A judge for the Provincial Court of British Columbia on Friday ruled that the federal government’s mandatory-minimum sentence for the possession of a loaded and prohibited firearm is arbitrary and fundamentally unjust. Judge James Bahen ruled in the case of Glenn Harley Tetsuji Sheck, a 29-year-old male with no prior criminal record who was arrested [...]

The Constitutional Court of Hungary on Friday struck down an electoral law requiring voters to register to vote at least two weeks before elections in 2014. The new rules had been proposed by the conservative Fidesz party of Prime Minister Viktor Orban . The new electoral law was passed by the Hungarian Parliament last November [...]

JURIST Guest Columnist Christina Fialho of Community Initiatives for Visiting Immigrants in Confinement speaks out against the isolation of immigrants in confinement across the US…

The chief US military judge overseeing the trial of the accused 9/11 conspirators, including Khalid Shaikh Mohammed , has ruled that lawyers cannot make public any material involved in the trial, including unclassified documents. The decision by Judge Army Col. James L. Pohl was issued on December 20 but was just released this week. The [...]

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced on Thursday that Google did not violate antitrust or anticompetition laws. Google’s practice of favoring its own services in search results, to the detriment of its competitors, has been under scrutiny. Though Google will be required to make changes to its business practices that the FTC believes could stifle [...]

The US Department of Justice (DOJ) on Thursday announced a settlement with Transocean Deepwater Inc. for the company’s role in the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill . Transocean pleaded guilty to “negligently discharging oil into the Gulf of Mexico,” in violation of the Clean Water Act (CWA) and will pay $1 billion in civil penalties [...]

US Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano announced a new rule Wednesday which will make easier for undocumented immigrants to become citizens if they have an immediate relative who is an American citizen. Under existing law , immediate relatives of US citizens who have been in the US illegally for more than six months must [...]

US President Barack Obama signed the National Defense Authorization Act of 2013 (NDAA) into law on Thursday. The bill, which authorizes appropriations for military activities for 2013, expressly prohibits using funds to transfer individuals detained at Guantanamo Bay and also prohibits using funds to construct facilities in the US intended to house Guantanamo detainees. Obama [...]

The Supreme Court of Sri Lanka on Thursday ruled that the impeachment proceedings against Chief Justice Shirani Bandaranayake were unlawful. The court held that the parliamentary committee does not have the authority to investigate or proceed with the impeachment of a senior judge; these tasks are left to the judiciary. Thus, by stepping into the [...]

A judge for the US District Court for the Southern District of New York on Wednesday denied a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for disclosure of tactics used by the US to assassinate suspected terrorists. The request had been filed by American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the New York Times in 2010. They [...]