The Supreme Court of India recently delivered a judgment in Janhit Abhiyan v. Union of India upholding the Constitution (103rd Amendment) Act, 2019, creating a regime for income-based affirmative action in state-run educational institutions and state-sponsored employment programs. This explainer will illuminate the historical underpinnings of India’s affirmative action scheme and explain its legal evolution. [...]

The Honoring our PACT Act was signed into law by President Biden in August of 2022. This landmark legislation included the Camp Lejeune Justice Act (CLJA), which will be consequential for the thousands of victims poisoned by contaminated water – up to 280 times higher than permitted levels – at Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune [...]

Since the February 2021 coup d’état in Myanmar, human rights conditions have continued to deteriorate throughout the country. While the current ruling military dictatorship is guilty of causing and/or perpetuating many rights violations, some — such as restrictions on labor rights — had started even before the coup. In this explainer I will look at [...]

American basketball star Britney Griner was transferred to a Russian penal colony this week to serve out her nine-year sentence for possession of vape cartridges containing cannabis oil. The transfer — which comes nearly nine months after she was detained in a Moscow airport in the days leading up to Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine [...]

Following months of protests over rapidly rising inflation rates and economic turmoil in Sri Lanka, the government has imposed a series of repressive measures against its people. Officials were banned from expressing their own concerns about Sri Lanka’s beleaguered economy via social media platforms. Certain neighborhoods were subject to heightened security requirements which included an [...]

As the US Supreme Court considers oral arguments in the cases of Students for Fair Admission vs. Harvard College and the University of North Carolina, JURIST’s latest explainer offers a breakdown of the parties, the legal issues, and the factual allegations at play in the case. What are the cases about? A race-neutrality advocacy group [...]

On June 24, 2022, in the landmark Dobbs v. Jackson decision, the US Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in a 5-4 decision, posing a risk to the reproductive rights of millions of American women. Though of course, the debate is limited in many ways to US constitutional laws and practices, it also draws on [...]

In late August, Pakistani publisher and human rights activist Faheem Baloch was detained by unidentified plain-clothes law enforcement officers in his Karachi bookshop and ushered away. A native of the Balochistan region of Pakistan, the publisher is known to be a dedicated cultural advocate, heading up a publishing house specializing in Balochi literature, and serving [...]

On February 24, 2022, Russia launched a large-scale military invasion, essentially declaring war against the territorial integrity, sovereignty, and independence of Ukraine — an operation broadly seen as a continuation of the 2014 annexation of Crimea and the subsequent conflict in the Donbas and Luhansk regions. Immediately following the Russian invasion, the Government of Ukraine [...]

JURIST Deputy Features Editor Jaimee Francis talked with Shai Dromi, author of Above the Fray: The Red Cross and the Construction of the Humanitarian Relief Sector (University of Chicago Press, 2022) and co-author of Moral Minefields: How Sociologists Debate Good Science (University of Chicago Press, forthcoming), about his research on the impact of non-governmental organizations [...]