The International Criminal Court (ICC) ruled Tuesday that the war crimes trial of former Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) vice president Jean-Pierre Bemba can proceed. Appeals chamber Judge Anita Usacka affirmed the ruling of the trial chamber and dismissed Bemba’s appeal challenging the admissibility of the case before the ICC. The court found that Bemba [...]

The European Commission (EC) announced Tuesday that it is temporarily postponing the human rights complaint filed against France over the country’s failure to respect the EU’s Free Movement Directive of 2004 in its expulsion of Roma migrants . In September, the EC asked the French government to enact legislation guaranteeing that procedural safeguards would be [...]

The US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit on Friday upheld the constitutionality of an Illinois statute mandating a daily moment of silence in public schools. The court rejected arguments that the Illinois Reflection and Silent Prayer Act violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment by encouraging prayer in public schools, reversing an [...]

Lawyers representing the city of San Francisco submitted a brief on Monday arguing that California’s ban on same-sex marriages , better known as Proposition 8 , is irrational under California state law. The brief was submitted to the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit both in support of the district court’s finding in [...]

A federal jury on Monday convicted four men for planting explosive devices outside New York City synagogues and plotting to shoot down military planes at an Air National Guard base in New York. James Cromitie and three co-defendants were found guilty of conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction, conspiracy to kill officers and employees [...]

The Iranian Culture Ministry announced Monday that it will shut down media outlets that publish reports on opposition leaders. The government warned media outlets against reports on opposition leaders, marking the government’s first public acknowledgment of such censorship. There has been no mainstream media coverage of the two most prominent opposition presidential candidates, Mir Hossein [...]

JURIST Guest Columnist Keith J. Bybee of Syracuse University says in order for both state and federal judges to retain legitimacy, it is not enough for them to merely avoid actual improprieties; they must also visibly appear to play the role of impartial arbiter to sustain public support… Judges around the country have been struggling [...]

The Zimbabwe Supreme Court announced Monday that it would refuse to hear a civil rights case brought by Finance Minister Tendai Biti over his 2008 arrest on treason charges because he did not file an appeal in time. Biti, who is secretary general of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) , was seeking a ruling [...]

A Vietnamese court on Monday sentenced former deputy director of the Ministry of Transportation Huynh Ngoc Si to life in prison for accepting bribes while managing a Japanese-funded road project, according to state news agencies. Si was convicted of receiving USD $262,000 from the Japanese company Pacific Consultants International (PCI) in exchange for negotiating the [...]

The US Supreme Court on Monday granted certorari in Ashcroft v. al-Kidd to determine whether former US attorney general John Ashcroft is entitled to absolute or qualified immunity against claims that he used the material witness statute as a “pretext” to preventatively detain terrorism suspects. Ashcroft appealed the September 2009 ruling of the US Court [...]