A judge for the the US District Court for the Southern District of Florida on Thursday blocked an executive order that mandates Florida state government agencies provide pre-employment drug screening for all prospective employees and provide for random drug testing of all current agency employees regardless of classification. Governor Rick Scott issued Executive Order 11-58 [...]

Rwanda’s Supreme Court on Friday rejected an appeal by opposition leader Bernard Ntaganda, who was charged under the country’s anti-genocide ideology laws. Ntaganda, a former leader of the country’s PS-Imberakuri party, was arrested in July 2010 and convicted in February 2011 of endangering national security, encouraging an ethnic divide and attempting to organize demonstrations. He [...]

A judge for the US District Court for the District of Columbia on Thursday denied a request to release photos of Osama Bin Laden taken shortly after his death last year. Nonprofit organization Justice Watch filed a complaint against the Obama administration in May, claiming that the government violated the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) [...]

JURIST Guest Columnist J. Wells Dixon, Senior Staff Attorney for the Center for Constitutional Rights, and attorney for Guantanamo detainee Djamel Ameziane, says that the IACHR’s acceptance of his case is instrumental in promoting US responsibility for the well-being of detainees at Guantanamo Bay… On March 30, 2012, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) [...]

The US House of Representatives voted 248-168 Thursday to approve a controversial cybersecurity bill that would allow private companies and the federal government to exchange private security information, despite the threat of a presidential veto. The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) was designed as a way to stop cyber attacks on US infrastructure [...]

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay expressed concern on Friday about threats to rule of law in Papua New Guinea. Since August 2011 there has been a battle for leadership and the legitimacy of the Prime Minister has been called into question. Pillay’s concerns stem from actions taken by the government that she [...]

The American Civil Liberties Union of Washington (ACLU-WA) and the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project (NWIRP) filed a lawsuit Thursday alleging that US Border Patrol agents are routinely stopping vehicles to check the immigration status of Latinos without legal justification. The class action lawsuit was filed in the US District Court for the Western District of [...]

JURIST Columnist Haider Ala Hamoudi of the University of Pittsburgh School of Law says that recent decisions by the Federal Supreme Court of Iraq demonstrate the Court’s deference to the legislature over legal questions that implicate controversial areas of religious doctrine…

The Brazilian Chamber of Deputies Wednesday passed amendments to the country’s Forest Code, which requires landowners to conserve certain percentages of total acreage as forested terrain. Passed 247-184 over strong opposition, the controversial legislation eases conservation rules for farmers and provides amnesty from fines for illegally clearing trees. Farmers and other supporters of the bill [...]

JURIST Guest Columnist Harry Gerla of the University of Dayton School of Law says that contrary to Daniel Crane’s prediction, the alleged agreement among the e-book publishers may wind up being summarily condemned even if they never agreed on a price or price level…