The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit on Tuesday overturned the conviction of former Brocade Communications Systems CEO Gregory Reyes for backdating stock options . Citing prosecutorial misconduct, the appeals court overturned Reyes's 2007 conviction and sentence on conspiracy and fraud charges for backdating stock options. The Ninth Circuit found that the prosecution [...]

Prominent Chinese human rights lawyer Xu Zhiyong has been charged with tax evasion, his lawyer said Tuesday. Xu is accused of failing to pay taxes on a $100,000 grant from Yale University earmarked for the legal research center of Xu's Gongmeng human rights group. Xu was taken into custody last month, shortly after Chinese officials [...]

Joshua Posaner : "The recent case in Britain, in which the charity Reprieve is assisting Mohamed Saad Iqbal Madni in filing a lawsuit with the High Court, can only illustrate the fact that the British government is prepared to recognize its duty in giving this man a trial. We also realize that the British security [...]

Russian human rights activists and journalists are suspending their work in Chechnya in the wake of the recent violence, according to a Tuesday Moscow Times report . Rights group Memorial , which employed recently murdered activist Natalia Estemirova , closed its Chechen office soon after her death. Memorial, which has continued work in Chechnya through [...]

The US District Court for the Western District of Texas on Monday upheld a University of Texas at Austin (UT) affirmative action policy of considering race in student admissions. The plaintiffs were two Caucasian females who were denied admission to UT. They challenged the admission policy, which allows race and ethnicity to be considered among [...]

Kindhearts for Charitable Humanitarian Development, Inc. v. Geithner, US District Court for the Northern District of Ohio, August 18, 2009 . Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here. Latest commentary available here.

As Justice Sonia Sotomayor takes a seat on the US Supreme Court – the first Hispanic and only the third woman to do so – the federal judiciary as a whole continues to be heavily dominated by white males, according to a new report released by the Brookings Institution . As of early August 2009, [...]

The US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) acknowledged Monday that 11 deaths in immigration detention had gone unreported . ICE added 10 names to the official roster of immigration detainee fatalities and acknowledged an eleventh death that occurred last week. The revelation of the additional deaths came in response to an American Civil Liberties Union [...]

The specially-established Eritrea-Ethiopia Claims Commission on Monday awarded damages "resulting from violations of international law" that occurred during the nations' 1998-2000 border war. The five-person panel established under the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague awarded USD $174,036,520 to Ethiopia and $161,455,000 to Eritrea , not including an additional $2,065,865 granted to individual Eritrean [...]

The US Department of State (DOS) on Monday announced that it has sent a report to Congress that gives a favorable opinion of Mexico's recent human rights record, paving the way for US aid to the country. The report outlines Mexico's progress in addressing a variety of human rights issues as part of the Merida [...]