The UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders on Wednesday joined special rapporteurs from the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights (ACHPR) and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) in urging governments around the world to stop reprisals against individuals and groups seeking to cooperate with UN and regional human [...]

International Criminal Court (ICC) Chief Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo said Thursday that he would seek the maximum sentence for recently convicted Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) militia leader Thomas Lubanga Dyilo . Lubanga was found guilty Wednesday of the war crimes of enlisting and conscripting children under the age of 15 and using them to participate [...]

Serb nationalist politician and war crimes suspect Vojislav Seselj on Thursday told judges at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) that he believes the tribunal is biased and that he does not care about the verdict. In his closing remarks, Seselj said the UN-created ICTY does not have jurisdiction over him, and [...]

A jury found Virginia Tech University guilty of negligence on Wednesday for failing to warn students of a gunman on the loose. The verdict comes in a case brought by the parents of two female students who were shot by Seung-Hui Cho in the 2007 massacre . The parents alleged that their daughters’ lives could [...]

Two members of the US House of Representatives introduced legislation on Thursday aimed at protecting Ugandan citizens from the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) led by alleged Ugandan war criminal Joseph Kony . The legislation calls for the expansion of the telecommunications infrastructure in Uganda, as well as an increase in the presence of military forces [...]

The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit rejected a law suit on Wednesday brought by conservation groups trying to preserve federal endangered species protections for wolves. The groups were trying to preserve the protected status of the Northern Rocky Mountain gray wolf following an amendment to the Endangered Species Act (ESA) which removed [...]

The Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) on Wednesday filed a lawsuit against Scott Lively, a US pastor with Abiding Truth Ministries , for enabling the anti-gay movement in Uganda . The suit, filed in the US District Court for the District of Massachusetts on behalf of the Ugandan rights group Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG) , [...]

Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett signed a bill Wednesday to require photo identification from voters in the upcoming November election. The bill was passed earlier Wednesday in the House of Representatives by a vote of 104-88. Supporters of the proposed legislation say that it will combat voter fraud, but opponents fear that it will disenfranchise poor, [...]

JURIST Columnist Haider Ala Hamoudi of the University of Pittsburgh School of Law says that Iraq’s handling of the violence perpetrated against an unpopular group of people may ultimately determine the type of state Iraq will evolve into over the course of the coming years…

JURIST Contributing Editor Chibli Mallat of the University of Utah SJ Quinney College of Law says that there is no true legal distinction between liberators and occupiers, and that because it does not look like there will be a treaty to distinguish the two soon, mixed tribunals will provide a productive intermediate step…