JURIST Guest Columnist Arthur Hellman of the University of Pittsburgh School of Law says the Federal Courts Jurisdiction and Venue Clarification Act significantly clarifies the law of federal court jurisdiction and venue but was passed after removing some beneficial but controversial provisions…

A panel of three judges in the US District Court for the Southern District of West Virginia ruled 2-1 Tuesday that West Virginia’s congressional redistricting plan, signed into law last August, is unconstitutional. The Jefferson County Commission brought suit in November to challenge the constitutionality of the plan, which created a disparity of more than [...]

The Spanish government has approved a new law that creates a government agency with the authority to force Internet service providers to block certain websites that are involved in pirating copyrighted material, reports said on Tuesday. Under the Sinde law , the new government agency will take claims of infringement against websites that have copyrighted [...]

The Libyan National Transitional Council (NTC) published a draft law Monday establishing guidelines for the election of the assembly that will create Libya’s new constitution. The law would ban any former members of the regime of deceased former dictator Muammar Gaddafi as well as those educated in his political manifesto, the Green Book . This [...]

A three-judge panel of the Provincial Court of Justice of Sucumbios in Lago Agrio, Ecuador, on Tuesday upheld a multi-billion dollar fine against Chevron for polluting the Amazon Jungle in the 1980s. The USD $18 billion fine, one of the largest in the history of environmental contamination suits, was originally set at $8.6 billion but [...]

JURIST Guest Columnist Eric Leonard, the Henkel Family Chair in International Affairs Political Science at Shenandoah University, says that for the International Criminal Court to become a truly effective institution of humanitarian law, member states must consistently adhere to and enforce its mandates… The recent decision by a Kenyan court to issue an arrest warrant [...]

Former Turkish president Kenan Evren and former air force commander Tahsin Sahinkaya have been charged with crimes against the state in connection with a 1980 military coup and could face life imprisonment, according to Tuesday reports. Evren was head of the 1980 military coup before he became Turkey’s president in 1982 and was first questioned [...]

Former Tunisian president Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali went on trial in absentia Tuesday before a military court. The trial will focus on who ordered snipers to kill 41 protesters during last year’s Tunisian revolution which resulted in the death of more than 200 protesters. Along with Ben Ali, numerous former senior officials were named as [...]

The five-member prosecution team on Tuesday began presenting its case against former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak . Mubarak is facing charges of complicity by ordering the killings of at least 840 protesters during the Egyptian revolution early last year after which Mubarak stepped down from the office . Tuesday’s session, which lasted 90 minutes, was [...]

The daughter of former Iranian president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani was sentenced on Tuesday to six months in prison after being convicted of spreading propaganda against the country’s current government. Faezeh Hashemi, who is a former member of Iran’s Parliament , is also forbidden from being a member of any political party and must refrain [...]