Alexandra Bennett is JURIST’s Global Chief of Staff and an occasional contributor. She is a JD candidate at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, where she serves as a Senior Development Editor on Law Review, and is concurrently pursuing an LLM in International Business Law at the Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne. At 9 a.m. [...]

Editor’s note: The author is a federal prisoner. The Fifth Circuit rejected his challenge to the stipulations in his case on Aug. 11, 2026, in an unpublished per curiam opinion (United States v. Castro, No. 24-11000). He has since submitted the Rule 23(d) proposal discussed here as Rules Suggestion 26-CR-39. Before a federal court accepts [...]

The US Supreme Court announced on Monday that it would revisit the issue of race and school admissions, often called affirmative action, three years after striking down affirmative action in higher education admissions. This time, the Court will hear a challenge to the admissions policies at a competitive (magnet) middle school in Montgomery County, Maryland. [...]

The UN on Monday condemned Israeli settlers for carrying out at least 160 attacks against Palestinians during the current olive harvest on the West Bank, damaging property, and conducting demolitions that forcibly displaced 96 Palestinians. The wave of attacks come a year after the ceasefire agreement for the Gaza Strip was brokered. Commenting on the [...]

The US Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear challenges to former Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s withdrawal from plea agreements that would have spared three men accused of plotting the September 11, 2001 attacks from the death penalty. The justices denied petitions from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Mustafa al Hawsawi, and a separate petition from [...]

When I was in the third grade, my teacher told us that, before she had formally begun her career as a teacher, she was sitting on a bus when she saw Iraqi fighter jets flying overhead. The Iran-Iraq War had begun, and the image of aircraft above an ordinary road became, for her, the threshold [...]

Amnesty International reported on Monday that authorities in Kenya committed human rights violations against protesters between 2023 and 2025, using restrictive measures to suppress youth-led demonstrations in response to a deteriorating economic situation in the country. In a report documenting events and popular protests in Kenya between 2023 and 2025, Amnesty International revealed that Kenyan [...]

The US Supreme Court on Monday agreed to hear Department of Justice v. McNutt, a challenge to federal restrictions on home distilling that tests the scope of the constitutional authority of Congress to protect tax revenue. The case asks whether prohibiting the production of distilled spirits in homes and adjoining sheds or yards is a [...]

Amnesty International said Friday in a statement that Azerbaijan authorities must reverse school clothing rules that bar pupils and teachers wearing hijabs in classrooms, and must release people detained solely for peaceful protest. Commenting on the clothing restrictions and detention of protesters, Marie Struthers, Amnesty’s Eastern Europe and Central Asia director, stated: Denying girls access [...]