US President Barack Obama on Wednesday nominated Chief Judge Merrick Garland of the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to replace the late Justice Antonin Scalia on the US Supreme Court . Speaking on the White House lawn, Obama said that Merrick is: widely recognized not only as one of America’s [...]
A UN official said Wednesday that Qatari poet Mohammed al-Ajami received a royal pardon on Tuesday night and has been freed after more than four years in prison. The poet received a 15-year prison sentence in 2011 after a poem he wrote and recited in his home apparently offended Qatar’s former ruler. He initially received [...]
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon called Tuesday for the UN Human Rights Council to increase its impact in the next decade, citing the erosion of human rights around the world. In a speech marking the the tenth anniversary of the council, Ban said that because many state governments around the world are in conflict, there is [...]
North Korea’s high court on Wednesday sentenced an American student to 15 years of imprisonment and hard labor following his conviction for subversion. The University of Virginia student, Otto Warmbier, confessed in a press conference held last month by North Korean authorities that he had attempted to steal a propaganda sign from a Pyongyang hotel, [...]
JURIST Guest Columnist Dr. Sandra Mantu of Radboud University discusses France’s upcoming vote on a bill that would grant the legislator authority to revoke citizenship of natural born citizens… On February 10, 2016, the French National Assembly adopted a bill—Constitutional Law to Protect the Nation—that introduces in the French Constitution provisions dealing with the declaration [...]
A second Pennsylvania Supreme Court justice resigned Tuesday over of a growing scandal that involves hundreds of offensive e-mails. Justice Michael Eakin is the second justice to retire after Justice Seamus McCaffery retired immediately after being suspended in 2014 when Attorney General Kathleen Kane released a plethora of questionable e-mails to the media. Eakin’s lawyer, [...]
Brazil’s Supreme Court announced on Tuesday that it had accepted a plea agreement offered by prosecutors in a case against Senator Delcídio do Amaral for his alleged involvement in a recent corruption scandal. Amaral was arrested in November for attempting to bribe a former Petrobras executive for his silence in an ongoing investigation. The plea [...]
The UN Independent Expert on foreign debt and human rights, Juan Pablo Bohoslavsky presented reports to the UN Human Rights Council Tuesday finding that economic inequality has a negative impact on financial crises and undermines human rights efforts. The first report focused on these topics and found a somewhat circular pattern, finding that economic inequality [...]
A federal civil rights lawsuit was filed Monday accusing the city of Los Angeles of endangering homeless people. The lawsuit, which was filed in the U.S. District Court in Los Angeles , alleges that the city has endangered the homeless by seizing and destroying their tents and bedding then releasing them into the cold without [...]
A federal judge filed an order on Monday for attorneys to submit arguments as to whether the court system has standing to decide if Mississippi should remove the Confederate battle emblem that as been on the state flag since 1894. US District Judge Carlton Reeves of the Southern District of Mississippi has given Mississippi Attorney [...]
