The Center for Justice and Accountability (CJA) and the Asociacion Pro Derechos Humanos de España (APDHE) filed suit Thursday in Spain's National Court against Alfredo Cristiani , the former president of El Salvador. The groups claim that Cristiani, along with 14 others, committed crimes against humanity, citing a 1989 incident in which six Jesuit priests [...]

Germany's lower house of parliament voted Wednesday to approve a new law which would expand the power of Germany's federal police agency, the Bundeskriminalamt (BKA) , to undertake online and telephone surveillance. Under the proposed law, a judge would be required to order an online search before BKA agents would be permitted to engage in [...]

Authors of a new report on detainees released from US detention in Guantanamo Bay are urging US president-elect Barack Obama to form an independent, nonpartisan commission with subpoena powers to investigate the treatment of US detainees in Guantanamo as well as in facilities in Afghanistan and Iraq . The report, released on Wednesday by human [...]

The European Court of First Instance on Wednesday denied an appeal by the Danish company Lego to restore its EU trademark for its interlocking toy bricks. The decision upheld an Office for Harmonization in the Internal Market (OHIM) ruling that the distinctive nature of the product is its functional shape, and cannot be trademarked under [...]

A court in Brandenburg, Kentucky began civil trial proceedings Wednesday against the Kentucky-based Imperial Klans of America over injuries sustained to then-16-year old Jordan Gruver, a US citizen of Panamanian descent, during a racially motivated beating allegedly perpetrated by members of the IKA. The lawsuit, brought on behalf of Gruver by the Southern Poverty Law [...]

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) on Wednesday announced that it had filed an Alabama Open Records Act request to obtain documents related to the Hankins Middle School policy of educating students in a single-sex environment. In a letter to the Mobile County School System , the Alabama chapter of the ACLU argued that Title [...]

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon voiced concern Wednesday about the lengthy and "severe" prison sentences recently issued by a Myanmar court against pro-democracy demonstrators. He called for the country's military junta to release the more than 30 activists, along with all other political prisoners in a statement urging national reconciliation. The sentences , imposed in connection [...]

Connecticut Superior Court Judge Jonathan Silbert signed a final order on Wednesday allowing same-sex marriage in the state. Last month, the state Supreme Court ruled in a 4-3 decision that state statutes barring same-sex marriage violated the state constitution by discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation. The high court ordered summary judgment and injunctive [...]

JURIST Guest Columnist Leila Nadya Sadat of Washington University School of Law in St. Louis, Missouri, says that come January, a new US administration led by President Barack Obama should take seven specific steps to restore human rights at home and America’s respect in the world … America's human rights record has been badly tarnished [...]

The South African Constitutional Court Wednesday refused to hear an appeal brought by former president Thabo Mbeki of a lower court ruling that dismissed corruption charges against his rival, African National Congress (ANC) president Jacob Zuma and suggested he Mbeki had a role in bringing them. The Pietermaritzburg High Court dismissed corruption charges against Zuma [...]