Puerto Rican Governor Pedro Pierluisi said Sunday that the US is “morally obligated” to take action following the territory’s recent referendum in favor of achieving US statehood. Although Puerto Ricans have voted repeatedly on the issue of statehood in recent years, the November vote finally garnered majority approval with high enough voter turnout. Congress has [...]

The 23rd High Criminal Court of Istanbul on Monday sentenced four former employees of the pro-Kurdish daily newspaper Özgür Gündem, shut down by a Turkish court order in 2016, to imprisonment on terrorism charges. Eren Keskin, a Turkish lawyer prominent in human rights spheres, received a six-year sentence for “membership of an armed terrorist organization.” [...]

JURIST EXCLUSIVE – We present an interview recorded Monday with one of our Myanmar law student correspondents (“Gen Z”), discussing the current situation in Myanmar, the military coup, the protests, internet blackouts, and her hopes for a return to democracy. The interviewer is JURIST staff editor Khushali Mahajan, a law student at Rajiv Gandhi National [...]

The Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina on Friday upheld the conviction of Sasa Ćurčić, a former Bosnian Serb Army solider who served in the Dragan Nikolic Interventions Unit, for the rape of a woman in 1992 during the Bosnian War. The judgment in Prosecutor’s Office of Bosnia and Herzegovina v Sasa Ćurčić was released by [...]

Norway-based Telenor Group, an international telecommunications company with extensive operations in much of Europe and Asia, sharply criticized a cyber security bill proposed by the leaders of Myanmar’s February 1 military coup in a statement issued Monday. The bill, which is expected to be formally promulgated this week, has been decried by many rights groups [...]

The US Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit ruled Friday that an Arkansas law prohibiting state contracts with companies that refuse to pledge against boycotts on Israel is an unconstitutional violation of the First and Fourteenth Amendments. The 2017 law prevented contractors from signing deals with the state unless they agreed to abstain from [...]

The UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) released a report Monday denouncing attacks on Afghan journalists, human rights activists and media workers. In September, peace negotiations began between Afghan officials and the Taliban to end the ongoing war in Afghanistan. In November, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet and Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi called for [...]

JURIST EXCLUSIVE – One of JURIST’s law student correspondents in Myanmar writes Monday: There will be an internet cut off from 1 am to 9 am. The internet is very slow too. I wonder if there’s anything we can do about it. It’s worrisome to find out everything only in the morning. With the help [...]

When Democrats took control of the House of Representatives after the 2018 midterm elections, they used their first piece of legislation to announce what their priorities would be after two years of not controlling any lever of the federal government. The bill called the “For the People Act of 2019,” sought to restructure portions of [...]

The House decision to strip Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia) of committee assignments reflects a recent attempt to deal with a perceived failure in the marketplace of ideas. Oliver Wendell Holmes suggested in dissent over 100 years ago (Abrams v. United States (1919)) that the best way to arrive at the truth is by a “free [...]