The French Court of Cassation on Tuesday upheld a lower court’s 2008 decision finding French oil company Total and several other defendants criminally liable for an oil spill that occurred of the coast of Brittany in 1999. Over 20,000 tons of oil seeped from an oil tanker called Erika, which Total chartered from an Italian [...]

A Rwandan businessman pleaded not guilty on Tuesday to charges of involvement in the 1994 Rwandan genocide during Norway’s first genocide trial. Sadi Bugingo is accused of taking a lead role in planning and leading attacks against Tutsi civilians who sought refuge in a church and a hospital. The prosecution alleges that Bugingo was involved [...]

Three armed Islamist groups in northern Mali are abusing the local population and employing child soldiers , Human Rights Watch (HRW) reported Tuesday. According to interviews that HRW conducted over the past several weeks, three rebel groups, Ansar Dine, the Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO) and al Qaeda in the Islamic [...]

The US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruled Monday that the US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) is not liable for damages caused by canal breaches that occurred during Hurricane Katrina . Plaintiffs claimed that the impact-review requirement of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) constituted a legal mandate requiring the USACE to [...]

Kuwait’s Constitutional Court on Tuesday upheld a controversial election law passed in 2006 that divides the country into five voting constituencies. Tensions ran high in the lead up to the release of the court’s decision. The court was cordoned off prior to issuance of the ruling after thousands protested the election law in front of [...]

The United Nations held the High-Level Meeting of the General Assembly on the Rule of Law Monday and released the outcome document prepared by the meeting. The meeting was attended by the President of the General Assembly, the Secretary-General, the President of the International Court of Justice, the President of the Security Council, the UN [...]

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) on Monday finalized its April ruling to allow the UK to extradite five terror suspects to the US. Egyptian-born Muslim cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri and four other suspects appealed that ruling in July, but the ECHR declined to revisit their arguments . In addition to al-Masri, British citizens [...]

JURIST Guest Columnist Perry Moriearty of the University of Minnesota Law School says that the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Miller v. Alabama and Jackson v. Hobbs marks an important step toward restoring principles of rehabilitation to the juvenile justice system…

JURIST Guest Columnist Eileen Ward, St. John’s University School of Law Class of 2013, is the author of the fifth article in a 15-part series from the staffers of the Journal of Civil Rights and Economic Development. Ward offers insight about why the US should adopt the Convention on the Elimination of Forms of Discrimination [...]

An Egyptian criminal court on Monday upheld death sentences for 14 Islamists convicted of murdering several people in Sinai Peninsula attacks last year. In particular, the Ismailia court ordered the convicts, all members of the monotheist and militant group Tawheed wal Jihad , to be hanged for killing three police officers, one army officer, and [...]