An international coalition of human rights advocates have urged UN member nations to support a "competitive, genuinely-contested and principled electoral process" for future seats on the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) . In a letter sent Thursday to members of the General Assembly, 74 human rights groups including Human Rights Watch (HRW), Amnesty International (AI) [...]

The US Department of Justice (DOJ) on Monday announced the indictment of three men accused of perpetrating the largest hacking and identity theft case ever prosecuted in the US. Albert Gonzales and two unidentified Russian hackers are accused of stealing more than 130 million credit and debit card numbers by hacking into computer systems of [...]

JURIST Guest Columnist Charles Jalloh of the University of Pittsburgh School of Law says that while having the International Criminal Court take up cases arising out of the violence that followed Kenya's 2007 elections could be convenient for local politicians seeking to evade responsibility for stoking ethnic hatreds and fomenting violence for personal gain, international [...]

Farzana Hassan : "Afghan president Hamid Karzai has obviously capitulated to the conservative Shia clergy in signing the contentious Shia Law of Personal Status that severely curtails the rights of Shia Muslim women. The law grants a husband the right to withdraw material support to his wife by even denying her food if she refuses [...]

In re: Troy Anthony Davis, US Supreme Court, August 17, 2009 . Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here. Latest commentary available here. JURIST has more on the death penalty.

The US Supreme Court on Monday ordered a federal court in Georgia to consider the case of death row inmate Troy Anthony Davis . Davis had filed an original writ of habeas corpus directly in the Supreme Court. Justice John Paul Stevens wrote a concurring opinion, joined by Justices Stephen Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. [...]

The US Department of Justice (DOJ) said Monday that it was required to defend the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) as long as "reasonable arguments can be made in support of constitutionality" despite the administration's belief that the law is discriminatory. Arthur Smelt and Christopher Hammer, a California couple, filed suit alleging that DOMA, [...]

Former Zambian president Frederick Chiluba was acquitted Monday of charges stealing money from the country's treasury while in office from 1991-2001. Chiluba and two Zambian businessmen, Faustin Kabwe and Aaron Chungu, faced a total of 12 counts of theft of public funds for their alleged involvement in taking $488,000 when the treasury deposited payments to [...]

The Iraqi Cabinet on Monday approved a draft bill that would require a referendum on the US-Iraq Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) , which allows US troops to remain in the country until the end of 2011. When the SOFA was originally reached and entered into effect on January 1, Iraqi lawmakers called for a [...]

The government of Fiji is seeking foreign judges to replace judicial officers whose appointments were revoked after an April suspension of the country's constitution, according to a Sunday report from Sri Lanka's Sunday Times. Fijian Chief Justice Anthony Gates interviewed candidates in Colombo, Sri Lanka, last week and met with the Sri Lankan Chief Justice [...]