JURIST Guest Columnist Mark Latham of Vermont Law School discusses the Flint water crisis… The Flint residents poisoned by lead-contaminated drinking water were not harmed as a result of some sudden, unexpected natural disaster that left behind in its aftermath thousands of destroyed lives. Sadly, the residents of Flint were the victims of local, state [...]
The Ontario Superior Court on Thursday ruled that police orders requiring telecommunications companies to hand over cellphone user data breached the Canadian Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms . The orders, labeled “tower dumps,” demanded that Rogers Communications Inc. and Telus Corp. provide the police with personal information for more than 40,000 individuals, including their [...]
Tamara Fields, the widow of a defense contractor killed in an Islamic State (IS) terrorist attack in November, filed suit Wednesday against social media website Twitter alleging the company knowingly permitted IS to use their network to spread extremist propaganda. The complaint was filed in the US District Court for the Northern District of California [...]
Chinese authorities on Thursday arrested high profile human rights lawyer Wang Yu and her husband on charges of political subversion. Authorities have accused Wang of subversion of state power and her husband Bao Longjun, a trainee lawyer, of inciting subversion of state power. The formal arrest of Wang and Bao comes after six months of [...]
The Foreign Ministry of Oman on Thursday reported that 10 Yemeni detainees from Guantanamo Bay arrived temporarily to Oman. The US Department of Defense later confirmed the move . On Monday human rights experts from the UN and the Organization for Security and Co-operation (OSCE) jointly sent an open letter urging the US government to [...]
The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled Tuesday that an employer may monitor an employee’s private communications when the communications are transmitted with the employer’s Internet and hardware. The applicant, Bogdan Barbulescu, was employed as an engineer in charge of sales at a private company in Romania. Barbulescu created a Yahoo Messenger account at [...]
A well-known female human rights activist was detained Tuesday by government authorities in Saudi Arabia. Samar Badawi was detained and interviewed by Saudi prosecutors, allegedly for her involvement in managing a Twitter account that campaigned for the release of her former husband, a Saudi lawyer who is serving a 15-year prison sentence for activism. In [...]
The US Supreme Court heard oral arguments Wednesday in the cases of Bank Markazi v. Peterson and Puerto Rico v. Sanchez Valle. In Bank Markazi v. Peterson , plaintiff Deborah Peterson, representing hundreds of victims of Iran-sponsored terrorist attacks, brought suit against Bank Markazi, otherwise known as the Central Bank of Iran, seeking compensation through [...]
The European Commission (EC) announced Wednesday that it has begun the first assessment of the Rule of Law in Poland, a member state, concerning the EU policy of Media Freedom and Pluralism materials] as well as changes in the nation’s Constitutional Tribunal. The Rule of Law encompasses the core principles protected by the EU. The [...]
The Chinese Urgent Action Working Group said Tuesday that Swedish human rights worker Peter Dahlin was detained earlier this month on suspicion of endangering state security. It is believed by rights groups that the detention is part of a crackdown on rights lawyers and members of groups seeking reforms of the country’s legal system. Chinese [...]
