The US Supreme Court on Monday upheld a controversial provision of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) but avoided a constitutional question. The Court ruled 8-1 in Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District Number One v. Holder that the VRA permits the appellant municipality to "bail out" from the preclearance requirement of Section 5 if it can [...]

The US government is delaying the release of a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) interrogation report by another week, allowing for officials to determine what information to release. The special report on counter-terrorism and interrogation practices is expected to be released pursuant to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties [...]

JURIST Guest Columnist Victor Hansen of New England School of Law says that Department of Defense approval of military defense counsel's participation in Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani's federal court terrorism case would underline the Department's core commitment to the rule of law, and would show that military lawyers are capable of providing competent legal representation to [...]

Torture and other human rights abuses in Zimbabwe have become so commonplace that they constitute a crime against humanity, according to a study for the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation (CSVR) prepared by Tony Reeler of the Harare-based Research and Advocacy Unit (RAU). Reeler synthesized data collected by numerous human rights organizations [...]

Draft Act on Greenland Self-Government, Denmark Ministry of Foreign Affairs, June 21, 2009 . Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here. Latest commentary available here. JURIST has more on legal issues relating to the Arctic.

Awzar Thi : "At a meeting of lawyers in Hong Kong this April, Aitzaz Ahsan described how as counsel for the Chief Justice of Pakistan in the petition against his unconstitutional removal from office during 2007, neither the president nor any other senior official had even read the charges brought against the judge, which they [...]

Greenlanders Sunday celebrated their national day with the establishment of a self-rule arrangement that increases the island's autonomy from Denmark. Under the Greenland Self Government Act presented by Denmark's Queen Margrethe to Greenland's new socialist Prime Minister Kuupik Kleist , Greenland now controls its own law enforcement and domestic courts and will receive a higher [...]

Portugal will accept two or three Guantanamo detainees already cleared for release, Portuguese Foreign Minister Luis Amado said in an interview Saturday. Amado indicated that the Portuguese Ministry of Internal Affairs would have to determine the legal framework for receiving the detainees. The agreement resulted from a meeting on Friday between Amado and US Ambassador [...]

Bermuda Premier Ewart Brown Saturday survived a vote of no confidence by Bermuda's lower house of parliament, the House of Assembly , which was seen as an attempt to punish Brown for accepting four Uighur Guantanamo detainees to the Atlantic island nation last week. The resolution , proposed by members of the opposition United Bermuda [...]

A European Council summit meeting in Brussels concluded on Friday with a resolution to create a new European financial supervisory and monitoring system. The new system will seek to balance the need of coordinating efforts on financial supervision, particularly in times of crisis, with the autonomy of each member nation over their own financial stability. [...]