China’s ex-security chief Zhou Yongkang was found guilty Thursday of bribery, abuse of power and intentionally disclosing national secrets was sentenced to life imprisonment. He has also been deprived of his political rights for life and has had his personal assets confiscated. A year after Zhou’s retirement in 2012, he was put under investigation as [...]

The Constitutional Court of Belgium on Thursday ruled that a law requiring Internet service providers and telecommunications operators to retain customer metadata for possible future police investigations violates fundamental privacy rights and is therefore unconstitutional. Specifically the law required these organizations to store customer metadata such as phone call logs and Internet data for one [...]

The North Carolina House of Representatives on Thursday passed a law that would allow some court officials to refuse to perform same-sex marriages based on their religious beliefs, overriding a veto by Governor Pat McCroy . The law requires that officials who hold such religious beliefs must stop performing all marriages for a period of [...]

UN Special Rapporteur Miklós Haraszti on Thursday warned that Belarus continues to sentence and imprison political opponents of the government. Haraszti cited examples from April and May where existing prisoners we given extended sentences or placed under worse conditions and called for their release This year, the authorities chose in several cases to extend prison [...]

JURIST Guest Columnist Victor Williams of Catholic University of America Columbus School of Law discusses the significance of the 800th anniversary of the Magna Carta… The Magna Carta sealed by King John on June 15, 1215 in Runnymede England is one of the world’s most important legal documents. It has become an ageless symbol of [...]

The Supreme Court of Canada unanimously ruled Thursday that a law restricting the medical use of marijuana to smoking the dried plant was unconstitutional. Under the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act , smoking marijuana for medical purposes was permitted, but uses of the plant’s extracts in other forms such as in topical applications or food [...]

The Center for Reproductive Rights, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the ACLU of Florida filed a lawsuit Thursday challenging a Florida law requiring women to visit a doctor and wait 24 hours before undergoing an abortion. Florida Governor Rick Scott signed the bill into law Wednesday, and it is scheduled to take effect [...]

An Arkansas judge on Tuesday ordered that 500 same-sex marriages performed in the state last year be recognized as valid. Pulaski County Circuit Judge Wendell Griffen ordered the recognition of the marriages performed during a six-day window last year after another Arkansas court struck down the state’s same-sex marriage ban but before the state’s highest [...]

The Wisconsin State Senate on Tuesday passed the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act , limiting the ability of a woman to seek an abortion more than 20 weeks into her pregnancy. Proponents of the bill say it is designed to prohibit women from seeking an abortion that may cause pain to the fetus. Wisconsin Senator [...]

According to an unreleased report obtained by the Associated Press , some members of a UN peacekeeping mission engaged in sexual exploitation with more than 200 Haitian women, telling them that they had to in order to obtain necessary food and medication. Many see this as a sign that sexual exploitation consistently goes unreported during [...]