South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun criticized South Korea's election laws Sunday, saying that the country's political system with a single five-year presidential term was "underdeveloped" and should be reformed. Roh also criticized the country's political neutrality laws and rejected last Thursday's ruling by the National Election Commission that Roh violated the neutrality laws by repeating [...]
The US Supreme Court handed down decisions in five cases Monday, including Watson v. Philip Morris , where the Court held that a lawsuit against the tobacco company could not be removed from state to federal court solely based on an argument that the tobacco industry is regulated by the Federal Trade Commission. Philip Morris [...]
A European Union human rights team expressed the EU's "deep concern" at the state of human rights in Bangladesh under President Iajuddin Ahmed's interim government at the conclusion of a visit to the country Saturday, flagging reports of extra-judicial killings, torture and intimidation alleged to have taken place as part of the government's "anti-corruption campaign" [...]
Egypt's Supreme Administrative Court ruled Saturday against an American University of Cairo (AUC) ban on women wearing the Muslim niqab on campus, finding that the private university could not require a plaintiff student to unveil her face because it was her constitutional right under Egyptian law to practice her religion. The court nonetheless said it [...]
The lower house of the parliament of Rwanda voted Friday to abolish the death penalty effective July 1, with the hope that the measure will prompt other countries to extradite defendants facing trial for the 1994 Rwandan genocide back to Rwanda. Although the final vote was 45-5, 30 members of the assembly were absent. The [...]
JURIST Guest Columnist Margaret Burnham of Northeastern University School of Law says the trial of alleged Klansman James Seale, accused of kidnapping and then drowning two young men in southwest Mississippi in May 1964, highlights both Mississippi's historical role in Klan violence and the grievous shortcomings of federal law enforcement in the civil rights era… [...]
The Zimbabwean government has published proposed amendments to the Constitution of Zimbabwe that would allow the simultaneous election of the president and both houses of legislature, reforms that critics allege to be an attempt by Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe to weaken the opposition. The proposed amendments would end the existing assembly's term two years early [...]
Chief judge Mohammed al-Uraibi of the Iraqi High Tribunal said Sunday that the court will hand down a verdict June 24 in the genocide trial of Ali Hassan al-Majid – known to the Western media as "Chemical Ali" – and five other former Hussein-era officials. The six face genocide charges for their alleged involvement in [...]
Eric Sutton, Pitt Law '09, files from Prishtina: When discussing independence, the property rights of Serbian internally-displaced people are an understated cause of conflict between Kosovo and Serbia. As the war raged on, many Serbians understandably fled north to escape the crossfire. They left behind a great deal of real property, and they have had [...]
Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf on Saturday withdrew restrictions on media covering the political crisis that has followed the president's March 9 decision to suspend Pakistan Supreme Court Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry . Earlier this month, Musharraf issued an emergency ordinance to punish broadcasters allegedly undermining national unity through criticism and extensive coverage of rallies [...]
