The District Court of the Hague on Wednesday dismissed claims alleging the Dutch government negligently failed to protect civilians during the 1995 Srebrenica massacre . The relatives of several Bosnian Muslims killed at Srebrenica argued that the Netherlands should be liable for the deaths because Dutch soldiers acting as UN peacekeepers had forced the victims [...]

US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officials on Wednesday told Congress that a 670-mile fence along the US-Mexican border is unlikely to be completed as planned by year's end because of cost increases, technological problems and legal challenges. CPB Commissioner Ralph Basham said in prepared testimony before the House Homeland Security Committee that although 344 [...]

A report released Thursday by B'Tselem – The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories alleges that Israeli security policies have resulted in Palestinians being prevented from accessing land adjacent to settlements in the West Bank. The report, entitled "Access Denied: Israeli measures to deny Palestinians access to land around settlements" describes [...]

A group of American citizens from Texas' Rio Grande Valley filed suit against the US Department of State (DOS) Tuesday, alleging they had been denied passports because they are of Mexican descent and were delivered by midwives. According to a complaint filed in the US District Court for the Southern District of Texas , the [...]

US government secrecy continued to increase in 2007, according to the Secrecy Report Card 2008 released Tuesday by OpenTheGovernment.org . The report chastized the Bush administration for its refusal "to be held accountable to the public through the oversight responsibilities of Congress," and took note of extensive quantitative findings: The government spent $195 maintaining the [...]

A Fulton County Superior Court judge on Monday granted summary judgment for the state of Georgia in a suit alleging that the state's electronic voting system is unconstitutional and illegally vulnerable to fraud. The challenge, filed in 2006 by a coalition of Georgia voters called Voter GA , alleged that the system's lack of paper [...]

Carl Eric Olsen v. Michael Mukasey, et al., US Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, September 8, 2008 . Read the full text of the opinion . Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) released a report Wednesday calling on Iran, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Pakistan, and Yemen to join in a global moratorium on the death penalty for juveniles. The report states that the five countries are the last in the world known to engage in the practice, with a combined 32 executions of juvenile [...]

The US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit on Monday reversed a district court's grant of summary judgment and dismissal to Michigan's Region VII Area Agency on Aging (Region VII) , instead ruling that an unlawful termination suit filed by former employee Denise Hughes can continue. Hughes argues that the agency fired her because [...]

United States of America v. James Ford Seale, US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, September 9, 2008 . Read the full text of the opinion . Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.