The Dutch government on Monday asked the UN-backed International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) to order Russia to return a ship used by Greenpeace International and the activists who were arrested on board the ship . The ship had been used to stage a protest over oil drilling. The 28 activists and [...]

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled Monday that it is not competent to examine the adequacy of an investigation by Russian authorities into the1940 Katyn Massacre , where thousands of Polish prisoners of war were killed by the Soviet secret police (NKVD). The case was brought by 15 relatives of victims of the [...]

Hobby Lobby on Monday filed a brief in the US Supreme Court , urging the court to review its case regarding the constitutionality of the birth-control mandate in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) . The US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) in September filed a petition for a writ of [...]

An EU Parliament Committee on Tuesday approved broad legislation aimed at providing greater data protection for Internet users in the wake of the revelation of the US National Security Agency (NSA) PRISM program. If passed, the legislation would empower Internet users to demand that companies with access to user data transfer information, like Google and [...]

Amnesty International (AI) on Tuesday urged the US to conduct a thorough, impartial and independent investigation into allegations that Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) drone strikes have resulted in recent civilian casualties in Pakistan. AI reviewed more than 50 reported US drone strikes in Pakistan from January 2012 to August 2013, many of which resulted in [...]

Four same-sex couples filed a lawsuit on Monday challenging the Tennessee laws that prohibit recognition of their marriages. The federal lawsuit challenges the constitutionality of Tennessee’s “Anti-Recognition” laws, which prohibit the state from recognizing the marriages of same-sex couples lawfully entered into in other jurisdictions. The National Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR) , which filed [...]

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie announced on Monday that his administration would drop its appeal challenging same-sex marriage in the state. Christie’s appeal was the last hurdle in making same-sex marriage legal in New Jersey, but the administration withdrew its challenge, stating that there is “no ambiguity about the unanimous court’s view on the ultimate [...]

JURIST Guest Columnist Theodore Seto of the Loyola Law School of Los Angeles says the US Supreme Court’s decision in US v. Windsor will not be its last concerning same-sex marriage, due to its repercussions on federal and state law interplay…

The US Supreme Court agreed Monday to rule on a case addressing the legal standard for assessing whether an individual is mentally retarded in order to determine that person’s eligibility for the death penalty. In Hall v. Florida the court will decide “whether the Florida scheme for identifying mentally retarded defendants in capital cases violates [...]

Prosecutors at Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge tribunal, the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) , on Monday requested life imprisonment in the case against two former leaders of the Khmer Rouge. The former leaders, Nuon Chea, also known as “Brother Number 2,” and Khieu Samphan , the regime’s head of state, are accused of [...]