The UN Dispute Tribunal (UNDT) ruled that the UN Ethics Office has failed to protect the basic rights of a former UN employee, the Guardian reported on Wednesday. James Wasserstrom, a US diplomat and former official for the UN Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) advising on the management of its public utilities, was detained by UN [...]

JURIST Columnist Haider Ala Hamoudi of the University of Pittsburgh School of Law says that the Supreme Constitutional Court of Egypt’s recent judgment disbanding the People’s Assembly may result in a power imbalance between the three branches that could be exploited by a strong executive…

Three UN Special Rapporteurs on Thursday condemned Iran for recently executing four members of the Ahwazi Arab minority. Three brothers, Abd al-Rahman Heidarian, Taha Heidarian and Jamshid Heidarian, along with Ali Sharifi, were executed on or around June 19 in the Southwestern province of Khuzestan. The Special Rapporteurs criticized the alleged unfair trials that resulted [...]

The Quebec Superior Court on Wednesday rejected a request to suspend parts of an emergency law that restricts spontaneous protests until the law’s constitutionality is determined later this summer. Judge Francois Rolland refused to grant the application for stay by student organizations reasoning that plaintiffs did not demonstrate irreparable harm would occur if the grant [...]

The US Supreme Court on Thursday ruled 6-3 that a law criminalizing the making of false claims of military honors violates the First Amendment . In United States v. Alvarez , the Court struck down the Stolen Valor Act (SVA) , which makes it a federal crime to lie about having received a military medal [...]

An abortion clinic in Mississippi on Wednesday filed a lawsuit in the US District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi challenging a new abortion regulation that is scheduled to go into effect on July 1. The new law requires that all physicians performing abortions at a clinic to be a licensed OB-GYN and have [...]

UN Under-Secretary-General for Legal Affairs, Patricia O’Brien said Wednesday at the 55th Annual meeting of the Russian Association of International Law that “rule of law is key to the implementation of R2P and hence, to the prevention of atrocities.” The concept R2P, Responsibility to Protect, was initiated in 2005 in response to the events in [...]

A judge for the US District Court for the District of South Dakota on Thursday upheld an injunction against most of a controversial South Dakota abortion law but allowed one section, requiring doctors to certify that a woman has not been “coerced” into making her decision, to go into effect. The most controversial parts of [...]

The UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories Richard Falk on Wednesday demanded Israel cease its demolition of Palestinian buildings in the West Bank settlements. Falk reported that the demolition of Palestinian structures such as houses, animal shelters, water cisterns and roads have risen by 87 percent from [...]

Burundi President Pierre Nkurunziza on Thursday announced that the government will release prisoners in order to address the overcrowding in national prisons. At the end of May the number of prisoners was around 10,000 detained in 11 prisons that had a total capacity of only 3,500, according to a human rights group. The pardon, announced [...]