A class of plaintiffs suing several dozen US companies which did business in South Africa during apartheid will ask to narrow their claims Tuesday in a status conference to be held in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York (SDNY). The plaintiffs are South Africans seeking to hold the businesses liable [...]
A new tool for measuring adherence to the rule of law developed by the World Justice Project (WJP) was presented at the World Justice Forum in Vienna Thursday. The development of the Rule of Law Index was sponsored by the American Bar Association and is based on principles which emphasize the relationship between the rule [...]
JURIST Staffer Eric Linge, Pitt Law '10, from Addis Ababa… Joining the World Trade Organization (WTO) is not easy. Especially for a country like Ethiopia that has a history of communism to unwind, reams of technical laws have to be rewritten to be WTO compliant. But before legislators even sit down to rewrite laws, there [...]
The military trial of former Suriname dictator Desi Bouterse for the “December Murders” at Fort Zeelandia, Paramaribo in 1982 commenced Friday with former bodyguard Onno Flohr testifying that Bouterse was present at the killings of 15 political opponents, including lawyers, journalists, professors, military officers and businessmen, who were accused of plotting against the government and [...]
The reconstituted Supreme Court of Pakistan validated President Pervez Musharraf's declaration of emergency rule and concomitant ouster of judges, including former Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry , in an opinion released Friday. A 13-judge panel headed by current Chief Justice Abdul Hamid Dogar upheld Musharraf’s actions in November 2007 as “inevitable” in order to prevent [...]
Four members of Myanmar's National League for Democracy (NLD) have been jailed for a year for having campaigned against the country's then-draft constitution , according to NLD spokesperson Nyan Win as quoted by AP. Win said Friday the four were arrested in March for spreading leaflets which called on citizens to vote against the draft, [...]
Former Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) rebel leader Jean-Pierre Bemba appeared before the International Criminal Court (ICC) for the first time Friday after Belgium's Court of Cassation approved his transfer on Tuesday. Bemba was identified before the court and said that he had been informed of the charges against him. Bemba's lawyers also lodged preliminary [...]
A US district court judge Thursday released two US Marines who had previously been jailed for refusing to testify about the deaths of Iraqi detainees during the November 2004 offensive in Fallujah . Marine Corps Sgt. Ryan G. Weemer and Sgt. Jermaine Nelson were held in contempt of court in June and May, respectively, after [...]
Officials of the International Criminal Court (ICC) told journalists Thursday that the trial of Congolese ex-militia leader Thomas Lubanga would proceed as planned after evidentiary problems which had threatened the case were settled, according to AFP. Late last month, the ICC imposed an indefinite stay on Lubanga's war crimes trial after it found that the [...]
White House Press Secretary Dana Perino said Thursday that the administration is still working to close the Guantanamo Bay detention center , but suggested that a recent US Supreme Court decision could lead to the release of "dangerous detainees" into the US. The Court ruled in Boumediene v. Bush last month that "enemy combatants" have [...]
