Five same-sex couples on Monday challenged Alaska’s constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage. The lawsuit, filed in the US District Court for the District of Alaska , contends that the amendment , added to the Alaska Constitution in 1998, violates their due process and equal protection rights under the Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitution. Four [...]
Human Rights Watch (HRW) released a report on Monday finding that the use of fully autonomous weapons by militaries or law enforcement would be an affront to basic human rights and should be preemptively banned by international convention. The report, entitled “Shaking the Foundations: The Human Rights Implications of Killer Robots,” was jointly authored by [...]
The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) on Monday ordered Turkey to pay €90 million (USD $123 million) to Cyprus for invading the island in 1974. Thirty million euros are to be paid in damages to relatives of the missing, and €60 million have been allocated for residents of the Karpas peninsula. Speaking on the [...]
The office of Russian President Vladimir Putin has declared that it does not wish to annex eastern Ukraine where “self-rule” referendums have overwhelmingly supported secession, but called on the Kiev government to open dialogue with the separatists. The referendums, organized by pro-Russian insurgents in Ukraine’s Russian-speaking eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, claim a vote [...]
The Indonesian Constitutional Court (MK) on Monday established three panels to review disputes regarding the country’s April 9 legislative elections. The MK and the General Elections Commission (KPU) formed the panels in expectation of challenges to the election results, announced by the KPU on May 9, including accusations of electoral fraud. The Indonesian Democratic Party [...]
The lawyer for the Pakistani doctor who helped the US find Osama bin Laden said on Sunday that he would no longer represent him after receiving threats from militants. Lawyer Samiullah Khan Afridi told the Associated Press (AP) that he made the decision after he received a “final” warning from militants. Afridi had been representing [...]
Saif al-Islam Gaddafi , the son of the late Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi , appeared via videolink at a court in Tripoli on Sunday. Saif al-Islam and 36 other defendants are facing a variety of charges including corruption and war crimes from their alleged role in suppressing the 2011 uprising . At the trial, the [...]
Israel’s Ministerial Committee for Legislation approved a bill on Sunday that would allow Israel’s courts to impose restrictions the president’s ability to pardon murderers. The stated purpose of the bill is to prevent diplomatic overtures and “prisoner swapping,” which is the exchange of hostages or prisoners by opposing sides of a conflict. The bill, which [...]
The International Crimes Tribunal Bangladesh (ICTB) officially charged Abdul Jabbar, a former Jatiya Party lawmaker, with war crimes on Sunday. The charges, which include genocide, come at the conclusion of a year-long probe into allegations against the former member of Bangladesh’s parliament. The probe produced evidence of Jabbar’s involvement in the murder of 36 people, [...]
JURIST Guest Columnist Lauren Carasik of Western New England School of Law argues that the UN must change its recent course and uphold its international duties to provide a forum for legal redress to the victims of the Cholera outbreak in Haiti … Last month, the venerable New York City Bar Association added the voices [...]
