The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled unanimously Tuesday that Finland violated Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights – the "right to respect for private and family life" – in a case involving a minor targeted by pedophiles. In K.U. v. Finland (application no. 2872/02), the court found that Finnish authorities [...]

The Roman Catholic Diocese of Springfield, Massachusetts announced Tuesday that it has settled 59 sexual abuse claims against the church through voluntary arbitration. The total amount for the settlements was $4.5 million with individual awards ranging from $5,000 to $200,000 for incidents of abuse from 1948 to 1986. Springfield bishop Timothy McDonnell said of the [...]

The Convention on Cluster Munitions (CCM) banning the use of most such weapons was opened for signature Wednesday at a conference in Oslo, Norway. More than 100 countries adopted the convention in May at a meeting in Dublin, Ireland. Several major users of cluster munitions, including the US, Russia, and China, have not adopted the [...]

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on Tuesday proposed that Russian courts become more transparent in order to restore faith in the justice system and prevent people from turning to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) . Speaking at the seventh All-Russian Congress of Judges, Medvedev said that the ECHR cannot and should not replace Russian [...]

A federal judge on Tuesday ruled that her 2006 decision invalidating a 2005 Bush administration rule that would allow road construction and mining in national forests applies only to 10 western states. The original Roadless Area Conservation Rule , implemented by former US President Bill Clinton in 2001, was replaced by the Bush administration with [...]

JURIST Guest Columnist Douglas NeJaime of UCLA School of Law says that in the wake of California voters' endorsement of Proposition 8, amending the state Constitution to restrict the definition of marriage to a union between a man and a woman, the battle for gay rights may now shift to other states and focus on [...]

The US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled Tuesday that a suspected Osama bin Laden associate, imprisoned for 32 years after stabbing a prison guard while in custody, may be resentenced according to heightened standards for acts of terrorism. Mamdouh Mahmud Salim, a Sudanese national, was in custody in 2000 awaiting charges related [...]

Allen St. Pierre : "The recent results on voter referendums in Switzerland to allow for permanent heroin assisted treatments, but against decriminalizing cannabis possession are vexingly informative. The near 40% support at the polls for cannabis decriminalization shows a strong plurality, but demonstrates that current Swiss public educational campaigns for cannabis law reform were not [...]

The US Supreme Court heard oral arguments Tuesday in two cases. In Entergy Corp. v. EPA , the Court heard arguments on whether Section 316(b) of the Clean Water Act authorizes the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to use a cost-benefit analysis to determine what is the best technology available for minimizing adverse environmental impact from [...]

A Norwegian court on Tuesday sentenced Bosnian immigrant Mirsad Repak to five years in prison for committing war crimes against 11 Serbian citizens imprisoned during the Bosnian War. Repak, who has lived Norway for more than 10 years, was also ordered to pay damages to the families of eight Serbian victims, but was acquitted on [...]