UN Special Rapporteur on the Independence of Judges and Lawyers Gabriela Knaul said Sunday that lawyers and judges in the Maldives are not adequately independent from outside influence . The special rapporteur pointed to the power struggle between parliament, the government and the judiciary, as having a negative impact on the rule of law. Knaul [...]

JURIST Guest Columnist Justin Levitt of the Loyola Law School says that the Supreme Court’s newest campaign finance case need not signal a sea change in the Court’s campaign finance doctrine…

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) on Thursday filed an appeal in the Guantanamo Bay military tribunal, the US Court of Military Commission Review , to an order granting the government’s request to censor testimony . The ACLU is seeking access to testimony from 9/11 defendants relating to torture and other abuses, held in the [...]

The Kansas Supreme Court on Friday ruled that a non-biological mother of children conceived using assisted reproductive technologies has parentage rights under Kansas law. Kelly Goudschaal and Marci Frazier were in a committed, long-term, same-sex relationship and had two children via artificial insemination. The couple executed a co-parenting agreement and after they separated, Frazier filed [...]

Human Rights Watch (HRW) on Saturday urged both the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Iran to allow detainees access to lawyers and provide them with basic rights. It urged UAE to not only grant immediate access to lawyers, but also to either charge or release 13 Egyptian detainees who are accused of having ties to [...]

The Iowa Supreme Court on Friday ruled that a woman whose will designated that she be buried in Montana must be buried in Iowa at the behest of her husband. It ruled that the state’s Final Disposition Act gives the spouse of a decedent “the right to control the final disposition…with no accompanying requirement that [...]

The US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit refused on Friday to rehear a case decided in December that struck down Illinois’ ban on carrying concealed weapons. Last month, Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan filed a petition for re-hearing en banc , which requests for all 10 judges on the court to hear the [...]

In a statement to the UN Security Council on Friday, Special Representative of the Secretary-General Roger Meece urged the council to deploy an additional military brigade to help the “overstretched” peacekeeping mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Meece, the head of United Nations Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo [...]

Three briefs on the merits were filed with the US Supreme Court in the case US v. Windsor on Friday on the issues of the constitutionality of the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) and of whether the Court even has the authority to decide such a question. The Obama Administration filed a brief arguing [...]

The Uruguay Supreme Court ruled on Friday that a 2011 law allowing for investigations into crimes committed during the country’s 1973-1985 dictatorship is unconstitutional. Uruguay’s legislature passed the law in 2011, allowing the government to investigate human rights violations that occurred during the 12-year dictatorship and not subjecting these violations to a statute of limitations. [...]