The US Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday delayed a vote on the confirmation of Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor at the request of Senate Republicans. The vote on whether to send the nomination for consideration by the full Senate is now scheduled for July 28 . Committee chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) said that he was [...]

Department of Defense—Retired Military Officers as Media Analysts, United States Government Accountability Office, July 21, 2009 . Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here. Latest commentary available here.

The French National Assembly voted Tuesday to delay a vote on a new version of a controversial Internet piracy law, past its original July 24 date. The French Senate approved the law earlier this month after portions of its original version were rejected in June by France's Constitutional Council . The original law subjected violators [...]

Venezuela judge Alicia Torres said Monday that she has been removed from her position presiding over a case against Globovision TV owner Guillermo Zuloaga. Zuloaga has been charged with usury and conspiracy to commit a crime, and Torres said she was removed from the case after she refused to issue an order prohibiting Zuloaga from [...]

Human Rights Watch (HRW) sent an open letter Monday to US Attorney General Eric Holder to "express strong support for opening a criminal investigation into abusive interrogation practices by the US government since the attacks of September 11, 2001." The letter appears to come in response to last week's Newsweek report indicating that Holder was [...]

A report on the closure of the military prison at Guantanamo Bay , due to be presented to US President Barack Obama Tuesday, will be delayed for six months, officials reported Monday. The government task force, assigned to create a new policy on terrorism detainees, missed its Tuesday deadline for a full report, instead presenting [...]

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on Monday approved amendments to the country's law that regulates non-governmental organizations (NGOs), loosening and simplifying registration requirements for the groups. The amendments eased reporting and auditing requirements on the groups and eliminated a requirement that the groups prove they are not a threat to the Russian state or identity. The [...]

JURIST Guest Columnist Anand Grover, UN Special Rapporteur on health and founder of the Lawyers Collective human rights advocacy group describes his group's decade-long fight to end discrimination based on sexual orientation in India, culminating in his recent Delhi High Court victory against India's colonial-era anti-sodomy law…. On the evening of Wednesday, 1st July, while [...]

Chief judge for the US District Court for the District of Columbia Royce Lamberth found Monday that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) committed fraud in its efforts to keep documents related to eavesdropping allegations a secret. The judge ruled that the CIA must unseal more than 200 documents relating to the case. Lamberth is also [...]

Mehmet Tohti : "Horrible video footage posted on the internet regarding the July 5th Urumqi massacre has brought some international attention and at the same time revealed the bitter reality that can be summarized as miserable Uyghurs, cruel Chinese and a generally uninterested world when it comes to the reaction to this tragedy that resulted [...]