JURIST Guest Columnist Michael J. DeBoer of the Faulkner University Thomas Goode Jones School of Law discusses the recently passed Women’s Health and Safety Act and the challenges facing this legislation… On April 9, 2013, Alabama Governor Robert Bentley signed into law the Women’s Health and Safety Act . Two months later, two abortion providers [...]

Both sides in the South Sudan conflict are committing gross human rights violations, according to a UN report released Thursday. The UN Mission in South Sudan’s (UNMISS) issued the report after compiling evidence from interviews with more than 900 civilians who were victims of and witnesses to violence after being directly targeted based on ethnic [...]

The Oklahoma Criminal Court of Appeals on Thursday approved a six-month stay of execution for a current death row inmate while an investigation is conducted into issues with last week’s lethal injection. Attorneys for Charles Warner requested the delay after the recent botched lethal injection of Clayton Lockett. Last week inmate Lockett died of an [...]

US District Judge Eric Melgren on Wednesday ruled that Kansas and Arizona voters will have to provide proof of US citizenship while registering to vote using the federal form, despite a pending appeal by a US agency of the federal judge’s ruling that aids in the enforcement of new voter registration requirements. Melgren rejected requests [...]

A federal judge ruled Thursday that the state of Indiana must recognize the out-of-state marriage of a same-sex couple during the couple’s legal battle to have the name of one of the women listed as spouse on the death certificate of her terminally ill partner. The preliminary injunction , granted by US District Judge Richard [...]

The Court of Appeal of Quebec on Wednesday upheld the conviction of Rwandan Hutu Desire Munyaneza for war crimes committed during the 1994 Rwandan genocide. Munyaneza was convicted in May 2009 and sentenced the following October for seven counts of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes under Canada’s Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes [...]

Amnesty International (AI) on Thursday released a report detailing the crimes against humanity that have been fueled by South Sudan’s conflict. The report, entitled “Nowhere Safe: Civilians Under Attack in South Sudan,” documents the ethnically-motivated violence that has led to the targeted killing and sexual assault of civilians. Homes have been looted and burnt down, [...]

JURIST Guest Columnist Charles Duan of The Patent Reform Project at Public Knowledge discusses problems in Patent Law and Nautilus v. Biosig Instruments… The patent system is intended to incentivize invention and the spread of knowledge. As part of dispatching this task, patent laws require that patents be described clearly—the statutory term is “definiteness”—to ensure [...]

The Indian Supreme Court on Tuesday banned a version of bull fighting in the southern state of Tamil Nadu. Jallikattu is an annual festival in which thousands of men chase the bulls to grab prizes tied to their horns. The court found that the use of bulls in the festival “severely harmed” the animals and [...]

Chinese authorites on Tuesday detained prominent human rights lawyer Pu Zhiqiang on a charge of “causing a disturbance” after he attended a weekend meeting that urged an investigation into the 1989 crackdown of pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen Square. Pu Zhigiang is a leading free-speech lawyer who is well known for opposing China’s system of forced [...]