Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on Tuesday announced that the country would withdraw from the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR) . In a statement during a military ceremony, Chavez announced the withdrawal and criticized the regional court , saying it is not fit to be called a human rights court. The decision came just after [...]

The Scottish government announced Wednesday that it plans to bring forward a draft bill that will recognize same-sex marriages with the same legal rights belonging to married heterosexual couples in the country. The measures are expected to be passed by the Scottish Parliament next year, and the first marriages could be held in 2015. Same-sex [...]

JPMorgan Chase on Tuesday agreed to a $100 million settlement in a case alleging that the company increased monthly minimum payments for credit card holders from 2 percent to 5 percent in 2008 and 2009 to profit from higher fees. The settlement, which was filed with the US District Court for the Northern District of [...]

Florida Governor Rick Scott on Tuesday announced that he will appeal an injunction issued by a federal district court last month blocking a new Florida law that denies government contracts to companies that do business in Cuba or Syria. A judge for the US District Court for the Southern District of Florida last month temporarily [...]

The Supreme Court of Pakistan on Wednesday granted another two weeks for the new Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf to comply with its order to reopen the investigation against President Asif Ali Zardari . The adjournment of the case came after the attorney general requested more time to resolve the tension between the legislature and [...]

A regional court of the Philippines on Tuesday granted bail to former president Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo who was detained on electoral fraud charges. The court reasoned that the evidence, based mainly on a single witness’ testimony, was insufficient to bring the charges against the former president who was in office from 2001 to 2010. She was [...]

The Federal Constitutional Court of Germany on Wednesday invalidated the country’s election law as unconstitutional. Germany has a complex system that sometimes creates extra “overhang” parliamentary seats that benefit the larger parties, a result the court ruled violates constitutional guarantees of citizens’ rights to take part in direct, free and equal elections. Each German voter [...]

JURIST Guest Columnist Robin West of the Georgetown University Law Center says that Chief Justice Roberts’s conviction that the individual mandate is not authorized by the Commerce Clause is evidence of a new, anti-collectivist conception of individual rights that is growing in popularity…

Mali security forces loyal to the country’s coup leader, Captain Amadou Sanogo, have been abducting and torturing opposition soldiers and journalists, Human Rights Watch (HRW) reported Wednesday. The report says that 20 soldiers involved in a counter-coup to overthrow Sanago in April have disappeared, and several others have been detained. HRW said that while it [...]

A judge for the US District Court for the District of Columbia released an accused Somali pirate Tuesday after prosecutors failed to produce sufficient evidence to proceed to trial. English-speaking Somali citizen Ali Mohamed Ali, 50, was scheduled to be tried next week on charges of conspiracy to commit piracy, piracy and aiding and abetting, [...]