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The Pennsylvania Supreme Court announced Friday that it will hear an appeal from Derek Lee, a man convicted of second-degree murder who is challenging the state’s law requiring mandatory life prison sentences for those found guilty of the offense who did not intend to kill. The court granted Lee’s petition for an appeal on the [...]

The India Supreme Court unanimously declared unconstitutional the electoral bonds scheme on Wednesday, which previously allowed for anonymous funding to political parties. The electoral bonds scheme was first instituted by India Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Union government in 2018. It allowed both individuals and corporations to anonymously fund political parties by purchasing electoral bonds from the [...]

The Malaysian federal court declared several Kelantan state Sharia laws to be unconstitutional in a judgement on Friday. The decision followed a petition deposited by lawyer Nik Elin Zurina Nik Abdul Rashid and her daughter, Tengku Yasmin Natasha Tengku Abdul Rahman, to challenge the constitutionality of provisions of the Kelantan Syariah Criminal Code (I) Enactment [...]

The US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit heard oral arguments Tuesday in a case challenging a Mississippi felon voter disenfranchisement law. Several voters who were previously convicted of felonies challenged the law on the basis of it being an unconstitutional example of cruel and unusual punishment under the US Constitution’s Eighth Amendment. The [...]

Amnesty International found that it is now riskier to flee persecution in the North Caucasus region of Russia due to the ongoing war in Ukraine and stigmatization in Europe. In a report published on Thursday, Amnesty International urged European governments should stop transferring at-risk individuals to Russia to protect their human rights. The Thursday report [...]

Hafsa Kanjwal is an Assistant Professor of South Asian history at Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania, where she has taught courses covering the history of the modern world, South Asian history, and Islam in the modern context. Most recently, Kanjwal authored a book titled “Colonizing Kashmir: State-building under Indian Occupation.”  In a conversation with JURIST’s [...]

The US Supreme Court announced Friday that it has granted certiorari in the case City of Grants Pass, Oregon v. Johnson, which challenges cities banning or heavily regulating encampments of unhoused people on public land under the 8th Amendment of the US Constitution’s prohibition on “cruel and unusual punishment.” The case surrounds several parts of [...]

Human Rights Watch (HRW)  released its 2024 World Report on Thursday detailing the state of global human rights. The report’s central theme was that “transactional diplomacy” undermined global human rights institutions and enabled autocrats to worsen violations. HRW Executive Director Tiran Hassan described “transactional diplomacy” as when “governments disregard the benefits of long-term relationships built [...]

A grand jury declined to return an indictment Thursday against Brittany Watts, an Ohio woman facing an abuse of corpse charge after suffering a miscarriage in her home. The Trumbull County prosecutor’s office stated that, after evaluating the case, they believed Watts did not violate the Ohio Criminal Statute of Abuse of a Corpse. The grand [...]

The Directorate of Communications for Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan released a statement Tuesday confirming the country would not allow two British military minehunter ships en route to Ukraine to travel through the Turkish Straits in keeping with the 1936 Montreux Convention. In the statement, the Directorate wrote, “Our pertinent allies have been duly apprised [...]