JURIST Contributing Editor Michael Kelly of Creighton University School of Law says that the likely outcome of the withdrawal of coalition forces from Iraq is a backslide into sectarian violence resulting in the split into smaller states based on ethnoreligious geography…

The UN Office for the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) Thursday released the first ever UN report on the global human rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people. The report details LGBT people around the world being killed or enduring hate-motivated violence , torture, detention, criminalization and discrimination in jobs, health care [...]

A group of animal rights activists on Thursday challenged the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act which they claim violates their rights to peaceful protest. The lawsuit, filed in the US District Court for the District of Massachusetts by the Center for Constitutional Rights , claims that the law is overly broad and criminalizes activity that is [...]

Alabama and Georgia filed motions Thursday in the US Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit seeking to stay proceedings on challenges to their immigration laws pending a ruling by the US Supreme Court in Arizona v. United States . The Supreme Court agreed Monday to rule on a challenge to Arizona’s controversial immigration law [...]

JURIST Guest Columnist Damian Ugwu, Executive Director of the Social Justice & Advocacy Initiative, says that the recent bill prohibiting same-sex marriage in Nigeria has ominous implications for a broad range of individual rights in the country…

International Criminal Court (ICC) Chief Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo on Thursday urged international cooperation in executing arrest warrants for suspects accused in the Darfur conflict . Presenting his report to the UN Security Council , Ocampo emphasized that all states parties to the Rome Statute have an obligation to cooperate with the ICC. Following his report, [...]

JURIST Contributing Editor Stephen Halbrook, Counsel for the National Rifle Association in the case of Messerschmidt v. Millender, argues that the police violated clearly established gun ownership rights in seizing the guns of all those present within the searched premises without verifying that the suspect was among those persons…

There were only 78 new death sentences handed down in the US in 2011—the first time that number has dropped below 100 since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976—according to a report published Thursday by the Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC) . There were 43 executions in 13 states in 2001, down from 46 [...]

The two-year sodomy trial of Malaysian opposition leader and former deputy prime minister Anwar Ibrahim came to a close Thursday with the prosecution delivering its closing arguments. Under Malaysian law, sodomy is punishable by 20 years in prison regardless of consent. The charges against Anwar allege that he sodomized a former male political aide. This [...]

JURIST Guest Columnist Phil Robertson, Deputy Director of the Asia Division at Human Rights Watch, says that the Peaceful Assembly Bill is a betrayal of Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak’s earlier promises to bolster civil society through broadening respect for individual rights and enhancing democratic practices…