In courtrooms from Birmingham, Alabama, to Santa Maria, California, Thomas Mesereau has faced some of the highest stakes in American criminal law. Renowned for his landmark criminal defense of pop icon Michael Jackson and over two decades representing clients on death row in the Deep South, Mesereau speaks with JURIST’s Senior Editor for Long-Form Content, [...]

Fawzia Koofi has survived assassination attempts, navigated Afghanistan’s turbulent political landscape, and negotiated directly with the Taliban. As a three-time elected member of Afghanistan’s parliament and now an International Relations & Geopolitics speaker, she has been one of the country’s most visible advocates for women’s rights and democratic governance. Now in exile, as the Taliban [...]

JURIST’s Sarisha Harikrishna interviews Megumi Ochi, Associate Professor at the College of International Relations, Ritsumeikan University, Japan, about the International Criminal Court (ICC)’s expansion of its framework to include intergenerational harm in providing reparations for victims of atrocities against humanity. The topic of intergenerational reparations at the ICC has generated significant discourse over the years, [...]

US President Donald Trump recently claimed he has “unquestioned power” under the Insurrection Act to deploy National Guard troops to San Francisco. The Insurrection Act grants the President authority to deploy military forces domestically to suppress insurrection or rebellion. Dating to 1807, it represents a narrow exception to the Posse Comitatus Act‘s general prohibition against [...]

Ghana’s bodies of water are being poisoned by mercury and cyanide. Babies are being born with severe health conditions. And now a chorus of voices is demanding the president invoke emergency powers to stop it. The culprit is galamsey—a local term for illegal small-scale mining that has transformed fertile farmland and pristine rivers across Ghana [...]

The US Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in Louisiana v. Callais on Wednesday, October 15, a case testing how far states may consider race when redrawing congressional districts to comply with the Voting Rights Act (VRA). In 2024, Louisiana enacted a new map creating a second majority-Black district. A three-judge federal court struck it [...]

Two years after the Hamas-led attacks on Israel of October 7, 2023, the enduring violent aftermath of the attacks has given rise to multiple international legal proceedings, illustrating both the reach of international justice mechanisms and their inherent limitations. The original Hamas attack killed some 1,200 people across Israel and resulted in 251 taken hostage. [...]

The US Supreme Court will hear oral arguments on Tuesday, October 7, in Chiles v. Salazar, a case concerning Colorado’s ban on “conversion therapy”—treatments that seek to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity—for minors. A Christian therapist is challenging the law, arguing that it violates her freedom of speech. This case follows a [...]

In the aftermath of Bashar al-Assad’s December 2024 ouster and flight to Moscow, JURIST’s Sarisha Harikrishna interviews Dr. Patrick Kroker, Senior Legal Advisor in the International Crimes and Accountability program at the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR) in Berlin, about universal jurisdiction’s role in pursuing justice for Syrian crimes. Universal jurisdiction empowers [...]

Fawzia Koofi is a former Afghan MP, the first ever female Deputy Speaker of the Afghan Parliament, and a veteran human rights advocate whose career embodies the fragile yet essential relationship between law and justice in conflict zones. Elected to the Afghan National Assembly in 2005, she spent nearly two decades drafting and championing legislation [...]