Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga on Friday appealed the results of Kenya’s 2013 election to Kenya’s Supreme Court. Kenya’s election commission declared Uhuru Kenyatta , son of Kenya’s first president Mzee Jomo Kenyatta, the winner of the nation’s 2013 presidential election earlier this month. Odinga has accused electoral authorities of “electoral theft” and stated that [...]

A judge for the US District Court for the Northern District of California ruled Thursday that the use of national security letters under 18 USC § 2709 is unconstitutional. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) challenged the use of national security letters by the FBI on behalf of an unnamed telecommunication company. The statute allows the [...]

JURIST Guest Columnist George Kegoro of the International Commission of Jurists argues that the results of the 2013 presidential election in Kenya are unavoidably marred by technological failures and the shortcomings of the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commissions… Now that Kenya has completed the general elections for 2013, which ended with the declaration of Uhuru [...]

JURIST Guest Columnist Lara Wharton, Emory University School of Law Class of 2013, discusses the human rights abuses in the Philippines…

The Syrian regime is expanding its use of widely banned cluster bombs, according to a Human Rights Watch (HRW) report released Saturday. According to the report, the Syrian military has used cluster munitions in 119 locations across Syria, dropping at least 156 bombs over the last six months and killings dozens of civilians. The use [...]

The North Dakota legislature passed two bills Friday that would place strict limits on abortion, banning non-emergency abortions after a fetal heartbeat is detected and barring terminations sought because of genetic abnormalities. HB 1305 and HB 1456 will go before Governor Jack Dalrymple this week. If signed, HB 1456 would make it a felony for [...]

The Maryland House of Delegates on Friday voted 82-56 to ban the death penalty in Maryland. Senate Bill 276 seeks to repeal “the death penalty and all provisions relating to it,” and will prescribe sentences of life imprisonment for individuals convicted of first degree murder. Prior to Senate Bill 276, Maryland’s capital punishment laws were [...]

Tribal Chairman Dexter McNamara of the Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians , a northern Michigan Native American tribe, on Friday signed into law the Waganakising Odawak Statute 2013-003 , a measure approving same-sex marriage. The law repeals Waganakising Odawak Statute 2007-001 which only permits marriage between one man and one woman. The newly [...]

JURIST Columnist Haider Ala Hamoudi of the University of Pittsburgh School of Law says that Iraq must not push blindly forward in its goal of de-Ba’athification, but rather consider the harm that such absolute changes pose to fairness and process …

Tunisian lawmakers voted on Friday to establish a deadline for elections and an initial draft constitution. The draft constitution must be completed by the end of April and elections must be held by December. A spokesman for Mustafa Ben Jaafar, speaker of the constituent assembly, stated that the establishment of dates for the constitution and [...]