The UN-backed Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) on Thursday ordered the trials of four alleged Khmer Rouge leaders be split into a series of smaller trials . The ECCC said that the separation of trials will allow the tribunal to deliberate more quickly in the case against the four elderly defendants. The [...]

Former Libyan prime minister Al-Baghdadi Ali Al-Mahmoudi was arrested Wednesday in Tamaghza, Tunisia, near the border with Algeria, according to Tunisian authorities. Al-Mahmoudi was sentenced to six months in prison for illegal entering the country . Al-Mahmoudi served as prime minister under Muammar Gaddafi until Gaddafi was ousted during the Libya conflict which began last [...]

JURIST Guest Columnist Larry Eaker of the American University of Paris says that the recent debt crisis in the EU has made it necessary to examine whether it is legally possible for a eurozone nation to leave the EU and abandon the joint currency…

The British government announced Thursday that it would pay reparations to the families of those killed or wounded in Northern Ireland’s 1972 Bloody Sunday, the day on which members of the British Army’s Parachute Regiment opened fire on civil rights marchers in Londonderry. The shooting killed 13 Northern Ireland civilians and wounded 15. The UK [...]

The US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit on Wednesday dismissed two cases filed by former Iraqi detainees who claimed they had been tortured by civilian contractors at the Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad. The three-judge panel ruled 2-1 to dismiss both cases, filed against contractors CACI International Inc. and L-3 Services , holding [...]

The state of Georgia executed Troy Anthony Davis Wednesday night after his eleventh-hour appeal for clemency was denied by the US Supreme Court. Davis was put to death by lethal injection, the three-drug cocktail that first put the condemned man in an induced coma through an administration of pentobarbital, followed by an injection of pancuronium [...]

The Liberian government must work to improve its generally poor prison conditions, according to an Amnesty International (AI) assessment released Wednesday. “Good Intentions Are Not Enough: The Struggle to Reform Liberia’s Prisons” describes an otherwise determined government’s failure to cope with the needs of its prisoners as it struggles to rebuild a country wracked by [...]

A judge for the US District Court for the District of Columbia Wednesday dismissed a challenge to election monitoring under the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (VRA) . In a 151-page decision , Judge John Bates rejected the arguments of officials representing Shelby County, Alabama, together with a corps of conservative activists, who claimed it [...]

A Paris prosecutor on Tuesday, asked that the corruption charges against former French president Jacques Chirac be dropped. Additionally, the prosecutor has requested acquittal of the nine other individuals charged with Chirac. The charges against Chirac stem from his time as mayor of the city of Paris and accuse him of using public funds to [...]

The US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit on Friday reinstated a $675,000 verdict against a Boston University student who illegally downloaded 30 songs and then shared them on the Web.The verdict was, at one point, reduced to $67,500, because then-judge Nancy Gertner, who has since retired, found the original penalty “unconstitutionally excessive.” Gertner [...]