for the next elections. Suu Kyi’s National League of Democracy (NLD) decided last month to reenter politics after boycotting last year’s elections in which Suu Kyi was not allowed to run. The move may [...]
The Supreme Court Chamber of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) on Tuesday ordered that former Khmer Rouge leader Ieng Thirith remain in detention . The Trial Chamber found last month that Ieng Thirith is unfit to stand trial for war crimes because of dementia from Alzheimer’s disease and ordered her immediate [...]
Canadian Minister of the Environment Peter Kent announced Monday that Canada will withdraw from the Kyoto Protocol on climate change, making it the first country to do so. The treaty was signed by Canada’s previous Liberal government, but little had been done to implement it. Kent said that the protocol “will not work” because it [...]
Fatou Bensouda of the Gambia, Deputy Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) was officially chosen Monday to succeed Chief Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo when his nine-year term expires next year. Liechtenstein’s UN Ambassador Christian Wenaweser, outgoing president of the Assembly of States Parties (ASP) to the Rome Statute that set up the ICC, announced last [...]
Corruption is leading to unequal distribution of land and resources, resulting in human rights violations, according to a working paper published Monday by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and Transparency International (TI) . According to the report, corruption flourishes where land governance is efficient. “Weak land governance tends to be characterised by low [...]
JURIST Contributing Editor Haider Ala Hamoudi of the University of Pittsburgh School of Law says that although there are fears that Iraq may slide into chaos due to the impending withdrawal of troops, it is more likely that the country will continue to make slow advances in solidifying its legal and constitutional structure…
