An Iraq war veteran filed suit Wednesday in the US District Court for the Central District of California against the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) after it refused to pay her full disability benefits because she is in a same-sex marriage. Tracy Cooper-Harris, who served in the US Army for over a decade, argues that [...]

The Supreme Court of Pakistan on Thursday ordered Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani to appear in court on February 13 for a formal indictment on contempt charges. Gilani has failed to comply with the court’s order to reopen a corruption case against President Asif Ali Zardari , but Gilani maintains he did not comply [...]

JURIST Guest Columnist Jill Levenson, Associate Professor of Psychology at Lynn University, says that sex offender residency restrictions often do little to prevent repeat offenses because they are based on stereotypical notions of recidivism among sex offenders…

The Washington state Senate approved Senate Bill 6239 to legalize same-sex marriage by a vote of 28–21 late Wednesday evening. Washington currently grants expanded domestic partnership rights rather than full marriage or civil union rights to same-sex couples. Several amendments affording protection of religious objection to same-sex marriage were added to the bill in debate. [...]

JURIST Guest Columnist Laurie Blank of Emory University School of Law says that the current US policy of justifying all targeted strikes with reference to both armed conflict and self-defense has a detrimental effect on both current implementation and future development of the law…

JURIST Guest Columnist D. Wes Rist of the University of Pittsburgh School of Law says that any attempt to extend the reach of the International Criminal Court into areas it was not created to address runs the risk of weakening its overall authority and the willingness of member states to comply with its orders…

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a lawsuit on Wednesday under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) demanding the US government release information about their targeted killing program of US citizens abroad. The lawsuit comes in response to the three American citizens that have been killed by drones in the past four months. In [...]

The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) accepted a plea agreement on Tuesday in which Jelena Rasic, the case manager for Bosnian war criminal Milan Lukic, pleaded guilty to five counts of contempt against the tribunal. According to the original indictment , the prosecutor of the tribunal charged Rasic with contempt for procuring [...]

Lawyers for former Liberian president Charles Taylor requested Tuesday that the Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL) reopen Taylor’s war crimes case in light of new evidence, including a recent report by the UN Panel of Experts on Liberia. Taylor’s lawyers request this report be admitted as evidence in the case , claiming that the [...]

JURIST Guest Columnist Kelsey Alford-Jones, Director of Guatemala Human Rights Commission, argues that it is important for the Public Prosecutor’s Office and president to follow through with the genocide charges against Rios Montt to strengthen Guatemala’s judiciary and bring justice to the victims of genocide…