Prominent Chinese human rights activist Hu Jia was released from prison on Sunday after serving three years for a subversion conviction. Hu was formally charged in February 2008 and subsequently sentenced to more than three years in prison after he made public letters and recordings from Chinese lawyer Gao Zhisheng alleging that Gao was tortured [...]
The US Supreme Court in a plurality opinion Monday reversed the New Jersey Supreme Court’s grant of personal jurisdiction over a UK company in a products liability suit. Robert Nicastro alleged that he was injured by a defective metal-shearing machine manufactured in the UK by J McIntyre Machinery, Ltd. and sold in the US. McIntyre [...]
Fifteen associates of former Ivory Coast president Laurent Gbagbo were charged on Sunday with crimes allegedly committed as a result of the country’s post-election violence that has been ongoing since last November. The 15 were charged with economic crimes, harming the authority and sovereignty of the state and setting up armed gangs. Former prime minister [...]
The US Supreme Court ruled Monday in Arizona Free Enterprise Club’s Freedom Club PAC v. Bennett that an Arizona campaign finance regulation that provided publicly financed candidates with additional government subsidies, which are triggered by independent expenditure groups’ speech against such candidates or by the candidates’ privately financed opponents, violates the First Amendment . The [...]
The US Supreme Court on Monday ruled unanimously in Goodyear v. Brown that foreign subsidiaries of the American corporation Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company are subject to neither specific nor general personal jurisdiction in North Carolina. Two North Carolina teenagers were killed in a bus accident in France when a tire manufactured in Turkey malfunctioned. [...]
The US Supreme Court on Monday ruled 7-2 in Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association that a California ban on the sale of violent video games to minors violates the First Amendment . California Civil Code sections 1746-1746.5 sought to prohibit the sale of violent video games to minors where a reasonable person would find that: [...]
The US Supreme Court on Monday added 11 more cases to its 2011-2012 docket. In FCC v. Fox Television Stations, Inc. , the court will rule on whether the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) current indecency enforcement regime violates the First or Fifth Amendment to the US Constitution. The FCC sought Supreme Court review after the [...]
A Bangladesh military court on Monday sentenced 657 border guards for their roles in a February 2009 mutiny . The verdict was unprecedented in the number of people convicted at once and brings the total number of soldiers jailed for the mutiny to over 3,000. The court originally charged 667 guards from the Bangladesh Rifles [...]
A Tunisian appeals court on Saturday upheld the conviction of Imed Trabelsi, businessman and nephew of ousted former president Zine Al Abidine Ben Ali . The 14th Criminal Chamber of the Tunis Court of Appeal sentenced Trabelsi to four years in prison and ordered him to pay a 3,000-dinar fine after being convicted on charges [...]
The Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) on Monday began the initial hearings in the trial of four former leaders of the communist Khmer Rouge regime of the 1970s. The four leaders include Nuon Chea, who was Pol Pot’s second-in-command and the group’s chief ideologist, former head of state Khieu Samphan, ex-foreign minister [...]
