JURIST Guest Columnist Kevin Govern of Ave Maria School of Law says that social media and networking have proven pivotal in the success of the Arab Spring protest movements in a manner that was previously unforeseen by commentators and scholars…
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On Friday, Australian Attorney General Robert McClelland announced that he will be petitioning the United Kingdom’s Ministry of Defense to re-examine the war crime convictions of Australian Lieutenants Harry “Breaker” Morant and Peter Handcock during the Boer War. Morant and Handcock were convicted through a court martial of murdering Boer civilians and sentenced to death [...]
United Nations Special Rapporteur on on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, Christof Heyns , on Thursday urged respect for international standards concerning the use of lethal force during arrests and warned that the growing use of targeted killings with unmanned drones is legally problematic. Heyns made a report to the UN the General Assembly saying [...]
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on Thursday announced plans to develop standards for the disposal of wastewater from the process of hydraulic fracturing . Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, is a process in which water, sand and chemicals are pumped into the ground to create fractures in rocks, which allows trapped gas and oil to come [...]
The Canadian Centre for International Justice (CCIJ) on Thursday filed a complaint in the Surrey Provincial Court on behalf of four men against former US president George W. Bush on torture charges . Bush was in Surrey on Thursday to attend the Surrey Regional Economic Summit . According to the CCIJ, the four men, three [...]
The League of Women Voters of Wisconsin filed a lawsuit Thursday in Dane County Circuit Court challenging Wisconsin’s new voter identification law as a violation of the Wisconsin Constitution . Plaintiffs seek declaratory and injunctive relief in challenging the constitutionality of parts of Wisconsin Act 23 passed in 2011. The controversial voter identification law states [...]
The UN Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights (OHCHR) on Friday called for a full investigation into the killing of former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi in his hometown of Sirte on Thursday. Rupert Colville, the spokesman for UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay told reporters that there needs to be an [...]
A judge for the US District Court for the District of Columbia on Thursday dismissed a lawsuit brought by group of 10 congressmen alleging that US President Barack Obama violated Article I Section 8 and the 1973 War Powers Resolution by authorizing increased military strikes in Libya without Congressional approval. The complaint filed by the [...]
A judge for the Queen’s Court Bench of Alberta has granted legal rights to a non-biological father of a child—the ex-partner of the biological father—over the biological father in a child custody case. While the judge stated that the biological father, identified as “H”, would remain the legal parent of the unidentified eight-year-old girl, the [...]
UN Special Rapporteur on human rights for the West Bank and Gaza Strip , Richard Falk called Thursday, called for better guidelines on the treatment of Palestinian youth arrested by the Israeli military. in a report to the General Assembly’s human rights committee, Falk expressing concern about reports of violence against children during arrest and [...]
