The US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit on Monday rejected Argentina’s attempt to prevent bondholders from acquiring bank documents regarding the country’s assets outside US territory. To no avail, Argentina asserted that its sovereign immunity was affected by a September 2011 ruling by the US District Court for the Southern District of New [...]

The International Criminal Court (ICC) on Monday dismissed a challenge by former Ivory Coast president and alleged war criminal Laurent Gbagbo that the court lacks jurisdiction to try him. Gbagbo is being charged with crimes against humanity relating to violence following the 2010 elections in which Gbagbo lost but refused to cede power. Specifically, the [...]

JURIST Guest Columnist Mary L. Bonauto, Civil Rights Project Director at Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders, says that the Defense of Marriage Act does not serve a legitimate government purpose and must be struck down by the courts…

Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) activists filed a lawsuit against Russian authorities Monday in the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) . The founders of Pride House in Sochi filed the lawsuit seeking €200,000 over the Russian Justice Ministry’s refusal to register Pride House for the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympic Games . Justice Svetlana [...]

The Arizona Supreme Court ruled on Friday that a state law requiring all public officials to be proficient in English is constitutional. The defendant in the case, Alejandrina Cabrera, was a city council candidate in the largely Spanish-speaking Arizona town of San Luis. Cabrera argued that her English was good enough for San Luis because [...]

Spokespersons for the UN Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights (OHCHR) and the UN High Commissioner of Refugees (UNHCR) about a recently passed law in Australia that will reopen offshore detention centers used to process migrants and asylum-seekers who arrive in the country by sea. A spokesperson for the High Commissioner on Human [...]

A judge for the US District Court for the Northern District of California on Friday rejected a settlement proposed by Facebook in a class action lawsuit over the social networking company’s “Sponsored Stories” program. The lawsuit accuses Facebook of appropriating the names, photographs and identities of users through the Sponsored Stories program to advertise products [...]

The government of Japan announced on Saturday that it will file a lawsuit with the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague over an ongoing territorial dispute with South Korea concerning a group of islands. The disputed islands, known as Takeshima in Japan and Dokdo in South Korea, are believed to contain valuable natural [...]

Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari said Monday that the country’s blasphemy laws would not be misused to persecute religious beliefs. Zardari’s comments came after an 11-year-old Christian was arrested last week for allegedly desecrating pages of a religious text. Police said after the girl’s arrest that she may have Down syndrome. Zardari has ordered an [...]

The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled on Friday that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) acted lawfully when it approved a plan to increase the amount of ethanol in gasoline. The EPA approved the introduction of a fuel blend known as E15 which consists of 15 percent ethanol, up from [...]