Sri Lankan law students have been reporting for JURIST on the situation in that country since mass protests and the physical invasion of the President’s House in Colombo by demonstrators forced the departure and resignation of Sri Lanka’s sitting president in July and precipitated the imposition of emergency rule. Now that the state of emergency [...]

UK privacy campaign group Big Brother Watch Thursday reported that police are disproportionately using existing stop and search powers to target protesters. This comes as the Government is planning even more protest crackdowns through the Public Order Bill, the human rights group said on Twitter.  According to the UK Government, the bill aims to “give police the [...]

Law students and lawyers in Afghanistan are filing reports with JURIST on the situation that has developed there since the Taliban takeover. Here, our correspondent, a now-graduated law student, reflects on her academic, professional and personal circumstances before and after the fall of Kabul on August 15, 2021.  For privacy and security reasons, we are [...]

United Nations Special Rapporteur on slavery Tomoya Obokata released a report Tuesday on contemporary forms of slavery where he found that it was “reasonable to conclude” that forced labor “among Uygur, Kazakh and other ethnic minorities in sectors such as agriculture and manufacturing” is taking place in China’s Xinjiang region. Obokata’s assessment was made “based [...]

In a landmark decision, India’s Supreme Court Wednesday ruled that pre-litigation mediation is mandatory for all commercial suits initiated after India’s Commercial Courts Act of 2015. The court held that Section 12A of the 2015 Act, the enabling provision for pre-litigation mediation, is mandatory in nature. Thus, any commercial suit instituted before a commercial court [...]

India’s Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) Wednesday denied having issued directions to provide housing for Rohingya refugees hours after the Union Minister for Housing and Urban Affairs, Hardeep Singh Puri, announced that the government would house them. In a press release, the MHA said that the ministry had not passed any order to provide flats [...]

The US Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit Tuesday held that Arkansas’ three-drug execution protocol does not violate the Eighth Amendment’s protection against cruel and unusual punishment. The case, Stacey Johnson v. Asa Hutchinson, was initially brought by death-row prisoners seeking to avoid the execution protocol in Arkansas. Though Arkansas’ supply of the three [...]

The first plaintiff scheduled to go to trial against drug manufacturers for the heartburn medication Zantac Tuesday dropped his suit. Joseph Bayer, who claimed Zantac (also known as ​​ranitidine) caused him to develop esophageal cancer, told the court and drug manufacturers that he intended to file a notice of voluntary dismissal. Notably, there was no settlement [...]

Rabia Shuja holds an LLM in International Human Rights Law from Griffith College, Dublin and is a Staff Correspondent for JURIST in Pakistan. She reports from Islamabad.  Hello everyone, I am Rabia Shuja – JURIST’s new Pakistan Correspondent. I have the honour to be reporting on recent developments in my country. This first piece is [...]

The Department of Justice (DOJ) Tuesday unsealed a 28-count indictment against former California congressman TJ Cox. Cox was indicted for 10 counts of wire fraud, 11 counts of money laundering, 5 counts of wire fraud affecting financial institutions, and one count of contributions in the name of another. The bulk of the charges come from [...]