A Lebanon opposition party demanded Tuesday that Prime Minister Najib Mikati announce full support for the UN-backed Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) during debates leading up to a vote of confidence for the prime minister. There is debate over a policy statement issued by Mikati on his support for the tribunal. Pro-Western opposition groups are [...]

Nicholas Battaglia, Albany Law School Class of 2012, is an intern in the school’s Health Law Clinic. He argues that the partisan affiliations of the judges coupled with strong legal arguments will result in more successes for the government in the health care litigation… The constitutionality of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act has [...]

The Hague Appeals Court Tuesday ruled that the Netherlands is liable for the death of three Bosniak men during the Srebrenica massacre forcing it to compensate the men’s families. The court held the Netherlands liable for the deaths of three Bosnian Muslims, Bosiniaks, of about 5,000 who took refuge in a UN-designated “safe area” controlled [...]

Australia played a larger role than previously thought in the abuses of detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, according to Australia Defense Force (ADF) documents obtained by the Public Interest Advocacy Centre through freedom of information laws. The documents show that Major George O’Kane worked closely with US authorities as a military lawyer [...]

Prominent Iranian rights lawyer Mohammad Ali Dadkhah was sentenced Monday to nine years in prison and banned from working as a lawyer and a teacher for 10 years after being convicted of seeking to overthrow the government. He had represented some of the activists involved in the protests following the disputed 2009 presidential election . [...]

Former Tunisian president Zine Al Abidine Ben Ali was sentenced to an additional 15 years in prison on Monday by the Tunisian Court of Criminal Appeal after being found guilty in absentia on charges of illegal possession of drugs, weapons and stolen archaeological artifacts . This follows last month’s verdict by the Tunisian Court of [...]

Ratko Mladic made his second appearance Monday at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) , but was removed from the courtroom for disrupting the proceedings. Throughout the proceedings, Mladic was hostile, gesturing to the crowd and refusing to enter a plea without lawyers of his choice representing him. The ICTY assigned Mladic [...]

The US Department of Justice Friday filed an amicus brief with the US Supreme Court in an attempt to stay the execution of Mexican national Humberto Leal Garcia . Leal Garcia’s defense team filed a writ of certiorari with the Supreme Court earlier this week. The Obama administration has serious concerns for how the execution [...]

Rhode Island Governor Lincoln Chafee on Saturday signed into law a bill that legalizes same-sex civil unions in the state. The bill effectively adds a “Civil Unions” chapter to the Rhode Island General Laws section governing domestic relations, affording same-sex couples many of the same rights and benefits available to married couples. The bill is [...]

The Center for Reproductive Rights (CRR) filed a motion for a preliminary injunction Thursday to block a new Texas requiring a woman to have a sonogram with the doctor describing the fetus in detail before having an abortion . The CRR filed a class action lawsuit in the US District Court for the Western District [...]