Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard said Tuesday that, while she is personally opposed to same-sex marriage , the decision should be left to parliamentary vote . Gillard called on the Australian Labor Party to back her adamant position that the institution of marriage has a particular meaning and should remain unchanged: Many will ask, what [...]

The Brazilian government on Monday granted citizenship for the first time to a foreigner based on his same-sex marriage . Spaniard Antonio Vega Herrera will become a Brazilian citizen due to his marriage with his Brazilian partner, according to the country’s Federal Register . The news comes a month after Brazil’s High Court of Justice [...]

The Scottish Human Rights Commission on Monday condemned plans for a UK Bill of Rights . The Bill of Rights would replace the UK Human Rights Act , but Commission leader Alan Miller said the new legislation would weaken civil liberties rather than protect them. Instead, he argued, the UK should adopt more international human [...]

JURIST Guest Columnist William Stanger, University of California, Davis School of Law Class of 2014, is a Staff Editor for the school’s Business Law Journal. Stanger writes about the shortcomings of corporate social responsibility and how government should play a larger role in regulating corporate efforts… On April 20, 2010, the Deepwater Horizon offshore drilling [...]

The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) voiced concern on Friday regarding recent events in Egypt, “including the military trial and jailing of a blogger/activist.” The blogger, Alaa Abdel Fattah, was imprisoned by Egypt’s Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) at the end of October after refusing to answer prosecutors’ [...]

The Egypt Supreme Administrative Court on Monday suspended a verdict handed down last week by the Mansoura Administrative Court that prohibited former officials of the National Democratic Party (NDP) to participate in the upcoming election. As a result, most of the officials who joined other parties or plan to run independently are now allowed to [...]

The presidents of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) on Friday told the UN General Assembly that the tribunals are in need of experienced staff to complete their work . The presidents warned of the difficulties in retaining staff at the ICTY and the [...]

The Republic of Equatorial Guinea held a referendum on Sunday that would institute a number of changes to the country’s constitution . The proposed reforms include a limit on the number of terms a president can serve, the creation of the office of vice president and a provision allowing the current president to pick his [...]

The US Supreme Court agreed Monday to hear arguments on the constitutionality of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) . The court granted certiorari in three separate cases, reserving five-and-half-hours for oral argument on the issue. The court agreed to hear two hours of arguments on the constitutionality of the individual insurance mandate [...]

A UN official on Saturday expressed concern regarding the lack of transparency in an inquiry by the UK into allegations that its secret services were complicit in torture of detainees in the aftermath of 9/11. The UN’s Special Rapporteur on Torture, Juan Mendez, has doubts as to whether the proposed inquiry will meet international standards [...]