JURIST Guest Columnist Leah White, University of California, Davis School of Law Class of 2013, is a Staff Editor for the school’s Business Law Journal. She writes on the effectiveness of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and encourages legislation to increase corporate social responsibility… Consumers’ demands have always influenced businesses. As concerns over ecological responsibility rise, consumers [...]

The UN Special Rapporteur on North Korean Human Rights Marzuki Darusman criticized North Korea’s human rights record on Friday, especially concerning treatment of prisoners, echoing a UN General Assembly resolution earlier this week. After speaking to North Korean refugees in South Korea, Darusman said he was convinced that 200,000 political prisoners are being abused in [...]

An Italian high court Thursday rejected an application by former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi to prevent testimony being heard at his corruption trial. Berlusconi had applied for but was denied an interim injunction preventing David Mills , his former tax lawyer, from appearing via video link from a London court. A justice sitting in private [...]

A Tunisian criminal court Friday convicted a nephew of the wife of Tunisia’s ousted former president Zine Al Abidine Ben Ali , immediately pronouncing an 18-year prison sentence for writing over USD $399 million in bad checks. Imed Trabelsi, viewed as the favorite nephew of former first lady Leila Trabelsi, is already in jail for [...]

A Belarus court convicted human rights activist Ales Bialiatski, the president of Viasana and vice-president of the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) , of tax evasion on Thursday, sentencing him to a four-and-a-half-year prison term. Viasna is a non-governmental human rights organization in Belarus that is dedicated to reporting on allegations of police and [...]

The European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruled on Thursday that Internet service providers (ISPs) cannot be required by law to monitor their customers’ activities as an attempt to combat illegal sharing of copyrighted material. The court’s ruling comes after a lower court ordered an Internet provider, Scarlet , to make it impossible for its users [...]

Sri Lankan Secretary of Defence Gotabaya Rajapaksa stated on Thursday in a speech that the government has begun counting the number of civilian deaths from its 26-year civil war with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) . The counting was initiated to counter several allegations of war crimes against the Sri Lankan military including [...]

Egypt’s Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) on Thursday called for an end to violence against protesters and reiterated that demonstrations were a protected right, as long as they were done peacefully. The SCAF also assured citizens that arrested demonstrators would be released , possibly by Saturday. Protesters have been clashing with Egyptian security [...]

The Supreme Court of British Columbia ruled on Wednesday that a law banning polygamy was constitutional. The law was under challenge by two bishops of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS) who claimed that the law infringed on their religious freedom and was not consistent with the Canadian Charter of [...]

Bahrain authorities used excessive force and tortured detainees involved in the pro-democracy demonstrations earlier this year, according to a report released Tuesday by an independent Bahraini government commission. The report, published by the Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry (BICI) , concluded that the security forces “violated the principles of necessity and proportionality” in their choice [...]